I did this myself, and I almost collapsed in laughter.
I’ve also heard in the Navy they send newbies running around the ship looking for …
… 30 feet of chow line
… a sky hook
… a sound-powered phone battery
Just for a point of information: we had one sound powered phone circuit with an amplifier built into it - it was for helo operations.
Yes, it DID use a battery. 
(9 volt, AIUI)
rinni, do you go by the same name on LJ? Because your kind of humor (just reading about it) was cracking me up.
A lot of organizations do this. we did it in the boy scouts, sending people for
–A left-handed sky hook
– a Smoke-Shifter
– A Bacon Stretcher
The last one netted us a bonus. We pulled it at a Jamboree, and one of the visiting moms in all seriousness suggested we place our bacon between two of the aluminum cook-kit plates!
When people, including myself, accidentally say the completely wrong thing. NOt so much Freudian slips as just the utterly wrong word(s).
An example:
My friend and I were out walking my dog, Hobbes. Kevin was throwing a tennis ball ahead of us for Hobbes to fetch and bring back. Well, Kevin threw the ball really badly one time and said, “Geez! I should be a kicker for a deflated volleyball team.”
Holy crap, I am cracking up typing this. Anyway, he MEANT to say, “I should be a pitcher for a retarded* baseball team.”
*Not PC, but it was high school and this is a direct quote
No, I think it was “Jätte Salt,” dubbel zout doesn’t have a mascot as far as I know. But it does have a distinctive flavor as though everything in the ocean was somehow compressed into a tablet.
Ahh, the humor of foreign candy.
Saying that a certain action is stupid, and then having someone overhear you and do it, not knowing that you were mocking it.
For example: on Sunday, as our flight from Amsterdam landed at JFK in New York, my mother said “You remember how people used to clap when the plane landed?” I said yes, and made some sarcastic comment like “I guess they figured that the people who took off and flew the plane might never have learned how to land it.” To complete the irony, I clapped lightly two or three times, I think with my eyes crossed and my tongue out. Somebody near the front of the plane heard me and started clapping, and a couple of seconds later everybody on the plane was applauding the pilots. All because I’d said they’re stupid. We both went red in the face and laughed for a good five minutes. I’m still chortling.
When we did this in Scouts we always sent the unsuspecting kid for a, “The LEFT-handed smoke bender” followed by the following:
-100 ft of shoreline
-Sky hook (for holding up the smoke bender)
-Fallopian tubes
…and if they were lucky they would see some fish tracks as they walked by the waterfront.
roflmao… Bacon streatcher, now THAT’S funny!
One thing I always do that I find incredibly funny goes back to when Star Trek TNG was on. Every time Pickard would say, “Fire at will,” I would always yell out, “NO! Not Will Riker!” Now any time I hear the words, “Fire at will,” I just can’t help myself.
When i was a kid, my stepfather would have me scratching my head for hours when he told me to go into the back yard and dig half a hole.
My husband and I were just watching ST Nemesis last month for about the 5th time. Every time I watch it, I just fall apart giggling when he yells “Fire at Will!” and have to do a little voice over for Riker “What did I do???” Never ceases to be funny. Well, at least for me. My husband rolls his eyes.
I worked in a hospital kitchen in high school. Two great recurring gags. . .
Gag 1: We had a potato peeling machine that had it’s own little hose that screwed onto the tap for cleaning it out. The big gag was to tell a newbie that there was a potato worm in the hose, get him to look into it and then turn the water on right in his face.
Yes, once that newbie was me.
It never got old. Selling it was key. “Whoa, a potato worm. We got one. Haven’t seen one in a while.”
Gag 2: Whenever you exited a room/walk in freezer/whatever right behind somebody, you always mimed zipping up your fly like you just got done. . .you know.
The higher the authority figure, or the more priggish the person you were trailing, the better.
Every time I think about the one where the mom finds the little kid with half his hair and Dad’s beard trimmer, I can’t help but laugh.
Something else that is always funny–people in movies, tv, whatever, falling out of frame. You know they’re falling, but they’re out of sight before they hit anything. I don’t know why that amuses me so damn much.
I have a friend who is a spontaneous vomiter. He can vomit with absolutely no warning–and it’s usually just as much of a surprise to him as everyone else. One day, he was eating raw cookie dough for breakfast, and his fiancee warned him that it would make him sick. He started to joke that he was going to throw it back up on her. He’s even making the vomit noises and pretending to heave.
You see where this is going, don’t you?
So, in the midst of teasing her about puking on her, he goes right ahead and does it. I still cannot tell or hear that story without laughing so hard I actually cause myself pain.
Who knows how many times I’ve pulled that one.
Definitely people falling down. I don’t care who it is, where they are, it’s always hilarious. I even laugh at people falling down on TV. Ex-boyfriend used to berate me for laughing at the scene in “Radio” where some kids were chasing radio and he fell down.
It’s best in person though. I got the pleasure of witnessing the most spectacular fall ever a couple of years ago. A bunch of friends and I were parting it up in someone’s barn. You know, typical barn, there’s horses in stalls and whatnot. Also there’s horse poop on the floor, right in the middle of the barn. There’s a little cage with a quail in it, and someone had let it out and it was kind of running around the barn. Person X sees the quail and decides to run after it. Well, he didn’t notice the horse crap on the floor. He’s running full speed towards this quail, steps in the horse crap, and his feet literally FLY out from under him and he lands right on his ass in the middle of this pile of doo-doo. Funniest damn thing I have ever seen in my life. I still bring it up. “Remember when X fell down in the barn! BWA HAHA!”
A really childish one for me is when I’m in a crowded setting and something makes a loud fart-like sound (like a table scraping the floor or someone using a nearly empty plastic squeeze bottle) and someone says, “Excuse me!”
Always get’s me.
An intentional joke that always breaks me up is the “Muffin Man” gag from Shrek.
I also love any time “your mom” comes up in conversation. The more disjointed or inapplicable, the better.
“It’s a nice day outside.”
“Yeah, your mom thinks it’s a nice day outside.”
sputter
We have a Popeye’s Chicken near our house, so we go there a lot. Lately they’ve got a new sign up by the register which makes me chuckle every time I see it. I guess I’m easily amused.
It says something like:
At Popeye’s, everything tastes GREAT!
(except for the napkins. Those taste like napkins.)
Both this No Diving sign and this Respirator warning affixed to the wall in the employee’s bathroom at work.
From Police Squad: ’Step out into my Japanese garden’
SCTV’s “Battle of the PBS Network Stars” featuring Julia Child in a boxing match with Mr. Rogers & King Friday
Did somebody already mention that video with the monkey sniffing his finger and then falling out of a tree? Because that is comedy gold.
Also, the Greatest Picture Ever. It’s my desktop background, and it still cracks me up every time I see it.
