Remember the zombie thread rules, "it is acceptable to revive an old thread if you have some substantive comment to add. " which I believe allows us to discuss the Michael Jackson joke, but probably not to add new jokes, right?
Back in the day(1980ish) I had an Irish/Jewish jokebook. One particular joke stands out although I cannot remember the lead up to the punchline. I’ll try to lay it out.
Something about an old lady who lived in the penthouse and some old man who was maybe an elevator operator. It seems he thought she was Catholic because she always made the sign of the Cross when she got in the elevator.
It turns out, no, she was not Catholic, but was checking her jewelry. "My tiara, my brooch, my earrings… oooh, my earrings!
I think the point is they don’t believe he’s a spy, they think he’s a soviet intellectual who is trying extreme measures to avoid his obligation to public service.
When I was a kid and making prank phone calls was the rage, the joke was calling up a tobacco store and asking “Do you have Prince Albert in the can?”, and then answering “Better let him out” if they answered yes.
Prince Albert is (or was) a type of tobacco. I believe the “in a can” meant the loose tobacco (either roll-your-own or pipe, I don’t recall which), as opposed to rolled cigarettes or cigars.
The phrase “the can” is also a slang reference to “the bathroom”.
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was a white-run black African country, very near South Africa in both senses of the word. They suffered from the unreasonable fear that if the black indegenes were allowed to run the country, it would disintegrate into a mass of corruption, crime and a busted economy. And now Zimbabwe is… well, surely you know.
The version I’ve heard is the Jewish man was riding the elevator everyday with someone who thought he was scared of elevators and Catholic. But it turns out the Jewish man was just forgetful, so whenever he got on the elevator he checked to make sure he had his spectacles, testicals, wallet and watch (joke-teller’s hand moves to gesture to head, tummy, then side to side.)
Obsolete because who wears watches anymore? Time’s on your cell phone!
In *The Colour of Magic *, Rincewind spends a short time on a real world aircraft, and ends up back on Discworld along with the Luggage which is now marked with “the powerful travelling rune TWA”. Rendered obsolete when TWA went away.
A guy walks into a bar. He sits down, gets a cold one, and asks the bartender, “Hey, wanna hear an ethnic joke?”
The bartender says, “Well buddy, I’ll have you know that I’m ethnic. And those bikers down the bar are ethnic too. In fact we’re all ethnic here. This is an ethnic bar. So maybe it ain’t such a good idea for you to tell ethnic jokes.”