I was sitting in a mandatory ethnic studies class when my professor was explaining that humans first evolved in Africa and anthropologists have traced our genealogy to prove that fact. He then went on to explain that Europeans/Americans in the 1700s rationalized slavery by claiming Africans were black because they had fallen the furthest from God. According to their beliefs white people were made in God's image and then Africans sinned and turned away from the great lord. Oh, the irony. At this point a young black scholar in the front row piped up to ask, "Ha can dey say dat wid all dat genetical evidance? Cuz dat don't rhyme." He was so confused and sincere I couldn't help but burst out laughing. Everyone turned to glare at me, but the more I tried to stop the harder it came out. I swear I'm not racist, but I couldn't help myself. Focus: When have you laughed at an inappropriate time and been helpless to control it? If this doesn't happen to you, how do you keep it together? Sometimes I try to focus on words and images like 'rock' or 'pluck' that I don't associate anything funny with. It rarely works though. Alt Focus: What's the dumbest question you've ever heard someone ask? Bonus points if they used words that don't exist like 'genetical'.
There was a news story a couple of months ago talking about how a black couple in Brazil had conceived three albino children. This was a big news story for the students I teach for at Job Corps (Sort of a training center for underprivileged or troubled young adults). Around 90% of the students there are black, which is an oddity in Eastern Kentucky. So they were trying to understand how this could happen and I was trying to explain about genetics, which they were not understanding. Then one kid, whose real name I can't remember but everyone called him Boobert (fuck if I know why), explained it as such, "See da black man has two different kinds a sperm, a black sperm and a white one. Cause da black cum is a lot faster dan da white cum, black people have black babies. But sometimes you get da white babies cause some of dem niggas in you dick is lazy."
I was telling some kids at work how a little bitch used to come around and take our dog off for a walk. 'Why is she a bitch for doing that?' one of them asked. Because she's an actual dog you obstreperous little twat.
Well, this is a painful conversation I had recently with a cousin-type*, after meeting The Man's stepaunt or some obscure relation at Thanksgiving. Him-"So what did you think of her?" Me-"She's nice, has a bit of a martyr complex though. That got tedious as the night drew on." He pauses, his brow knitting together in consternation. I can tell that he is having trouble making a connection, I just assumed it would be about something far more thought provoking. Him-"Like a schoolteacher? Is that what a martyr is?" I stare at him for a moment. I try to help him. Me-"You went to church alot growing up..think of it in context." Him-"Context?" I give up. *He isn't actually blood, he is related by a marriage that has since dissolved, yet somehow is still around.
A few weeks back, someone on the food thread asked if fat makes food taste rancid. Don't know where to begin with that one
When I was a valet downtown, I noticed that one of the mammoth shut-down construction sites (Echelon?) put up 3 spotter balloons around the giant crane. Later that night they turned on a searchlight below making the balloons glow white. As the crowd picked up people began noticing the balloons and freaking out, many staring with awe up into the sky as if in a Spielberg movie. The NEWS got flooded with calls. People with no intention of eating on the property sped in off the Strip to ask me what was going on (?!) maybe because I was the lead that night. In the process I won "$15" off some attendants who swore the balloons were the moon and stars. Best though was the tipsy stripper who asked me: "Like, I know that's the moon. But why, like, are there 3 of them?" Edit: Far as mutilashun of the english language goes, All in the Family reigns supreme. Meathead tells Archie not to snigger and Archie says: "Being such a commie pinko bleedin hot, don't you know the correct phrase is "snegro"?
I posted this somewhere else, but I'll tell the story again. I was managing a traditional Irish pub and, naturally, we had lamb stew on the menu. I was in the kitchen and one of our servers came back. Keep in mind that, although young, this was a grown woman who lived on her own in a different province from her family. Server: A customer wants to know if the lamb in our stew is old. DCC: Oh, he's asking if it's mutton. Tell him it's lamb. S: So, it's not old, then? D: No, it's lamb. S: So I'll tell him it's young lamb. D: If it was old, it would be called 'mutton.' It's lamb, so it can't be old. S: So lambs aren't old? I then had to explain to this grown woman that a sheep has a baby, which is called a lamb. It stays a lamb until it grows up. She didn't know that lambs were baby sheep. And to think that she had a drivers licence and the ability to vote. EDIT: Jeez, guys, it's not that she's a woman who can vote that's upsetting...it's that she's that stupid and can vote.
Wait, are you saying we should think about her ability to drive and vote because she's a woman, or because she didn't know that lamb is by definition less than a year old and mutton is by definition more than two years old? In other news: I know a guy who emits stupid questions at the same rate as he emits sperm cells. Millions upon millions of them. Well, we were in a class this past summer being warned about not being stupid on the weekends; don't get roofied, don't get into fights, etc (yeah, it was that kind of school...). Anyways. We are warned that there have been about 8 cases of date rape occurring in the last few months. Know what the next question asked was? "Were those all females?"
At work last summer, one of the hostesses, really nice girl, completely well intentioned, greeted a group. She gathered menus, kids menus and crayons and sat the people down. Then she passed out the menus. She gave a kids menu and crayons to the midget. There was a midget. She didn't notice. For about a week after that I was breaking into laughter for no discernible reason.
In our grade 8 humanities class we were have a discussion about euthanasia. The discussion was coming along, about half way through the hour class this girl comes out with "But what does youth-in-Asia have to do with killing yourself?". I remember everyone laughing at her, and the teach trying really hard not to laugh along with the rest of us. There was more stories like this from the same girl, but this one sticks out the best.
