I was making Mrs. Solost a bagel and lox sandwich today. I asked her if she wanted it cut in half. She said she did. I asked “straight or diagonal cut?”
After just a half second beat, she said “oh, har har har”.
That’s a good one!
My own personal dumb-joke corollary is, when someone is cutting a sandwich or something and asks me which half I want, I say “top half.”
It usually gets a decent reaction if the person hasn’t heard me say it before. The problem with reflexive dumb jokes is that they do get repeated, and the other person is annoyed.
As my poor suffering wife can attest.
“I ran into Bob on the way home!”
“Oh no, was he hurt?”
I had a friend in college that would answer the phone “Garden of the Gods. God speaking.”
Whenever it’s someone’s last day on the job, they’ll eventually say something that implies they’re not exactly giving 110% today — which prompts me to look them in the eye and sternly intone,“if you’re gonna keep talking like that, don’t bother showing up for work tomorrow.”
I had a buddy who answered his phone, “Telephone”. He was delightfully weird.
A man gets up to go use the restroom.
“If you shake it off more than twice you’re playing with it!”
Does “cow-orker ” count as one of those “jokes” that ceased to be amusing many many years ago?’
Probably. IIRC we had a whole thread (or section of thread) on tired Doper clichés recently. Hmmm.
After some searching … the original innocent comment that triggers the cliché mini-debate is here:
and the back and forth about overused clichés lasted from there (post 1899) to post 1941 with just a couple off-topic (off-hijack actually) interjections.
And yes, “cow-orker” took some abuse along the way.
Wait, you’re blaming that all on me?!?
Not your fault you were unwittingly standing on a powder keg when you casually dropped that match. 
Not so much as a joke as sort of a SDMB meme, like Og or the squid and the goat; a nod to the board’s traditions, if you like. If I’m honest with myself, I used it as a status marker to show that I’m a longtime Doper. Certainly didn’t intend it as a joke.
I think Scott Adams popularized it in his Dilbert mail list before that, so it is badly tainted since he revealed himself to be such a colossal asshole.
I first encountered it on Salon.com’s TableTalk fora. That was years before I discovered the Dope.
Thank you very much, and Happy New Year!
it does …
.
and a lot of other stuff as well… rimshot
Something I’ve found myself doing in the past is making one of these dumb, obvious jokes, but doing it ironically. For example saying “see you next year” to a coworker just before the holiday break. But I’ll make a slight mugging expression or say it with a sarcastic inflection to convey that I’m teasing the fact that other people say it unironically.
Trouble is, I think that some (most?) people didn’t get my sublimely subtle layering of irony, and just thought I was making a dumb, obvious joke.
Or, let’s say the cashier at the grocery store can’t scan an item. I might say “don’t worry, I won’t ask if it’s free, har har”. So I’m saying I’m too clever to make the obvious joke, while still subjecting the cashier to it.
And to you! I look forward to another year of battling wits with you in the Botticelli thread!
Yup. That’s my point of view, too.