The thing with this and many other old jokes, a lot of younger people coming up still haven’t heard them, and in the case of the H[sub]2[/sub]O joke, may still resonate in the context of an ongoing public debate. Al Franken did this same joke on SNL, back in the era of the debut cast.
Another “joke” that needs to die is comments on men going to prison being subject to prison rape (“5 years in the Big House? Hope he enjoys his new boyfriend.” etc.). It’s not funny. Not at all.
Pretty much all of Monty Python is practically baked into my being. With regard to MP I see it as one of a long line of notable British accomplishments in humor, one that also includes P.G. Wodehouse and some much more recent writers. I’ll probably always think it’s funny. It’s the same with Airplane though obviously for different reasons.
Curiously, I know nothing of The Princess Bride.
But using words like “necrotic” and “equines” isn’t a bit like that, is it?
I might be annoyed by it if I still saw it, but I really haven’t noticed it since Opal passed away.
I don’t remember the origin of the joke, but in the interest of fairness she didn’t actually create the joke did she? It was whoever first said “Hi Opal” after she made her point.
But Chinese doesn’t have xs and ys; it has a bunch of idiograms (sp?) that are really difficult to remember and pronounce. With those as your variables, of course the algebra is going to be hard.
I take your point but by the same token classical Greek geometry and number theory seem “hard” as well because they didn’t have our familiar algebraic shorthand either. Instead, a theorem might begin with: Given a line, and another, and a third that is a mean proportional to the smaller and bigger line. You see this in the old Dover editions of Euclid and Archimedes.
There are plenty of tonal languages, even some of the Native American languages. A language being tonal does not make it any harder or easier to learn than a non-tonal language.
Yabbut “as hard as Greek geometry and number theory” isn’t a joke that’s so tired it needs to die, is it? My whole point was that you don’t need abaci to explain why Chinese algebra is a joke.
But . . . I like rape.
Well, you’ll just have to paddle your own canoe.
Rio - by Duran Duran
The Church of the SubGenius schtick got tired decades ago. I was first exposed to it in the mid-1980’s and purchased an ordainment in the early 1990’s. They haven’t had anything new or clever to say in at least 20 years. Even their website looks like it hasn’t been updated since about 1996.
I’ve got to say, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen “Hi, Opal” in the wild, so to speak. I’ve seen WAY more references to how annoying it is.
The truth is unchanging.
The baking isn’t a problem if you keep the kiln door closed. The lines were funny when Monty Python delivered them. Repeated ad nauseam for decades by millions of dorks, they become the opposite of funny.
Think of the loveliest piece of music ever written. Now imagine it being played constantly by a global orchestra of tone-deaf kazoo players. Imagine the horror each time you hear the first notes, knowing that a cacophony of torture will inevitably follow.
Truth speaks to the ages. The Church of SubGenius is still speaking to a few years out of the late 20th century.
To you. They’re still funny to me, and they’re still funny to people who haven’t been exposed to them. But then I’m fortunate enough not to be so psychic I hear the jokes made by millions of people.
Unfortunately
- a relevant point
- got nothing
- Buckeye!
never caught on.
Nah. He’s right and you are utterly, irretrievably wrong. The material was original and funny when Python performed it. Decades of repetition by dweebs has beaten every last trace of humor out of it. The surviving members of Monty Python have long since moved on to other things and seldom perform the old material. Even they, it seems, are tired of it.