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After Dinner Mints
by Sean Hammond
I've always been amazed at the apparent virility of jokes; they spread faster that a cooze's legs. But where do they come from, and how do they spread?
Jokes don't come from anywhere; they transcend both space and time. At the instant that the Big Bang occurred, and space began expanding at speeds faster than the speed of light (isn't that neat? In order for light to travel at any speed, it needed to be able to travel through something. At the instant of the Big Bang, space began to expand, with light right on it's heals. I wonder what happens if the gnaB giB ever occurs?), every joke that has ever or will ever be told came into being.
These joke particles flit about the universe and sometimes pass through the mind of someone (they actually pass through a lot of other things as well, but most of them just can't appreciate a good joke) and they suddenly "come up with a joke." Some jokes are told more often than others because of a sort of "natural selection." Though every joke exists, not all of them are funny at the same time; funny jokes get retold, while other jokes just have to wait. Unfunny jokes are jokes that aren't in sink with a particular time period. They will be funny in the future, or were funny in the past, or maybe they're funny in a different place.
In the 1940's jokes about Rommel could have caused a great deal of crying and side clutching, but to a member of the Anamani tribes in the 1940's, the joke wouldn't have been funny. The same is true of today. Heard any good Rommel jokes lately?
Take for example Pee-Wee Herman: if you told any jokes about him before he got caught jerking off, no one would have thought it was funny. The same applies now; the jokes just aren't good anymore.
And of course there are always those who are just in the wrong time period; they're always making comments that make them laugh, but just don't seem funny to others. Their comment is funny, just not in their current time and place.
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