[JOTD] Joke of the day

[aum]

One day, Uncle Joe got fired from his construction job.

 

His nephew asked him what happened.
“You know what a foreman is?” he asked. “The one who stands around and watches the other men work?”

“What’s that got to do with it?” he asked.

 

“Well, he just got jealous of me,” Uncle Joe explained. “Everyone thought I was the foreman.”

 

 

 

[ducky88]

Arguing with the wife is like reading a software license agreement.

In the end you have to ignore everything and click "I agree"

[aum]

Two small boys, not yet old enough to be in school, were overheard talking at the zoo one day.

 

My name is Billy. What’s yours?”, asked the first boy. Tommy”, replied the second.

“My Daddy’s an accountant. What does your Daddy do for a Iiving?”, asked Billy.

Tommy replied, “My Daddy’s a lawyer.”

 

“Honest?”, asked Billy.

 

“No, just the regular kind”, replied Tommy.

 

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[lurch234]

A son announces to his dad that he's getting married.
"You're not ready to get married" replies the father.
"Why?" asks the son.
Father-Not telling you.
Son-How do I know what I'm doing wrong if you don't tell me?
Father-That's for you to find out!
Son-Hey come on man! Help me out here I'm on my knees!
Father-starts ignoring his son...
Son-I give up! Whatever it is I'm sorry!
The fathers face brightens up and says "Now you're ready to get married. You just apologized for something you'll probably never know about!"

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[Karlston]

[aum]

What do you call a number that can't keep still?

A roamin' numeral.

 

[aum]

An elderly woman decided to have her portrait painted.

 

She told the artist, “Paint me with diamond earrings, a diamond necklace, emerald bracelets, a ruby broach, and a gold Rolex.”

“But you are not wearing any of those things,” replied the artist.

“I know,” she said.

“It’s in case I should die before my husband ...

 

I’m sure he will remarry right away, and I want his new wife to go crazy looking for the jewelry.”

[Karlston]

[aum]

I have decided to quit my job as a personal trainer, because the weights are too heavy.

I just handed in my too weak notice.

 

[Dce3480]

[aum]

My doctor told me I have high blood pressure and short term memory loss.

At least I don't have high blood pressure.

 

[aum]

My wife yelled, "are you even listening to me?"

I thought that was a weird way to start an argument.

 

[aum]

A girl walks into a grocery store and asks the stock boy if he has any nuts.
The guy says, "No, ma'am."

She says, "Well, do you have any dates?"

And he says, "Ma'am, if I don't have nuts, do you really expect me to have dates?"

 

[aum]

A girl was given a tea set for her second birthday. It became one of her favorite toys, and when her mother went away for a few weeks to care for her sick aunt, the toddler loved to take her father a little cup of tea, which was just water really, while he was engrossed watching the news on TV. He sipped each "cup of tea" he was brought and lavished generous praise on the taste, leaving the little girl immensely proud.

 

Eventually the mother returned home and the father couldn't wait to show her how his little princess had been looking after him. On cue, the girl took him his "cup of tea" and he sipped it before praising it to the heavens.

 

The mother watched him drink it and said: "Did it ever occur to you that the only place she can reach to get water is the toilet?"

 

[Karlston]

No dictionary has ever been able to define the difference between ‘Complete’ and ‘Finished.’

However at a linguistic conference in London, one of the attendees came up with a clear differentiation...

When you marry the right woman, you are ‘Complete.’

When you marry the wrong woman, you are ‘Finished.’

And, when the right woman catches you with the wrong woman, you are ‘Completely Finished.’

[Karlston]

I just saw on the news that a man has discovered how to do origami backwards!

More on this story as it unfolds...

[aum]

Here’s what happens in your brain when you hear a joke, and why you find it funny – or not

 

It all stems from our brains’ ability to recognise incongruity in the world around us and then resolve it.

 

 

Jokes and humour are often thought of as frivolous and unimportant. In a way, this is understandable: they are, by definition, not serious. If your tax accountant, or the lawyer defending you in court, couldn’t stop wisecracking, you’d be understandably alarmed.

 

But the common impulse to dismiss and belittle humour, to regard it as inconsequential, is a mistake: humour, jokes, and laughter, have a vital role to play in human behaviour and interaction.

