american nerd survey

How come no one tells jokes anymore?  Is the joke dead as an artform? If not, please share one.

bryan: here's one I think I made up...  why did the cow not want to have sex with the bull??  she wasn't in the moooood...

Joel Jensen: The joke is all but dead, but still lurches and spasms a bit. I told the aristocrats joke in a bar recently, and instead escorting me to the door, the staff loved it. So, maybe people want the joke not to be dead, even if it's nearly there. But maybe I'm just nostalgic.

Stephen McClurg: I would say the joke will always be viable. In some way, The Aristocrats is testament to that. Then again, I may have been the only person to sit through it.

I only know two jokes and they don't seem to make too many people laugh. They both involve babies. One involves garbage bags. The other has dumptrucks and pitchforks in it.

Keith Pille: I know I don't tell jokes like I used to; it hadn't occurred to me that it was a society-wide thing, but maybe. I figured it was just my sense of humor changing.

Anyway, I don't claim it's funny, but here's the only non-filthy joke I can remember (I've also got a large store of pedophile jokes taking up room in my head, courtesy of a friend in Duluth, but I think it's better for all of us if they just stay up there until they're eventually washed away by beer):

So, John Paul II died and went to Heaven; and when he got there, he was greeted personally by God. "You were a pretty good Pope," God said, "you didn't get everything right, but the good outweighed the bad, and I'd like to reward you by offering you anything you'd like in Heaven. John Paul, ever the scholar, said, "God, what I'd really like would be to read back through the original written-down versions of the Bible, to see what changed during the years and various translations. God was pleased by this request, and led John Paul off to the Library of Heaven.

A few hours later all of Heaven was rocked by very loud wailing, moaning, and crashing coming out of the Library of Heaven. God set down his gin and tonic, ran to the Library, and threw open the door to see a distraught John Paul II crying, and punching the table.

"What's the matter?" asked God.

John Paul waved a manuscript at him. "It's CELEBRATE! CELEBRATE!"

Don Pizarro: The joke isn't dead, but the telling is certainly on life support, living only because of the extraordinary means taken to preserve it in defiance of its advance directive.  It will only deteriorate further as people lose more and more of the interpersonal skills necessary to transmit and receive a joke face-to-face.  This is partly because more people are getting their jokes from mass emails from their AOL-using family members.  Thus, rather than tone and body language, the only possible cues come from text formatting. Here's a joke I heard last week (from a full-blooded Irishman) that sounds a lot funnier coming from him than I could ever make it by typing.

A Frenchman, an Englishman, and an Irishman walk into a  rather filthy bar.  Each one orders a pint of Guinness, and, alas, each one finds a fly in their glasses.

The Frenchman turns his nose up at the drink, pushes it aside, and orders a merlot.  The Englishman reaches in, plucks out the fly by its wings, flicks it aside, and starts drinking.

The Irishman reaches in, plucks out the fly by its wings, and shakes it violently over his glass yelling, "SPIT IT OUT!  SPIT IT OUT!  SPIT IT OUT!"

Simon Riordan: The Joke is dead. Long live the Joke!
Q: Why did the Old Lady go outside with her purse open?
A; She was expecting some change in the weather.

Katie Sheehan: Apparently, Yo Momma has trimmed down, hit the books, and won the lotto. She will bear the brunt of your jokes no longer . . . Nearly all of the jokes I heard growing up were racist, sexist, sizeist, homophobic, etc. If these types of jokes have truly left the world, I can't say I mourn their loss.

Jonathan Shipley: Jokes dead? God no...

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Boo.
Boo who?
You don't have to cry. It was just a joke.

Clint Weathers: The art of the joke is NOT dead!

EG,

A guy walks into a bar -- this guy's face is all black and blue, he has bandages on his nose, and his jaw is wired shut.  The bartender says, "Sheeeit.  This beer is on me.  What the hell happened to you?"

Through his wired teeth the guy says, "I called my wife a two-bit whore and she hit me in the face."

The bartender just stares and says, "What the hell did she hit you with?"

The guy says, "A bag full of quarters."

(I'll be here all week, folks.  Try the veal.)

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Editor's note: a slew of jokes are also available over here.