A New Joke Thread

Today's Observer has a collection of jokes by scientists. Most of them - perhaps predictably - are pretty dire, but I thought this limerick, from a chemist, was rather neat:

A mosquito was heard to complain
That chemists had poisoned her brain;
The cause of her sorrow
Was paradichloro-
diphenyltrichloroethane.

And here's one of the briefest, from a biologist:

A blowfly walks into a bar and says, "Excuse me, is this stool taken?"

Sign spotted today near my home:

IF YOUR DOG FOULS THE PAVEMENT, PLEASE PICK IT UP

The original joke of this thread reminds me of one I once read:

A man appears at the pearly gates. Saint Peter is there and says, "I'm terribly sorry, but the Lord is on one of his little kicks and will only let those in today who have otherwise had a bad day."

The man says, "Well, I died. Isn't that worthy enough of a bad day?"

Saint Peter replies, "Tell me how you died and we will see."

The man related his story. "I was sure my wife was cheating on me, so I ran all the way up ten flights of stairs and burst into our apartment and found her naked in the bedroom. I was incensed, let me tell you. I tore open the closet looking for the guy, but he wasn't there. I ripped the bed apart, but he wasn't beneath it. I ran for the living room and looked behind the couch, but nothing! I heard a noise in the kitchen and I ran into there. I saw some guy clinging to the windowsill, so I ran over and started kicking at his fingers. He yelled and hollered, but I kept right on kicking until he lost his grip. I watched him fall ten stories, but he landed on an awning and rolled off onto the pavement. I was still so mad that I grabbed the refrigerator and threw it out the window, but I must have overdid it because I never saw it hit. The next thing I saw was you, so I must have just keeled over right then and there."

Saint Peter considers and then says, "Yeah, that's a pretty bad day. Go on in."

A short time later, another guy appears and Saint Peter tells him of God's restrictions that day and gets him to relate his story.

"I'm a window washer, see. I do windows for this high-rise downtown and I was in the middle of cleaning the windows on the 20th floor when my safety harness snapped and I plummeted toward the ground. I reached for anything I could get my hands on and I just happened to snag the windowsill of an apartment somewhere below me. Just when I thought my life had been spared, this total nutbar starts screaming at me and kicking my fingers. I'm yelling and screaming back, but this guy is insane. He manages to kick me loose and I'm suddenly back to falling. My hands hurt so bad that I can't grab anything, but somehow I manage to bounce off the front entrance awning and land on the sidewalk. I'm hurt, believe you me, but I'm alive. I laugh and praise God and roll over. That's when I saw this refrigerator barreling down at my head. The next thing I know, I'm here."

Saint Peter chuckles to himself and agrees that the fellow has had a very bad day. He lets him inside.

Moments later, Former President Bill Clinton appears in front of Saint Peter. "Mr. President," Saint Peter exclaims, "you must have had a terrible day to have ended up here!"

"A bad day," Clinton says, "let me tell you about it! I was hiding from this woman's insane husband in her refrigerator..."

There was a preacher who was a popular choice to preach funerals, because he always had something nice to say about the deceased, no matter how bad that person had been. Then one day he was asked to preach the funeral of a man who had been the meanest man in the county. No one in anyone's memory had even came close to being as mean as he had been. At the funeral, the preacher got up and starred at the casket for several seconds, searching for something nice to say about the departed rogue. Finally he said, "You know, this man could whistle about as good as anyone I've ever heard."

I was going to include the following dialogue in a recently published tale, but it got cut in the final rewrite:

Scarlett (a robot): "I invented a new joke last night for use at a small party of close friends."

Professor Robinson (a human) "Really? A new joke? Please, do share it with me..."

Scarlett; "This is not a small party of cl... Yes, professor."

She assumed her joke telling posture and recited in the tone of someone daring to tell a joke that might be a tad risqué.

"A lady from Lapland and a lady from Poland go into a bar carrying their dance shoes. The barkeep asks the Lapp dancer what she would like to drink and she says 'a Manhattan, please.' He gives her one, and asks the Pole dancer what she would like. She looks at the Manhattan for some time and then says 'Anything that does not come with two cherries stuck on the end of a cocktail stick.'

"That's not funny."

"It is to a robot."

That reminds me of this one I heard during a BBC television programme on the fascinating subject of logic....

Three logicians go into a bar, and the bartender asks "Would all three of you like something to drink?"

The first logician replies, "I don't know."

The second logician also replies, "I don't know."

The third logician replies, "Yes, all three of us would like something to drink."

That's clever! Should be in every logic class...

I knew you would like it, Alef!

Saw this in another forum....some of you with a more cultured sense of humor might enjoy it (sorry Bendover, skip this one!)

When Beethoven passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate. When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards." He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling." So the magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..." Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Beethoven decomposing."
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"Give it to me!" she yelled. "I'm so fucking wet! Give it to me now!"

She could yell all she wanted. I was keeping the umbrella.