Jokes
Looking for funny jokes? Settle in: You're in the right place. From clean knock-knock jokes and the top corny jokes to hilarious one-liners and clever riddles, we've got the jokes guaranteed to bring on serious laughs.
Other Emergency
He didn't return for the longest time, so I went looking for him. I was upstairs calling his name, when I heard our phone machine click on.
"Hi," a voice said. "This is Dad. I'm locked out of the house."
Painful Situation
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Parental Duties
But one boy was not worried about money or responsibility. He wrote, "If I have children, I might have to drive a minivan."
Personal Problems
Planning Ahead
There was a moment of silence; then a thin voice piped up, "What time?"
Plow Driver
"He was checking to see if the landing strip was plowed," the man replied.
As we made a second approach, I glanced out the window. "It looks plowed to me," I commented.
"No," my neighbor replied. "It hasn't been cleared for some time."
"How can you tell?" I asked.
"Because," the man informed me, "I'm the guy who drives the plow."
Problems on Both Ends
Protection
We were unprepared for the response of a young newlywed who wrote: "Yes—birth-control pills."
Relationship Problems
"It's a variant of the I Love You virus, only worse," I said.
"What could be worse?" my single co-worker asked wryly. "The Let's Just Be Friends virus?"
Rooting for the Right Team
My younger son looked worried. "But we're still a hundred percent Red Sox, right, Mom?"
Rubbed the Wrong Way
Scared Situation
"You're right. I'm being silly," I said, feeling relieved. "Please continue."
"Good. Now," the nurse went on, "do you have a living will?"
Sedated
"Man," he replied, struggling to keep his eyes open, "I feel like I'm in English class."
Sick Day
There he was, propped up in bed, earphones on, listening to a baseball game—while the tape recorder coughed on and on. The next morning he was in school.
Small Print, Big Problems
Speech Impediment
Stale Cup
She shrugged. "I don't know. I've only been working here two weeks."
The Higher the Better
"Pretend it's your I.Q."
"Pretend it's your I.Q."
The Other Woman
Still half asleep, I reminded him that I had taken his wife's inflamed appendix out a couple of years before. "Whoever heard of a second appendix?" I asked.
"You may not have heard of a second appendix," he replied, "but surely you've heard of a second wife."
The Retriever
Trouble Focusing
"I give up," I said.
"Let's go ride our bikes."
Ugly Remark
On the way to the multiplex my husband glanced in the rearview mirror and caught our teen applying lipstick and blush, which produced the predictable lecture. "Look at your mom," he said. "She didn't put on any makeup just to go sit in a dark movie theater."
From the back I heard, "Yeah, but Mom doesn't need makeup."
My heart swelling with the compliment, I turned back to thank this sweet, wonderful daughter of mine just as she continued, "Nobody looks at her."
Unappetizing
Uninvited Announcement
"Great news, Scott!" she announced. "We're getting our regular room at the hotel!"
All eyes were on Gail and me as she suddenly realized she had interrupted a meeting with co-workers.
Unwanted Transportation
Placing his hand on the man's, he said, "I know how you feel. My mom makes me ride in the stroller too."
Useful Ailment
Vast Entertainment
If you watch your TV set constantly, Minow had said, "you will see a procession of game shows, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism …"
My 12-year-old son, hearing part of the quotation, interrupted excitedly, "What time does that show go on, Dad?"
Virtual Perspective
Weighed Down
Wrong Patient
On the way down I asked if his wife was meeting him. "I don't know," he said. "She's still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown."
A Technical Answer
Responding quickly, the people in the building penned a large sign of their own. It read: "You are in a helicopter."
The pilot smiled, and within minutes he landed safely at the airport. After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked how the sign helped him determine their position.
"I knew it had to be the Microsoft building," the pilot replied, "because like any computer company's help staff, they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer."
Angry Customers
Tailgating Tattletale
"Honey," she said, "your turn signal is still on. And put your lights on—it's starting to rain."
Complex Explanation
Computer Language
I couldn't help but laugh when my husband impatiently waved at me to move the car forward while saying, "Scroll up, honey."
In Total Control
Recently, I was traveling with my parents in their new car when we hit a wide-open expanse of highway. My dad leaned back and said, "I think I'll let Tom drive for a while."
"Tom who?" I asked.
My mother translated for me: "Tom Cruise, of course."