 

Humour is a powerful part of social bonding: we’re thirty times more likely to laugh with others than when alone. Humour is heavily intertwined with human mating behaviours. Humour is our brain’s way of displaying prowess and success, the cognitive equivalent of antlers on a stag. Also, humour and laughter are genuinely beneficial for health via their stress relieving properties.

 

But, what’s happening in our brains? Why do we respond, in such powerful and rewarding ways, to things that are objectively nonsensical, or meaningless?

 

Scientists have spent many years studying this. Which is to their credit. After all, to study how humour works in the human brain, scientists would ideally be able to induce humour in their subjects, reliably and consistently, in an experimental setting. However, ‘making people laugh on command’ isn’t an ability normally associated with professional scientists.

 

Thankfully, this hasn’t stopped them. A substantial amount of data has been generated regarding how humour works in the brain, and on the various types of recognisable jokes that induce it.

 

While jokes can manifest in a very wide range of ways (semantic jokes, linguistic jokes, static and dynamic visual jokes etc.), unsurprisingly, the most basic recognised joke is the beloved pun.

 

Verbal puns, the most familiar type, are where specific linguistic elements convey different meanings, simultaneously. For example, ‘Why did the golfer wear two pairs of trousers? In case he got a hole in one.’ Here ‘hole in one’ has two possible interpretations. Both are equally valid. Simultaneously.

 

Interestingly, puns are often the go-to jokes scientists use when studying humour. We may not actually laugh at them, but their simplicity and familiarity mean most subjects recognise the humour in puns, however feeble it may be. So, the brain’s humour processes are still engaged.  

 

But where does humour arise from in the brain? According to the data, everywhere. This is because jokes, and other humorous stimuli, typically include a great many sensory elements, as well as language, memory, emotion, analysis, extrapolation, and so on. These are all processed by disparate neurological regions and networks.

 

However, considerable data-crunching points towards a part of the brain where everything to do with jokes ‘converges’, forming a specific system for recognising humour. This system is composed of regions occupying the junctions between temporal, occipital and parietal lobes, the brain equivalent of an airport connecting three continents.

 

This system seemingly detects, and resolves, incongruity. Our brains know how things, like language and behaviours, should work or proceed. But, in the real world, many things don’t conform to expectations/assumptions. It seems our brains have evolved a system to recognise when this happens.

 

If normality is subverted, it means we don’t know how what’s going to happen, which creates cognitive tension. However, the system that recognises incongruity seemingly also resolves it, by providing an explanation, or at least a confirmation that the incongruity has no negative consequences. This removes the uncertainty, dispersing the tension.

 

Our brain approves of this. It means potential danger has been removed, we’ve learned something new, we’ve expanded our mental model, and more. So, we experience a rewarding feeling.

 

Basically, thanks to these complex systems in our brains, humour can be derived from things being surprising, unexpected or wrong in some form, as long at it’s resolved, without negative consequences.

 

However, if the incongruity is not resolved, humour is absent. If the answer to ‘Why did the golfer wear two pairs of trousers?’ is ‘in case the metal owl that lived in his gold bag attacked him’, that’s… not funny? There’s more incongruity, which goes unresolved. This would explain why surreal humour is often so hard to get right.

 

This explains much of familiar humour.

 

Puns? The same words having dual meanings violates our understanding of language, causing incongruity. But there are no harmful outcomes, and our brains not being relentless logic machines means we can accept two interpretations at the same time.

 

Slapstick? People don’t usually injure themselves in exaggerated ways, so that’s incongruous. But they’re ok, just embarrassed?

 

Incongruity resolved, all’s well, so humour occurs.

 

This is also why, unlike music, jokes struggle to have the same impact when repeated. The resolving of incongruity is a key part of humour. If it’s familiar, the incongruity has already been resolved.

 

Humour is a uniquely human phenomenon with many other complex variables that affect it. Status, emotion, motivation, social cognition, memory, arousal, and more. But, according to the latest science, the detection and resolution of incongruity is its neurological bedrock.

Humour is essentially our brain going “This isn’t how things usually work… but I’m okay with it!”

 

It may sound frivolous, but the neuroscience of humour is no laughing (grey) matter.  🙃

 

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[aum]

Susan: My husband is a great handyman. He can repair almost anything.

Janet: My mother always taught me to beware of the man that can fix everything. You'll never get anything new.