A minister, a priest, and a rabbi walk into a bar. The bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?" Warning: autoplay on first link. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Jun 12, 2009 - 94 comments

As a belated tribute (of sorts) to Victoria Day, may you find interest in a variety of Victorina era literature, short and long. In the short category, there is Chit-Chat of Humor, Wit, and Anecdote (Edited by Pierce Pungent; New York: Stringer & Townsend (1857), who has written quite a bit of such work) [via mefi projects], and Conundrums New and Old (Collected by John Ray Frederick; J. Drake & Company Publishers Chicago, 1902) [via mefi projects] This publishing house also published The Art of Characturing, copyright 1941. If you prefer your antiquated humor with a twist, take a gander at bizarro version of Conundrums New and Old [via mefi projects]. In the category of longer works, behold the The Lost Novels of Victorian New Zealand [via an older mefi projects]. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on May 29, 2009 - 4 comments

April 1 is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 274 days remaining until the end of the year. April 1 is most notable in the Western world for being April Fools' Day. [more inside]
posted by jbickers on Mar 31, 2009 - 42 comments

Old Jews telling jokes.
posted by gman on Jan 30, 2009 - 26 comments

The bottom of Slate's Explainer mailbag. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Dec 19, 2008 - 76 comments

Sadie tells Maurice, "You’re a schmuck! You always were a schmuck and you always will be a schmuck! You look, act and dress like a schmuck! You’ll be a schmuck until the day you die! And if they ran a world-wide competition for schmucks, you would be the world’s second biggest schmuck!" "Why only second place?" Maurice asks. "Because you’re a schmuck!" Sadie screams. Some Jewish humor.
posted by serazin on Dec 7, 2008 - 27 comments

A math professor was explaining a particularly complicated calculus concept to his class when a frustrated pre-med student interrupts him. "Why do we have to learn this stuff?" the pre-med blurts out. The professor pauses, and answers matter-of-factly: "Because math saves lives." "How?" demanded the student. "How on Earth does calculus save lives?" "Because," replied the professor, "it keeps certain people out of medical school."
posted by cthuljew on Nov 9, 2008 - 82 comments

Why are viola players always the butt of the joke in the orchestra? Some viola jokes. Are you still laughing now?
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Sep 2, 2008 - 65 comments

Humor goes back a long way. The oldest recorded joke in the world was told 4,600 years ago to Pharoh Snefru by the magician Djadjamankh: "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish," and there's lots more ancient Egyptian humor (some quite dirty) as well. Humor really got rolling with the Greeks, however, and the Philogelos (Laughter Lover) a joke book from the 4th century. A representative joke: “An intellectual was on a sea voyage when a big storm blew up, causing his slaves to weep in terror. ‘Don’t cry,’ he consoled them, ‘I have freed you all in my will'." [more inside]
posted by blahblahblah on Jul 16, 2008 - 70 comments

As we were talking about Joke Theft, here's an interesting case. It appears that the Daily Show may have stolen a joke from Penny Arcade. [more inside]
posted by Caduceus on Jun 20, 2008 - 105 comments

Henri Bergson's "On Comedy"
Helene Cixous's "The Laugh of the Medusa"
David Chalmer's Philosophical Humour
Monty Python's "Philosopher's World Cup" [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea on Feb 16, 2008 - 21 comments

The man who runs xkcd
has created the LimerickDB.
Though often quite dirty
There are more that are nerdy;
If you check out the best ones, you'll see.
posted by kyleg on Feb 5, 2008 - 88 comments

Comic Wonder is a new joke telling and rating site. With jokes as audio, would-be comics are able to capture the timing and tone that make many jokes funny.
posted by scottreynen on Jun 27, 2007 - 8 comments

Fans of the late & much missed comic Mitch Hedberg might enjoy the stand up routine of Daily Show correspondent Demetri Martin: Some Jokes, Some More Jokes, Other Jokes & These Jokes.
posted by jonson on May 28, 2007 - 45 comments

B3ta Bumper Book of Sick Jokes (flash) on Scribd, a youtube for pdfs. For extra weirdness listen to the mp3 (the link is at the bottom of the pdf display).
posted by srboisvert on Mar 16, 2007 - 12 comments

Joe Rogan vs. Ned Holness What do you do when a famous comedian is stealing jokes? If you're Joe Rogan, you climb onstage, embarrass him in front of his audience and post the entire exchange to your MySpace page.
posted by dhammond on Feb 14, 2007 - 171 comments

