Speaking of Merry….


Here are a couple from Patsy Cline, about whom I'd forgotten (because originally, I didn't like her that much) until the too-short-lived Space Oater Above and Beyond reminded me of her.


 And this one, which I've been wondering why I didn't like as a kid (oh, wait…).


 And a propos nothing much in particular,
A man went to the zoo and among other animals there, saw a gnu in its pen. "What kind of a gnu is that?" he asked the keeper.

"It's just a typical gnu."

A couple days later the guy returned.  This time there was a stack of tiles in the gnu pen, and the gnu was applying them to the floor of its pen. The man said in surprise to the keeper, "Hey, I thought you said that was a typical gnu. But he's putting tiles on the cage floor!"

"Yeah.  He's a typical gnu and a tiler too."

And finally:
A frog went to a bank for a loan, and the teller sent him to see the loan officer, Mr Paddiwack. He went to Paddiwack 's desk and made his pitch for the loan.   When the loan officer asked the frog if he had any collateral, the frog pulled out a small ivory figurine of an elephant and set it on the desk.  The loan officer looked dubious and said "Hold on a minute."

The loan officer went to his manager, and explained the situation, and said that all the frog had was the figurine as collateral.  The manager looked at the small statue and said "It's a nick-nack, Paddiwack. Give the frog a loan."

15 comments:

Lars Walker said...

One of Wiley's poems from the "B.C." comic strip, years back:

Once I used to know a gnu
That had a nose for news,
A nose for news no newsman ever knew.
But now he's dead, and though I know
Another nosy gnu,
I never knew a gnu that knew
The news that that gnu knew.

Cass said...

FWIW, I never cared for "I Fall to Pieces" as a child, either. It grew on me :)

raven said...

"I fall to pieces" one of my favorite country songs.

Gringo said...

For those with a cotton pickin' sense of humor:

Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much.

The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils.


I have a two foot high copper sculpture of a fiddle-playing frog, whom I call Frog Wills.

Cass said...

*groan* :)

Anonymous said...

Oh lordy. That first joke . . . ow. Groan just does not cover it.

LittleRed1

Grim said...

Really? I thought the second one was a lot worse.

E Hines said...

Well, then, here's another weevil one; I heard this one from Graham Kerr on the Galloping Gourmet.

Seems a young man and his new bride were just starting out on their small cotton plantation, and the weevils were just eating their crop like the two were running a soup kitchen for bugs. The man tried everything he could think of--sprays, poisons, other insects, whatever--all to no avail.

The young bride wanted to take a shot at it; with no more ideas, her man agreed. The next morning, she went out into the field armed with a large jar of honey and her iron skillet. She'd pour a dollop onto a boll, the weevil would come out for the treat, and BAM! she'd nail that beastie with her skillet. All day, under the hot sun, she went from plant to plant doing this until she'd cleared the field.

Her husband was amazed, and he asked her how she knew that would work.

"Silly, everyone knows that honey is the rout of boll weevil."

Eric Hines

Anonymous said...

One day I went to the zoo,
'cause I wanted to see the old gnu.
But the old gnu was dead, and the new gnu they said, surely knew as a gnu he was new.

karrde said...

A gentleman entered a bank during the lunch hour.

He sauntered up to the teller window, and stated that he needed to discuss taking out a loan.

The teller referred him to a man who sat behind a desk. But that man said, "The loan arranger is out right now."

The gentleman leaned over, in all seriousness, and asked: "May I speak to Tonto, then?"

Cass said...

That one took a few seconds to sink in....

Those are the best kind :)

karrde said...

So, there was this Eskimo going out in his kayak. He felt kind of chilly the last time he went out, so he brought along a little propane heater.

However, the kayak couldn't remain stable with the extra load of the heater. After a couple of waves washed over it, the kayak overturned and the Eskimo ended up in the drink.

Proving that you can't have your kayak, and heat it too.

Grim said...

Isaac Asimov loved puns too. His joke book includes numerous examples of this rather degenerate form of humor.

"Some years ago, New York's Third Avenue elevated railway was taken down. Visiting the city some time later to lunch with an editor, I was amazed to note the unaccustomed nakedness of the vista when I faced east.

"Thoughtfully, I said to my lunch companion, 'Third Avenue reminds me of Christmas.'

"Surprised, he said, 'Why?'

"'No el,' I said."

Grim said...

Another joke he tells -- I won't quote it in its entirety -- has to do with the Jewish Rabbi who came down to a South Carolina town to marry a couple of Jews from New York City, because the husband-to-be was stationed at a military base in the Deep South.

They began the parade to the synagogue, and as they passed through the town some children shouted in delight at the long-haired, bearded man in the big black hat. Children began to join the parade, until more and more of them filled it up so that it was a delightful, shouting thing.

Finally the Rabbi lost patience with all these laughing children. He turned and grabbed the closest one by the collar, and lifted him up. "What's the matter with you kids?" he shouted. "Haven't you ever seen a Yankee before?"

That's a good joke, if you've ever been a Westerner in parts of China that haven't seen one before -- as I was, once. I had a guy ride his bicycle into the back of a car, because he was busy looking over his shoulder at me.

Gringo said...

Finally the Rabbi lost patience with all these laughing children. He turned and grabbed the closest one by the collar, and lifted him up. "What's the matter with you kids?" he shouted. "Haven't you ever seen a Yankee before?"

As far as I can tell, there are three definitions of "Yankee."
1)Used outside the US: anyone born in the US.
2)Used in the South: anyone from north of the Mason Dixon line.
3) Used in New England: any inhabitant of New England whose ancestors came to New England from England before the 19th century : old New England stock. For most New Englanders, this is descriptive, not pejorative.

I was born and raised in New England. My parents were WASPs but from away, so I was not a Yankee. I never felt any bad vibes from the Yankees in my hometown for not being a Yankee: descriptive, not pejorative.

As such, I found the joke amusing. I recall reading back in the 1970s a letter to the editor in the Houston Chronicle about "Yankees eating chopped liver"- which also amused me.