ISTM that the joke is about the phrase “to make [something] fast”, i.e., to make it tightly secured or immobile: to “fasten” it. The pun is impeccable, even if it’s not particularly witty.
I don’t think so. If the punchline were “Take away its nosebag” or something like that, then it would be clear (and somewhat funny) that the pun was about making the horse “fast” in the sense of “not eat”.
But for the given tying-to-a-post punchline, the “make it fast”/“secure it” interpretation makes more sense and is (albeit marginally) funnier.
A guy is hosting a party and a drunken guest approaches him. The drunk guy says, “Do you have green toilet paper that says, ‘FUCK YOU!’” The host replies, “No.” Then the drunk says, “Well, then, I think I just wiped my ass with your parrot.”
The point of the joke is the setup gets you thinking along the lines of whether exercising the horse, changing its diet, seeking advice from a vet (or whatever) might increase the speed at which it travels, only for the punchline to give the simple solution of tying it to a post being how you ‘make it fast’. So as others have said, it’s a fairly standard classic joke format. I agree with you it’s not particularly funny, but I don’t get the hate.
Huh. There was I thinking I was pretty clever for only taking a couple of years to get “Knockturn Alley”, then you hit me with this one. What. A. Dunce.
Because even if I granted your explanation, it’s a really bad joke. It doesn’t follow the usual joke set up, in which you could end up with a statement that can be interpreted two ways, with one possibly being phonetically equal. an example of that kind of joke is:
“Why is whispering against the law?”
“Because it isn’t aloud.”
“How do you get down off an elephant?”
“You don’t get down off an elephant. You get down off a duck.”
But “How do you make a slow horse fast?”
“Tie it to a post”
Doesn’t follow. In the first place a pony tethered isn’t “firmly fixed”, and in the second place using fest in exactly that way isn’t common contemporary usage.
I’m reminded of what they had to do for a joke in the play and movie 1776
Charles Thomson (Secretary): “Rhode Island?” (no answer)
John Hancock (President of Continental Congress)“Where is Rhode Island?”
McNabb (Congressional custodian): "He’s out visitin’ the necessary.
Hancock: "After what he’s consumed, I’m not surprised. we’ll come back to him.
Thomson: “Rhode Island passes.”
(Loud laughter from congress)
They said they HAD to have Congress laugh at that, or modern audiences probably wouldn’t get the joke.
Except that “Rhode Island passes” is a lot more comprehensible than “Tie it to a post.”
Be honest – if I hadn’t given the supposed explanation, would you have gotten the joke?
Well, it probably was back when that joke originated. In any case, plenty of us who are considerably younger than that joke were nonetheless easily able to recognize the “make it fast” (in the sense of “securing it”) idiom.
Yup, I got it right away. But then, I’m a little more conversant with old-fashioned literature (and possibly with old-fashioned modes of transport) than you seem to be, and the concept of “making a horse fast to” some immovable object does not strike me as strange or incomprehensible in any way.
Those of you who grew up in central Iowa in the 1960s or 1970s will appreciate this:
Why did the man put his car in the oven?
Because he wanted a hot rod.
Or:
What’s the biggest pencil in the world?
Pennsylvania.
There’s an urban legend that in the early 1970s, a very popular band, most likely Deep Purple, was playing at the local Enormodome and someone in the opening act got really sick, so they cancelled. As a joke, someone suggested the above act and it turned out they were available, so when Duane Ellett and his puppet, Floppy, walked out onstage, the crowd rose to its feet and started chanting, “FLOPPY! FLOPPY! FLOPPY!”
After the advent of social media, the story fizzled out because certainly SOMEONE reading it would actually have been there. :o
p.s. Plus, certainly a band as big as Deep Purple were would certainly have published biographies, and being upstaged by a ventriloquist from a locally produced children’s television show would have gotten in it.
My relatives are responsible for the bad jokes I’ve heard.
From my sister (when we both little)
“How do you make a slow horse fast?”
Answer: “Tie it to a post”
Me: I don’t get it. Does that mean if you tie it to a post it can’t get to food, so it can’t eat?
Her: I think it means that you tie it fast.
to this day I haven’t heard a good explanation for this “joke”
She could have meant by tying the horse up it’s been made slow quickly, as long as one didn’t spend too much time tying it to the post.
That still doesn’t make it funny, though it’s quite cute in a way.
Well, there were all the dead baby jokes I learned when I was a teenager. Maybe it was just the callous taboo nature of those jokes that was the appeal. For example:
What’s red and swings?
A baby on a meat hook.
What’s green and swings?
Same baby two weeks later.
