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HomePage - RecentChanges - Random - ^zhurnal - RSSThe jokes and riddles that I like tend to have a common element:
What's brown and sticky?: A stick.
What's the best way to catch a fish?: Have somebody toss it to you.
What did the Sage say to the Hot Dog Vendor?: Make me one with everything.
... and so forth. They all involve a sudden frame shift, a jump from one way of thinking to another --- an escape from the commonplace to a surprising new set of meanings. That leap seems to give the mind a special thrill of joy. In the context of a joke, we laugh. Maybe the same happy feeling of freedom arises in other contexts, when we escape from the prison of our preconceptions?
Another, longer joke, with a similar (or not) twist is:
Three men, stranded on a desert island, find a lamp. They rub it, and out comes the genie. He says to the three, "You each get one wish." The first says, "I wish I was twice as smart as I am now." The genie waves his hand, and he suddenly is. Realizing that he can make it to shore, he dives into the surf and swims off. The second says, "I wish I was ten times as smart as I am now!" He then fells a tree, builds a raft, and starts paddling toward shore. The third says, "I wish I was a THOUSAND times as smart as the other two put together!" Then he looks about, seeing the distant figures of his two friends, and starts across the bridge.
(correlates: AchieveNewBalance, WebGardening, UnderappreciatedIdeas, ...)