After watching a video about using other animals organs for use by humans a girl asked this gem. "Mr. B, if you put a monkey heart in a human would the person love monkeys?"
Way way back, I believe in grade 5, my class was learning about the American Revolution. We had essentially finished covering the basics and then the bell rang to let us out to lunch or recess or something. However, as I was going to leave, this girl in my class went up to the teacher, and asked with great concern, "Is the Revolutionary War still going on?" The really sad part? This girl now goes to the same university I do.
Here are some doozies that I heard from some of the inmates I was locked up with when I was in jail a couple of years ago: -One guy thought it was possible to look up the skirt of a woman on TV if you get close enough to the screen. -Another guy thought that AIDS can be cured with antibiotics (He was explaining this to a guy that he was tattooing with a staple tied to a long wooden cotton swab handle). -One guy was telling others that there were "different types of seas (oceans);" for example, there is "Red sea," (he was not talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_tide Red tide), Black sea, dead sea, etc. If you swam in the dead sea, you would die, according to him. -Another guy said that a female amphibian of the order anura was a frog, and the male was a toad. I didn't even try to get into the whole tortoise/turtle debate. EDIT: Getting the giggles at a funeral SUCKS. I remember this one time in high school when on of my friend's relatives died, and we (me and two other guys) were able to get out of class to go to the funeral. For some reason we thought it would be a great idea to smoke a joint on the way over to the funeral home (this was back when I smoked weed). We got lost on the way and were telling jokes about what the service would be like. We finally found the place, right in the middle of the eulogy. We were NOT dressed appropriately ( I think I was wearing a Pantera shirt), and we took seats in the back. One of my friends just couldn't hold his laughter in any longer and went outside-- I bit the inside of my cheek until blood came out to keep from laughing. The other friend and I made it through, but that is just one of the reasons why I don't smoke weed anymore.
Focus: Much like Dixibandit I had a laughing fit during a sad talk our band teacher was giving our class the day a student died. It was in 6th or 7th grade and the girl was a year older than us and had died of cancer. Now it was sad and I felt bad for everyone that had personally known her but I hadn't seen or talked to the girl once in my life so I wasn't personally devastated as many were. Anyway, our band teacher tried having a talk with the class about it. A guy sitting next to me started singing the Canyonaro song from the Simpsons which had aired that weekend. He was singing it below his breath but this got be going and I tried doing that halfass holding it in body convulsing laugh. He noticed this and drew a spot on picture of the Canyonaro on his notebook and flashed it at me. We both busted out laughing. The teacher stopped and shot us the meanest look I have ever gotten. He said something about it not being the right moment for levity and went on while we both were crying with laughter. Anti-focus: A ditsy but super fine girl from the grade below us was known to constantly ask some real whoppers. The only good one I can still remember was when she asked a group of my friends if a finger one of them had lost in a dirtbike accident would grow back or not. She went on to OSU, fake boobs, and modeling for protein powder companies at industry trade shows.
I was working for some engineers in Perth and my direct boss thought that tigers were female lions... Despite bringing them up on google, asking her what a lioness was and also getting other opinions, she swore that I was trying to trick her and stuck to her guns. I quit shortly after.
I was on a flight a few months back and to my direct right two late 40ish women were talking fairly loudly. They must have been returning from a wedding because on top of bragging loudly about houses, cars and family they got onto the topic of “the reception”. The part that had me shaking head and nearly spitting out some of my JD and coke was when they talked about the man who was choking on his canapé but was fortunately saved when someone performed the “Heineken manoeuvre” I was gagging to ask how one applies crappy Euro larger to alleviate shrimp related asphyxiation, but was worried explaining the joke would cut into my drinking time.
Bloody fucking hell, I saw this yesterday and stupidly hit "Post New Thread" and typed out a whole response before realizing I wasn't actually responding. Now I have to type it all again. Fuck. I was talking with some friends and this guy we knew, who was confined to a wheelchair because he had MS or something, was telling us about his lifelong struggle with his ailment and all these terrible experiences he had had. My mind wandered to the previous day where I had been playing around at my desk with a pen when it suddenly catapulted from my hands hard into the back of the girl in front of me's head. The guy in the wheelchair had just told us about his months of struggling to walk two steps. I started laughing. Intensely. That did not go over well. Also this is quintessential: Edit 1: Oh yes, and there's always the "Wait a minute...clam chowder has CLAMS in it?!?!?" girl. Can't forget her. Edit 2: Oh, and my college physics lab partner was a blonde bombshell who used her calculator to add 5 and 5. And when I later multiplied 2 and 4 in my head to get 8? She didn't believe me and checked on her calculator. She thought I was a super genius, I thought I should get a different partner. So I did!
A gem from an old girlfriend: "Can we go somewhere else besides the mall? It's always so crowded and nobody goes there anymore anyway."
One of the supervisors at work has the idosyncracy of using the word "liason". It is as though someone has hacked into his mental dictionary, and replaced all instances of the words talk, communicate, confer, etc. with "liason". Not long ago, he used it in a strange context, and all I could think of was the dialogue from The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Since then, whenever he says the word liason, the dialogue pops into my head and I have to stifle laughter. Fortunately I learnt a good dissociative technique from a book about NLP. The trick is to imagine yourself sitting in a cinema, watching the footage of yourself laughing inappropriately. Then imagine a second version of yourself, standing so you can see that first you, and the footage on the screen simultaneously. Focus on how you would feel as the second person, watching the reaction of the first. Instantly removes all emotion associated with the situation. Problem is, you then can't concentrate on what the person is saying. But I figure inattentiveness goes down better than inappropriate giggling.