Ha!
Hard working scientists have discovered the World’s Funniest Joke. Oddly enough, when I tried it out on a cow-orker this afternoon, he didn’t laugh. Then again, he didn’t get why the joke that nobody found funny was funny either. The World’s Funniest Joke seems to puzzle other people as well; The Guardian actually asked a British comic to explain why the joke is funny. In fact, they seem to have worked up a whole package on the topic over two days, including a selection of jokes that are funny regionally.
This whole thing reminds me of nothing so much as the CD that David Soldier did with dadaist artists Komar and Melamid a few years back that contained the World’s Most Wanted and Most Unwanted Songs. The Most Wanted Song was some bland pop R&B concoction that lasted about four minutes. The Most Unwanted Song was over 25 minutes long and included the aspects of music that people hated the most, including opera, country and western (the opera singer singing "yahoo, yahoo, yahoo!" was particularly memorable), accordions, bagpipes, tubas, children, holidays, and commercials, among other things. The holiday bits were hysterical, with groups of children chanting things like "Yom Kippur! Yom Kippur! / Self-reflection and atonement / Yom Kippur / That’s what for / Do all your shopping at Wal-Mart!" Apparently I’m one of only 200 people in the world who enjoy The Most Unwanted Song. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get through to the scientists’ web site at all today to see if they’re joking or deadly serious about this study.
Posted at 9:39 PM
This actually reminded me of the Monty Python skit, where a comedian writes a joke so funny that he literally dies laughing. The Brits then translate the joke into German, one word at a time, by different people, and turn it into a weapon in WWII.
The joke in faux-German is:
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! .. Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Posted by lilbro at 1:10 PM, October 4, 2002 [Link]