I understood it, but “getting it” implies I got the humorous point. As far as I can see, there isn’t one. I guess one could argue that it is a parody-but I don’t see how one can find it funny. My wife didn’t see the humor either.
Of course we live in Katrina land and such things are kind of close to home for us…
snort 
I am always amused and amazed at how many people blank out on this one.
Oh, I forgot to add. Despite “getting it” I would definitely not say its sophisticated humor. Its pretty much the opposite in my book.
I get it.
I get it, but it’s not funny.
Another “Got it, not that funny, though.”
What things does your roommate laugh at without explanation?
Got it quick enough and kinda snerked. However, I’m one that’s blanking out on the parrot one. Anybody care to help?
A perch is also a kind of fish.
Took me a minute, too. 
Well, I didn’t mean “sophisticated” as in this particular joke being sophisticated. I meant it more along the lines of “I can get almost any joke almost immediately” as compared to my roommate’s “I don’t understand any kind of humor beyond slapstick, so could you explain this one to me?”(He is a fan of Laurel & Hardy.) There are certainly many jokes and cartoons that I don’t think are funny. But even in those cases, I can at least see what the writer/artist was trying to do, even if he didn’t succeed.
I just used this particular cartoon as an example of what is, to me, an obvious, simple joke. I’ve showed my roommate many cartoons, drawn by many different artists, with many different kinds of jokes, and he doesn’t get a single one of them. It’s left me personally frustrated. I’ve lived with this guy for two years, and I still haven’t been able to figure out how to talk to him. The biggest problem is that in most conversations he goes into “counselor mode”. I’ll try to start a conversation on some general topic of interest, and it turns into a Q&A session:
Me: “Hey, how about that baseball game last night?”
Roommate: “Ah yes. How do you feel about that?”
Me: “Well, I’m glad the Mariners won!”
Roommate: “I see. Tell me what you thought was the key aspect of the game.”
Me: “Uh …”
(He did admit that some of his other friends have said that he comes across as a counselor in conversation.)
He was trying to do an inspirational radio thing for a while - little 60-second skits that briefly related a true story and pointed out a lesson to be learned from that story. He worked up a “radio voice” for this. Problem is, he goes around talking in this voice all the freaking time. When you try to have a conversation, and he’s using his radio voice, it quickly starts feeling more like an interview than a conversation. I went and got myself a cell phone shortly after I moved in with him simply because he uses his answering machine to practice his “radio voice”. I didn’t want people trying to call me having to wait through this message that goes on and on and on. He uses the answering machine to screen his calls. He’s convinced that all the hang-ups he gets are telemarketers; I’m convinced that many of them are actually people who got tired of waiting for the beep and just gave up.
He teaches Sunday School, and does other things in his “children’s ministry”. Which is great. Problem is, much of what he does seems based on children’s TV programs from the 1950s and 60s. (I found a clip from a 1950s kids program on the Web a while back, and I couldn’t believe how much the host sounded like my roommate.) He seems unaware that kids today are more, um, “sophisticated” then they were back then. It’s painful to watch sometimes, when he’s clearly oblivious to the bored kids looking around the room - everywhere but at him - and rolling their eyes at his goofy antics. He also “talks down” to them - speaking in a kindergarten teacher’s voice - to kids getting on toward middle-school age. And sometimes he talks to adults in the same voice.
We’ve been through three other roommates in the last two years, none of whom have stayed more than three months. He’s convinced that we’ve just had bad luck; I’m convinced that these guys just wanted to get away from him. Before the last one moved in, I suggested to my roommate that he should skip his usual “welcoming ceremony”. When I moved in, this consisted of him delivering a brief and corny speech after which he handed over my copy of the house key; this was followed by him telling me that he thinks I’m really “grand” and giving me the “nifty gifty” of a $100,000 Bar (the candy bar). My cousin, who had helped me move in, had the most dumbfounded look on his face while he watched this happening.
Now, I had just moved out of the local homeless shelter, where I had lived for eight years (my stepfather was the executive director and I was there to reduce my bills while I got myself out of debt). I had seen much weirdness while living in that place, and so I was able to take this new weirdness in stride. Not so the next two roommates we had. Hey, nothing like freaking out the new guy as soon as he moves in! After the “bad luck” with those guys, I made my suggestion to skip the “welcoming ceremony”. I think it hurt my roommate’s feelings, but I thought it was for the best. So when we met the third guy, we chatted with him a bit and then my roommate asked me to leave the room so that he could talk to the new guy alone for a minute. I’m pretty sure he went ahead with his little ritual as soon as I was out of earshot. That guy lasted a little over a month.
Moving on …
I was discussing this humor situation with my best friend and he pointed out that, like him, I read fiction voraciously, and that’s the reason we have such similar outlooks and senses of humor. We’ve been exposed to a wide variety of topics and perspectives. My roommate also reads a lot, but his reading list is extremely narrow:
Emphasis on the self-help books. When he talks to me, he sounds like he’s putting to use the suggestions he’s read in the self-help books. And it sounds unnatural, and vaguely disturbing. I guess I just don’t like feeling like a guinea pig for “techniques”. How many times does he need to repeat my name when he’s talking to me? “So, like I was saying, Rik, it was a long drive. And let me tell you, Rik, my legs sure got stiff! Oh, by the way, Rik, did you take out the trash?” Am I going to forget that it’s me he’s talking to?
sigh
Okay, I’ve yammered on far longer than I intended. My problem, I guess, is that I’ve historically been able to gain an understanding of people be figuring out their sense of humor. If I can laugh with somebody, I can hang out with them and enjoy their company. But it’s been two years and I still haven’t figured this guy out. I know he likes slapstick, but with these hardwood floors I’m afraid I’m not going to start doing pratfalls just to get a genuine laugh out of him (as opposed to the “oh, now I get it” laugh that follows my explanation of the joke).
