hard to get here

About six years ago I changed my gmail main address, from one that gmail had randomly assigned me when I signed up for gmail in November 2005 to one closer to my own actual name, and like a lot of things in life it has been a nuisance and I regret it. Apart from anything else, this blog is attached to my old email address, which is still nominally active, and I have to log out of that to get into this. It's not simple, and less so in the last few weeks when one gmail account seems actively resistant to logging out, so I have to do it three or four times to get into this one.
It shouldn't make me less keen to post but it does take more time so for that reason alone I tend not to come here as much. Sorry.
Easter (particularly Good Friday) bores me almost literally to tears but I know i need the time to recover from the first five weeks of teaching which have been really gruelling. Today for instance has been an amazingly chill (ha ha) day. Mainly on the couch.

I actually want to raise my eyebrow at every one of these, but I should probably get on to more serious matters...

This joke is called 'backpack', and it's here

There were three passengers in a plane that was about to crash. One was the smartest man in the world, one was the President of the United States, and one was a little girl. However, there were only two parachutes. 

The first man, the smartest man in the world, stood up and said, “The people who would benefit the world the most should be the ones who get the parachutes. I, being the smartest man, am one of those.” With that he grabbed one and jumped out. 

The president looked at the little girl and said, “I’ve led a good long life, and you’re just starting yours. You take the last parachute.” 

And the little girl replies, “Don’t worry; there is one for both of us. The smartest man in the world just took my backpack!”

(1) This has got to be pre-Trump. In Trump era, it's so confusing, with the 'smartest man' thing, and the President being in the plane alone with the little girl etc, not that anyone's ever actually said that Trump is a pedophile but if I was writing jokes I wouldn't go there

(2) I was really hoping this would be the joke that ended with 'me not dumb, me not silly, me hold onto daddy's willy' but I guess that was a different plane

(3) where's the pilot

(4) fuck this shit

sorry but the idiocy of these do kind of obsess me

Read the real thing here until commonsense makes them delete the link and destroy any record of its lame existence

After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year, British scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 200 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 150 years ago. *

Not to be outdone by the Brit’s, in the weeks that followed, an American archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet, and shortly after, a story published in the New York bulletin: “American archaeologists, finding traces of 250-year-old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network 50 years earlier than the British”.**

One week later, the Punch Newspaper, in Ibadan, Nigerian, reported the following: 

“After digging as deep as 30 feet in his backyard Lucky Ade, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Lucky has therefore concluded that more 250 years ago, Africa had already gone wireless.”***

* AG Bell patented the telephone in 1876, which is just over 140 years ago, so OK... checks out in a manner of speaking, though the correlation between '200 years' and 'more than 150 years' is a bit peculiar. Also, we don't need archaeology really for these things, we already know how technology progressed 200 years ago because there was a written record. 

** What is the 'New York bulletin'? If it's a newspaper, why do we trust this newspaper and not the newspapers of 250 years ago? More importantly, I guess, since the present day US was an array of British colonies 250 years ago, the British could easily claim this as their innovation as well.

*** blah

The real question is why am I even asking these stupid questions, it's all so stupid. 

'He passed'

One day a student was taking a very difficult essay exam. At the end of the test, the prof asked all the students to put their pencils down and immediately hand in their tests.

The young man kept writing furioulsy, although he was warned that if he did not stop immediately he would be disqualified. He ignored the warning, finished the test 10 minutes later, and went to hand the test to his instructor. The instructor told him he would not take the test.

The student asked, “Do you know who I am?”

The prof said, “No and I don’t care.”

The student asked again, “Are you sure you don’t know who I am?”

The prof again said no. So the student walked over to the pile of tests, placed his in the middle, then threw the papers in the air.

“Good” the student said, and walked out. He passed.

(Because 'the prof'/'instructor' had that brain disorder where people can't tell one face for the other, and because the papers were not actually individually graded or in any way linkable to any individual student, but the essay exam was run on the basis that everyone had to pass or no-one would. I hope you don't respond to this explanation furioulsy and by the way hilarioulsy the whole of this 'joke' is entitled just that: 'furioulsy'  http://fantasticjokes.net/furioulsy/  )

Here's another one

One day, a man visited a friend who was crippled. During the conversation, the crippled man said;

– Both phones are charging in the upper room. Could you bring them to me, please?

The man went upstairs and he saw something that would make him look so surprised; the crippled friend has two very very beautiful daughters! And he used her practical intelligence immediately:

– Your father sent me, to make love with you.

Girls;

– How is it! Impossible!

The man;

– If you don’t believe me, let’s ask.

And the man called at his friend who downstairs;

– Both of them, right?

The crippled man shouted;

– Yes yes. Both of them please!…

What a funny joke, as long as you can hold on to the hilarious concept that a father has the right to donate members of his family to others for sex or, presumably, anything. COOL 

By the way... I understand the crippledness stops the father from going upstairs, but does it have any other value in the joke? Asking for a crippled friend... crippled with LAUGHTER! 

joke

These jokes that are suddenly all over fb are preposterous and addictive. I assume they are written in 90% good English by people from NESB backgrounds but perhaps the near-Englishness is part of the proposed appeal. It's 100% of the appeal for me. For instance this one from here:

One day a young handsome guy Richie was walking down the street when a frog called to him: “Boy, if you kiss me, I will turn into a charmful princess.”

The young man picked up the frog, smiled at it and put it in his pocket.

A short while later, the frog said, “Boy, if you kiss me, I will be a beautiful princess and I’ll be yours for all my life.”

Richie took the frog from his pocket, smiled at it and put it back.

Now the frog was upset. “Boy, what is the matter?” the frog cried. “I have told you that I am a beautiful princess, and if you kiss me, I’ll be yours!”

Richie took the frog from his pocket, looked at it and said: “Look, I’m a mechanical engineer.I have no time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is cool.”

SO:

'guy Richie'? Like, the film director? Is this supposed to be a reference to Guy Ritchie? Or is that just... ok, I'll leave it at wtf.

'Charmful'? Yes good.

'Look, I'm a mechanical engineer'. Is this a stereotype?! It's not like 'look, I work in IT' - which I guess is a stereotype (it still wouldn't be funny). Is the joke admiring of the mechanical engineer for taking this attitude? Boy, those guys sure work! Or is it contemptuous? Or... ok, wtf.