Alan Abel is a self-described "professional hoaxer" active since 1959. His classic hoaxes include the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, the 1964 presidential campaign of Jewish housewife Yetta Bronstein, a topless string quartet (slightly NSFW), and the wedding of Idi Amin. He also released two mockumentaries long before Spinal Tap was a gleam in Christopher Guest's eye. Now Abel's daughter Jenny has released a documentary tribute to her father, Abel Raises Cain, which has some great You Tube clips, including 1970s talk show staple, Omar's School for Beggars. (some clips may be NSFW)
posted by jonp72 on Aug 14, 2006 - 15 comments

Three prisoners in the gulag get to talking about why they are there. "I am here because I always got to work five minutes late, and they charged me with sabotage," says the first. "I am here because I kept getting to work five minutes early, and they charged me with spying," says the second. "I am here because I got to work on time every day," says the third, "and they charged me with owning a western watch." via BoingBoing.
posted by Tomatillo on Jul 13, 2006 - 47 comments

Must-haves for your coffee table, lavatory reading, or just killing time on the subway: The Nutritional Benefits of Nose Picking; Perfecting the Art of Fart Projection (NEVER be blamed again!); How to Murder a Complete Stranger (and get away with it) [paging scarabic]. These and other eyebrow-raising books can be yours, assuming you already have a book that you can put these dustjackets on. FlapArt: The Alternative Book Cover.
posted by Gator on Mar 17, 2006 - 17 comments

How's about a good blonde joke?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste on Jan 4, 2006 - 63 comments

Nothing is funnier than an academic or scientist explaining humor.
posted by Falconetti on Dec 11, 2005 - 10 comments

Wikipedia's Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense category is a veritable goldmine of...well. I had never heard of a Mushroom Tattoo, for example, nor did I know about the tragic exploitation of the Gnomish Nation or the truth about the American Revolution. Towards the end, Ronald Reagan's condition was even sadder than I thought. And why shouldn't we believe in Atlantis, or for that matter the bearatross or Alphonse W. Turkeyman?
posted by Gator on Dec 8, 2005 - 15 comments

Today by far is my favorite holiday. It's the one day that webmasters get to be creative and do things that normally wouldn't fit with their sites general themes. For example, Google attempts a high tech way of quenching peoples thirsts, Wikipedia sells out to Britannica, a RFC is written on Morality, and much much more!
posted by Urgo on Mar 31, 2005 - 44 comments

THE PRINCIPLES OF JEWISH BUDDHISM -- 12. To Find the Buddha, look within. Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.
And there's even a term now: Jubu
posted by amberglow on Mar 5, 2005 - 14 comments

GQ's 100 Funniest Jokes of All Time. I know, I know, these "of all time" lists are lame. And thought I'd heard them all, but quite a few were new. And funny. Unlike this description.
posted by zardoz on Feb 15, 2005 - 195 comments

The German Joke of the day . "In Germany, We have ways to make you laugh."
posted by ronsens on Jan 22, 2005 - 23 comments

"Sushi pants" and other stories... Possibly not the "best of the web", but not political and damn funny. Of late I have been enjoying a number of "story" sites recounting the kind of tall tales of questionable accuracy you usually only hear from genuinely funny friends. Many, many chuckles to be had out there. Some of the stories seem superficially mean but are actually interesting looks into difficult situations you might otherwise never glimpse. "A few days later he put a tarantula in my bedsheets while I was sleeping. Thankfully I wasn't bitten, but I was freaked out and still sometimes jump out of bed in the middle of the night for no reason and attack my sheets." - from thingie.net
posted by soulhuntre on Dec 21, 2004 - 13 comments

Lord of Rings Flatulence Mashup. [NSF mature people] [wmv 53 seconds]
posted by srboisvert on Sep 25, 2004 - 7 comments

A man, just back from a trip abroad, went to an incompetent fortune-teller. He asked about his family, and the fortune-teller replied: "Everyone is fine, especially your father." When the man objected that his father had been dead for ten years, the reply came: "You have no clue who your real father is."--that's one of the jokes from The Laughter Lover (Philogelos), an ancient Greek joke book published in the 4th or 5th century AD. The New Yorker commented on it, and other old jokes here, stating about one of the possible authors: ... there is some scholarly speculation that the Hierocles in question was a fifth-century Alexandrian philosopher of that name who was once publicly flogged in Constantinople for paganism, which, as one classicist has observed, “might have given him a taste for mordant wit.”
posted by amberglow on Jul 10, 2004 - 12 comments

Bloomsday Virus Inflicts James Joyce on Mobile Phone Users
The first ever computer virus that can infect mobile phones has been discovered, anti-virus software developers said today, rendering many phones virtually useless.