Anyhow, I guess I’ve received enough replies that I can go ahead and “spoil” the joke. From my perspective, that particular cartoon is “absurdist” humor - the absurdity being that somebody could be so incredibly thoughtless as to suggest something as wasteful as a food fight while engaged in a famine relief effort. There are actually two laughs there: First, the guy yells, “Food fight!” and gets slapped, which you don’t expect - you think that somebody didn’t understand what “food fight” means. Then, secondly, you’re shown the context in which he yelled “food fight”; you see how inappropriate his actions were, and you get to laugh at his stupidity.
Got it. Yeah, I can see that maybe it was supposed to be funny. To someone. But not me.
I got it. It’s not bad, but it’s not very funny. It’s not sophisticated at all, but the punchline might not be obvious to some people because it’s completely visual.
I get it but I thought it was kind of lame, like PBF. Then I read further and saw that it was PBF.
Ahhhhh. Duh to me then. Thanks so much Susie. I’m glad I’m not completely in need of the dunce cap yet. 
And Phase42, I understand where you’re coming from. It’s kind of like your roommate is stuck in a time warp and is therefore a bit fragile in trying to deal with the vagaries of this age, not to mention that he may never have been very socially adept either. But he sounds earnest and kind, so perhaps if you saw him more as an eccentric uncle, to be humored in his quirks, then you may find a way to relate and occasionally illicit at least a brief (unexplained) chuckle in response to the humor you try to share. Of course, that’s what you probably are already doing so beyond that, I’ve got nothing.
Regardless, good luck.
I thought I got it. Then I realized jokes are supposed to be funny. Maybe I missed a subtle nuance. Nope. I seem to have “gotten” it the first time.
Is your roommate slightly autistic? Aspergers? I think you should consider it a lesson in how some people don’t have the same faculties that others have.
Does your roommate take everything literally? If he takes all that he hears or reads at face-value, humor like sarcasm and puns won’t register at all. I don’t know if that is a symptom of Aspergers or not, but I do know some people who just don’t seem to “get” it when people say something other than exactly what they mean.
As for the comic, it took me a couple of minutes to “get” the situation, and I didn’t realize the guy had been slapped at all until your explanatory post. I don’t think the concept is terribly funny, but the main problem is that the art is so bad. That has got to be the ugliest comic I’ve ever seen.
Humour is so specific for different people, and in different contexts. Haven’t you ever watched a movie (or a comedian, or something) in a room full of people laughing their asses off, and you can’t for the life of you figure out why they’re laughing?
I have. It happened a lot in England. I just couldn’t get it. I mean, I understood the jokes, I just didn’t find them funny.
And the opposite happens when I watch South Park with people who aren’t North American. They just don’t seem to get it.
I don’t think the Three Stooges are funny. Lots of people don’t think King Of The Hill (which I find side-splittingly funny) is funny. I even have a crazy friend with whom I share a perverse sense of humour, who doesn’t think Airplane! has any redeeming qualities at all.
Whatever. No skin off my nose either way.
There are probably things your roommate finds funny, but he doesn’t share them with you because he doesn’t think you will.
I know a few people who seem to have no sense of humour, at least not one that I can relate to. These people are ones who take things VERY literally.
I consider myself to have a really good sense of humour - I enjoy laughing and joking around, and appreciate dry and sarcastic wit, although I also laugh at obvious, slapstick type humour on occasion.
I find that in conversations / dealings with people who I’m feeling like I can’t relate to, it’s because our sense of humour don’t mesh.
An example - I’m out at the mall and run into an acquaintance from work.
“Hey Stainz, where is BabyStainz?”. With a smile, I might reply, “Oh, she’s in the car, but don’t worry, the dog is in there to look after her.”
“WHAT?!?!”, is the response, with a horrified look.
Yeah, I left my baby in the car with our DOG looking after her. :rolleyes: Or MAYBE, she is at home with Daddy. To me it is such a stupidly obvious question, that it deserves a silly answer.
A FRIEND would have replied, “Oh that’s good - I was afraid you’d left her alone somewhere!” … because my friends have to have a sense of humour that is at least somewhat related to mine.
(As for the cartoon in the OP - yeah, I think it’s a little amusing, only because the second frame isn’t what you’d expect. To me, that is the joke.)
Now THIS is funny.
The cartoon not so much. I “get” it; it just seems awfully one-note. I’m not surprised that your roommate and you don’t have similar senses of humor, though, considering the age difference. He grew up on, I don’t know, Shirley Temple movies and Archie comics or whatever. You should try to see me explain MST3k to my dad. Just shake your head in wonder at this puttering old man, just like he shakes his head at you.
No, it’s old people. I’m sure someone will come in and say I’m making a gross generalization, which I am, but in my experience older people (60+) are categorically unable to understand sarcasm or irony in either written or spoken words. Sarcasm was not as big an element in the humor of their day, at least, not like it is now. It goes both ways; I don’t know many people my age who think slapstick is that funny, because there isn’t that much straight physical humor being done anymore.