Old and New Jokes

…is walking late at night when he sees a woman in the shadows.
Twenty bucks she says.
Hes never been with a hooker before, so he decides what the hell.
Theyre going at it for a minute when all of a sudden a light flashes on
them. Its a police officer.
Whats going on here, people? asks the officer.
Im making love to my wife he answers indignantly.
Oh, Im sorry, I didnt know says the cop.
Well, neither did I until you shined that light in her face.

Ever since I turned 30, my moms vocabulary seems to have gradually shrunk. It now consists of only about five words, usually arranged to form this question: When are you getting married?

If I had a nickel for every time Ive heard the question, Id be able to afford a mail-order bride. Maybe even one who can speak English.

My mom and others ask the marriage question so often, Im tempted to tattoo the answer on my forehead: Im a journalist, not a psychic.

But if I did that, my mom and I would never talk. Shed just look at my forehead and shake her head. And her expression would say: Where did I go wrong with this child?

Sometimes, just for fun, I feel like scaring my mom by saying I wont get married until one of these things happen:

Ken Starr completes his investigation.
Ross Perot produces a chart-topping rap song, My name is Ross, just call me boss. When I become your president, the interns will be more hesitant.
Ellen Degeneres and Elton John fall madly in love – with each other.
A pair of Amish men are arrested for selling drugs. (OK, this already happened. But I still dont believe it.)

Its not that I dont believe in marriage. I just believe it should involve two people who love each other so much, theyre willing to risk living together.

Its certainly a big risk. If the marriage goes sour, you can lose some of your most prized possessions. Just ask John Bobbitt.

But I could be wrong about the importance of love. After all, millions of people in my native country, India, believe in arranged marriages, even though such marriages sometimes produce children like me.

The families of the bride and groom usually do the arranging, uniting two people who hardly know each other. The honeymoon is like a first date, except youre certain to get past first base.

To many Americans, an arranged marriage may seem more like a deranged marriage. But such marriages tend to last. Divorces in India are as rare as hamburger joints.

Like me, most Americans believe in falling in love before marriage. Many even believe in falling in bed before marriage. The only mystery left for the honeymoon is whether the hotel accepts American Express.

Considering the soaring divorce rate, such marriages are more suspect than O.J. Simpson.

So maybe David Weinlick has the right idea. About four years ago, the Minnesota man got tired of people asking when he was going to get married. So he just gave them a stock answer: June 13, 1998. He even planned the entire wedding, the first man ever to do so. But an essential part of the wedding was missing. No, not the wine — the bride. Weinlick, 28, decided to let his friends pick his bride, after they interviewed a couple of dozen women in several states, including the state of desperation. He married the bride-elect, Elizabeth Runze, before 2,000 shoppers at the Mall of America. And he was all smiles afterward. That could mean the wedding was a big success, or perhaps Weinlick had been licking too much wine.

by Melvin Durai

A Sultan, whose loves grew so vastly,

Just couldnt love any steadfastly.

Someone asked him in fun,

If hed slept twice with one.

He replied, Just the thought is most ghastly.

Most of us understand that our self worth and feelings of achievement change as we go through life. While everyone has different aspirations, it appears we all have some common benchmarks for what success is. Really it all depends on your age. Consider the following:

At age 4, success is not peeing your pants At age 16, success is gettin a little At age 25, success is graduation and a wedding

At age 35, success is about career and family

At age 55, success is about graduations and weddings At age 65, success is gettin a little At age 80, success is not peeing your pants!

Dice Bonifacio a un amigo:

Me casé con mi mujer hace veinte años. Al principio la besaba y abrazaba tanto que ella temía que la asfixiara.

¿Y ahora?

Ahora creo que eso es lo que voy a hacer.

An elderly man in Phoenix calls his son Bob in New York and says, I hate to ruin your day, but your mother and I are divorcing. Forty-five years of misery is enough! Im sick of her, and I?m sick of talking about this, so call your sister in Boston and tell her, and then hangs up.

The son frantically calls his sister, who goes nuts upon hearing the news.

She calls her father and yells, You are not getting a divorce! Bob and I will be there tomorrow. Until then, dont do a single thing, do you hear me?

The father hangs up the phone, turns to his wife, and says, It worked! The kids are coming for a visit, and theyre paying their own way!

Because people are dying to get in!

What do Chinese people name their retarded children?

Som Ting Wong

Plato:

For the greater good.
Karl Marx:

It was a historical inevitability.
Machiavelli:

So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chickens dominion maintained.
Hippocrates:

Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in itspancreas.
Jacques Derrida:

Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT,DEAD!
Thomas de Torquemada:

Give me ten minutes with the chicken and Ill find out.
Timothy Leary:

Because thats the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
Douglas Adams:

Forty-two.
Nietzsche:

Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Oliver North:

National Security was at stake.
B.F. Skinner:

Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Carl Jung:

The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre:

In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein:

The possibility of crossing was encoded into the objects chicken and road, and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert Einstein:

Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle:

To actualize its potential.
Buddha:

If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken- nature.
Howard Cosell:

It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
Salvador Dali:

The Fish.
Darwin:

It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Emily Dickinson:

Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus:

For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:

It didnt cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann Friedrich von Goethe:

The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway:

To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg:

We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
David Hume:

Out of custom and habit.
Saddam Hussein:

This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
Jack Nicholson:

Cause it (censored) wanted to. Thats the (censored) reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic:

What road?
Ronald Reagan:

I forget.
John Sununu:

The Air Force was only too happy to provide thetransportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity. The
Sphinx:

You tell me.
Henry David Thoreau:

To live deliberately … and suck all the marrow out of life.
Mark Twain:

The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

A couple of years ago, the following joke was told at a Mensa gathering:

Rene Descartes was sitting at a bar. The bartender came over and asked if he would like another drink. He replied, I think not. And he vanished.

A another gathering some time later, a second part of the joke was noted:

Heisenburg was also sitting at the bar. After Descartes vanished in a puff of smoke, the bartender walked over to him and asked, Did you see that? To which Heisenburg replied, I cant be certain.

This weekend, when I attempted to take this joke even further, we came up with a couple more people at the bar:

The bartender then noticed Einstein was there. So he asked him if he could believe what had happened. Einstein replied, Its all relative.

Then the bartender noticed that Carl Sagan was there. He walked over to him and asked, Can you believe that all these famous people are here in THIS bar? Sagan replied, No. Why there must be BILLIONS and BILLIONS of bars out there.

So, now its your turn. Who else was there at the bar, and what did they have to say, or what happened to them?