The virus was apparently released in time for the 100th anniversary of the eponymous literary holiday. It infects the Symbian operating system that is used in several makes of mobiles, notably the Nokia brand, and propagates through the new bluetooth wireless technology that is in several new mobile phones.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood on Jun 16, 2004 - 19 comments

Ted L. Nancy (or is it really Jerry Seinfeld?) has a lock on the "send a seemingly serious letter to someone and see if they write back" genre, but this ploy to get unwitting United States Senators to send in their favorite jokes is amusing too. Even Santorum chimed in.
posted by emelenjr on Mar 17, 2004 - 24 comments

"If you don't do as I tell you, I'll personally take you out in the woods and shoot you." A top federal security official at the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport angrily threatened to "shoot" baggage screeners and financially ruin their families if they did not do their jobs to his satisfaction, airport employees have told the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general.

All jokes about bombs, guns and killing will be taken seriously?
posted by busbyism on Jan 30, 2004 - 24 comments

That's What Friends Are For: Laughing, getting drunk together, telling all...and making celebratory, determinedly silly websites like this one. Generally, private jokes are painfully unfunny but, when the vicarious instinct kicks in, other people's gregarious joie de vivre is contagious, touching - and great fun.
posted by MiguelCardoso on Nov 9, 2003 - 7 comments

Avast there, me hearties, and listen to some tales of Pirate Utopias! Ar-Harr!!!
posted by carter on Sep 19, 2003 - 2 comments

As a brief distraction from all the death and destruction, let's head over to the museum of hoaxes, where we'll find the top 100 April Fool's day pranks of all time. Good luck with your own respective hoaxing.
posted by jonz on Mar 31, 2003 - 5 comments

So What Happened After The Wise Man Discovered He Was Wearing The Red Hat? Don Steinberg's hilarious brainteaser aftermaths inevitably makes one wonder what happens after fairy-tale endings or the punchlines in jokes.
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jan 31, 2003 - 20 comments

Self-fulfilling Prophecy? Enron video says maybe... A video from an Enron company party from 1997 shows executives or other employees playing execs making jokes during skits about how to make "a kazillion dollars" et al. Some of the "methods" they speak of apparently are exactly the things that brought the company down. Looks like the cat was let out of the bag in front of a lot of unsuspecting individuals..
posted by djspicerack on Dec 16, 2002 - 4 comments

Tell a joke at some musician's expense. ...or tell a few. Here's something for your favorite bodhran player, or the banjo player in your life. But somehow, the string section gets the worst of it.
posted by datawrangler on Nov 8, 2002 - 12 comments

Hi-larious! Russian jokes about Americans, while probably not too amusing to begin with, become just too funny in translation. Via Cam.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Jul 11, 2002 - 21 comments

"Bart to the Future", Simpsons Season 11 Episode 13 (airdate 2000-03-19), featured the following quote from a wheelchair-bound Krusty 30-years in the future: "Let's start off with a joke. I got one: What's the difference between Pakistan and a pancake? I don't know any pancakes that were nuked by India! Ha-ha! What? Too soon?"
posted by gojomo on Dec 30, 2001 - 14 comments

Oh that whirlwind affair that October in Shanghai. It's a week old. And I hope and pray this hasn't been posted before. But if you like joke fodder about Bush, these photos may be for you.
posted by crasspastor on Oct 29, 2001 - 17 comments

Now is probably a poor time to start making bomb jokes at the airport.
posted by BoatMeme on Sep 20, 2001 - 10 comments

Why did the guru refuse Novacaine when he went to his dentist? [very large page!] Every single doctor-type joke you can imagine, all in one place. (He wanted to transcend dental medication.)
posted by hijinx on Mar 30, 2001 - 1 comment

Somebody can't take a joke... A lewd e-mail picture showing the cartoon character Bart Simpson in a sexual clinch has cost 10 people their jobs at a big British insurance company. Eighty others have been suspended
posted by murray_kester on Jan 4, 2001 - 26 comments

Bush: 342 / Gore: 224
Bush leads Gore in the number of jokes made about him on late night talk shows.
posted by tamim on Sep 19, 2000 - 0 comments

This is one of the funniest office pranks I've seen in a while. A few months ago, I proposed filling a coworker's office with ballons, but the packing peanuts are much better (and funnier). [stolen from brig]
posted by mathowie on Mar 31, 2000 - 5 comments

This really hurt me, but it's all worth it for the Panda joke (#316). In fact, you really only need to read the first two sentences for it to be funny. Well, it made me laugh, anyway.
posted by Annabel.Gill on Mar 9, 2000 - 4 comments