Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Do you really think I would have asked for a 12-inch pianist?

Team Franzy: Another cry for help. I am compiling a joke book for children 12 and under. I require 300 (yes, three HUNDRED) suitable jokes. Having looked through much of the literature surrounding the topic (ie. my old joke books) I have discovered that 12-year-olds don't really have a lot of jokes published in them with swearing, sexual references or whimsy based around various moral and ethical crimes. These are the only jokes that my brain seems to retain. Observe:

What's Salmon Rushdie's next book going to be called?
Buddha, You Fat Fuck!

The others I can't even bear to type out (however, meet me in person and I will regale you with them all! The 28-year-old joke, the sushi joke, the baby jokes and the famous Feminist Light Bulb zinger!)

So, I call to you, dearest readers, friends and weirdos coming across this page by entering "what is anchovies fishthesis proposal" and "marbles tombolla" into various search engines, tell me your jokes. Tell me them all. Dredge your memories and drill your dads. The best joke will win a copy of the joke book when/if it gets published (looking good at this stage).

***

GTH - River steals the point from Jono with the beautiful (and well-guessed) metaphor for my painful yoking to the desk of research. Neil gets a raised eyebrow for the hairy nipple/lumpy breast.
The photo is of me (of course) on holiday in Cairns. It was taken about an hour or so after a long Blue Bottle jellyfish tentacle wrapped itself around my neck while I was snorkelling. THE single most painful experience of my life. Flaming razor-blades across the throat most accurately describes the sensation. But I would still take that over a year of stressing out about my proposal. There's no steroid cream for the research heeby-jeebies.

7 comments:

  1. Why was 6 frightened?
    Because 7 8 9.

    What did 0 say to 8?
    Like the belt!

    What's long, brown and sticky?
    A stick.

    What can go up a chimney down etc

    Why did the butter jig in its dish?
    It saw abundance on the table (I remember that from when I was 12: I had to have it explained to me, but I loved it)

    What did the wattles say when the gumtree fell near them?
    Eucalyptus

    What did the windows say when the tree fell through them?
    Tremendous

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have grandchildren aged 13 and 11, I'll see if I can get a few jokes from them over the weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Q. What do you use a wombat for?
    A. To play wom.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Is today's header a couple of "giants" peering down at a "12 inch pianist"?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Why did the jellybean go to school?
    He wanted to be a smartie.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oooh I hope I'm not too late - am still selfishly on holiday in Qld.
    Here are my old faves from childhood:

    What do you call a camel with three humps - Humphrey

    Why did the koala fall out of the tree - it was dead

    Why did the possum fall out of the tree - it was nailed to the koala

    What do you call Batman and Robin after they've been run over
    - Flatman and Ribbon

    Did you hear the one about the dyslexic devil worshipper - he sold his soul to Santa

    What did the boy volcano say to the girl volcano - I lava you

    ReplyDelete

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32