Very Cato the Elder of you!
Ceterum censeo lapicidinae esse delendam!
The joke was older than the hills when I heard it told in Glasgow in 1964, but the wording was surprising. My new wife and I were sitting in a booth in a restaurant and someone in an adjacent booth ask his companion, “What has four wheels and flies?” “What?” “A corporation dustbin.”
I notice when I tell these jokes to people face to face, they heard them from other countries. I’m also trying to find the time period the jokes were told, but I’m sure they were spread with early commerce.
One of my favorite Scandinavian genre of jokes are the ones about the stoic Finns, but they’re best told in Finnish-Swedish.
Even so, I’ll share my favorite with you.
Pekka is out in the woods cutting timber and stays overnight in his timber woodsman’s hut. As he goes to bed he jabs his knife into the bottom of the bunk above him to have it close at hand if wolves should attack in the night. But in the middle of the night the knife comes loose, falls down and stabs him in the eye.
Pekka calmly sits up and proclaims to no one: “Such luck that it was a knife and not shears.”
Right after the war the URRS had a contest between a GAZ and Ford. They hired a Swiss to be judge. Of course the Ford won.
Pravda printed that as “International car contest! GAZ comes in second! Ford comes in next to last!”
Polish joke (all time periods): A Polish guy is granted three wishes by a genie and every time he wishes for the Mongol Horde to invade Poland. Finally, the genie asks him: “Why did you want the Mongol Horde to invade Poland three times?”
“Because they had to pass through Russia six times!”
I live in the Netherlands. The Dutch have a stereotypical reputation for stinginess that is expressed in jokes (not unlike Scots in the UK, Swabians in Germany or Catalans in Spain). Here are a couple of them.
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Who invented copper wire? Two Dutchmen pulling on a penny.
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Many many many centuries ago, there was a tribe of Swabians that were so stingy that they were kicked out of their land by the rest. Exiled, they started walking, walking, walking until they reached some swamps by the North Sea.
They were there stranded for a while, not really knowing what to do, until a ship showed up.
The captain of the ship says: “hey, I can help you cross to the land on the other side”
“For how much?”, replies the leader of the tribe.
“One penny per person”, says the captain.
“Oh! Too expensive!”, say the tribe in unison.
And they begin haggling with the captain. After three days of non-stop haggling, the captain, sick and tired of all that, says: “All right!! Enough!! I will carry everybody who boards my ship for one penny for the lot!! And this is my final offer!!”
The leader of the tribe says: “Very well, we must deliberate”. And the whole tribe starts talking. Soon it transpires that there are two sides: one group is ready to accept the payment of one penny for the whole tribe to board the ship, and the other doesn’t want to pay even that.
So in the end the tribe divided. One half boards the ship, pays the captain one penny for the lot, and sails away. The other half stays in their swamp.
The ones who crossed became the Scots, and the ones who remained became the Dutch.
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This one was told to me in Barcelona by a Catalan friend. It works only in Spanish, though. Will explain the wordplay later.
Two friends meet on the street in Barcelona. One looks rather depressed, so the other asks him what’s the matter. The depressed-looking one sighs and replies:
“My son is invertido “.
The other replies: “Oh, at what interest?”
(Explanation: “invertido” can mean either “invested” -as in “put into an investment fund”- or “homosexual”. The Spanish original is “Tengo un hijo invertido”)
Reagan liked these jokes. Some of which have already been referenced.
Weird typo, but I really like that.
There’s an old(ish) saying that Hungarians can follow you into a revolving door and come out in front of you.
British prisoners were only transported to Australia for a short time. After it had been running a few years, questions were asked about the progress in Parliament.
The minister in charge replied ‘We have found a country that has boundless open space, great weather, beautiful beaches and no pollution. We are sending people there as a punishment. By the way, can someone build us some more ****ing boats!’.
I heard that same joke about a British tabloid and someone from up north: “Liverpool Thug Kills Girl’s Pet”.
Applause.
This topic now begins with your phrase “Broken back out” It was very puzzling without context. “Whose back is broken?” was my first thought. I suggest “Now unmerged from…”
A co-worker who was from Mexico told me this joke when I was working with him back in the '90s. To understand this joke you have to know that the Spanish word gato has two meanings: it can mean cat or jack (the thing you use to lift your car when you need to change a flat tire).
So here’s the joke:
Why do dogs like to chase cars?
Because cars always carry a gato.
That joke dates at least to 1977. Did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Say 'Under Capitalism, Man Oppresses Man. Under Socialism, It's Just the Opposite'? | Snopes.com
I told this joke, and a few people online didn’t get it and thought the joke meant that in Socialism, people didn’t oppress other people.
I heard it from a Chinese comedian who was on Carson in the 80s from MeTV
Actually, for it to make sense as a joke, it should go the way Ted Nugent attributed it to AOC, as given on the Snopes page: “Under capitalism, man oppresses man. Under communism, it’s the other way around.”
I saw it on one of the Dick Cavett repeats on Decades TV, but I don’t remember if the version I’ve given is the one he used.
Hell, there’s a bumper sticker on my lectern that says “Under Republicans, man exploits man. Under Democrats, it’s just the opposite.” The sticker has been on there since at least 1997.
Something tells me it sounded the same in the original Proto-Indo-European.