Missing Parts
It had a shattered windshield, two missing tires, a sagging front bumper, a cockeyed grille, a hood that was sprung up at an angle, and dings and dents all over the body.
Before he started the bidding, the auctioneer announced the car's year, make and model, and then read the owner's comments: "Please note—the radio does not work."
No Cleaning Required
"Made in Indonesia—Not Dishwasher Safe."
Tough Question
My 50-something friend Nancy and I decided to introduce her mother to the magic of the Internet. Our first move was to access the popular "Ask Jeeves" site, and we told her it could answer any question she had.
Nancy's mother was very skeptical until Nancy said, "It's true, Mom. Think of something to ask it."
As I sat with fingers poised over the keyboard, Nancy's mother thought a minute, then responded, "How is Aunt Helen feeling?"
Not so Private
Personal Tracking Device
Running Out of Fuel
Similar Training
"Look, honey," said the wife to her husband. "He went to the same repair school as you."
Smarter Generation
I called the computer services office and explained, "My computer is down. The hard drive crashed."
"We can't just send people down on your say-so. How do you know that's the problem?"
"A student told me," I answered.
"We'll send someone over right away."
Snapshot
Sounding Off
"Some are quite effective," my friend corrected me. "Last summer, my teenager spent a lot of time at the neighbors'. Whenever I wanted him home, I'd go out to our driveway and jostle his car."
Sour Situation
I went to a florist, ordered a fruit basket filled with lemons and sent it to the dealer with this poem:
"When I drive my lemon, I'll be thinking of you.
Pretty soon, my attorney will too."
A short time later the dealer called and asked what color I'd like my new car to be.
Unable to See
Unfinished Repairs
Too Much Information
Suddenly the conversation shifted, and the woman said, "Him? That's over." Then she added, "Can we talk about this later? It's rather personal, and I'm in a room full of people."
Win-Win
Misplaced
A pastor I know of uses a standard liturgy for funerals. To personalize each service, he enters a “find and replace” command into his word processor. The computer then finds the name of the deceased from the previous funeral and replaces it with the name of the deceased for the upcoming one.
Not long ago, the pastor told the computer to find the name “Mary” and replace it with “Edna.” The next morning, the funeral was going smoothly until the congregation intoned the Apostles’ Creed. “Jesus Christ,” they read from the preprinted program, “born of the Virgin Edna.”
On a Safari
Some New Yorkers were on a safari in the jungles of a little-explored faraway country when they were captured by cannibals.
"Oh, yes!" the chief of the tribe exclaimed. "We're going to put you all into big pots of water, cook you and eat you."
"You can't do that to me," the tour leader said. "I'm the editor of The New Yorker!"
"Well," he responded, "tonight you will be editor-in-chief!"
Job Interview
During a job interview, a client of my employment-search company voiced his concern about work-life balance.
"Spending time with my family is very important to me, and I'm just wondering how much overtime I can expect to put in," he asked. His prospective employer quickly put him at ease.
"Family should always come first," came the reply. "Of course, here we like our employees to think of us as family."
Health Food Junkies
Because he's a chemist and I'm a personal trainer, my fiancé and I don't always agree about what eating healthy means. I prefer foods with less fat and fewer calories. He watches out for chemicals and additives. We were grocery shopping, and I asked him to go get some butter.
"Which kind," he asked, "cancer or heart attack?
Parachute Problems
The topic of the day at Army Airborne School was what you should do if your parachute malfunctions. We had just gotten to the part about reserve parachutes when another student raised his hand.
"If the main parachute malfunctions," he asked, "how long do we have to deploy the reserve?"
Looking the trooper square in the face, the instructor replied, "The rest of your life."
So Long, Snail Mail
After my wife landed a coveted job offer from DHL, we went out of town to celebrate. While on our trip, she was contacted by the company's human resources department with an urgent request to complete and send back her tax forms.
"No problem," she said. "I'll FedEx them right over."
Pretty Pennies
A: Two tax attorneys fighting over a penny.
A: Two tax attorneys fighting over a penny.
Quick Clean-up
Tough Luck
"I feel sorry for this soldier," joked my husband as he handed me a flier he'd found in our mailbox. It read:
Lost CatBlack and white
Answers to Nate
Belongs to a soldier
Recently neutered
Hot Off the Press
As I stripped off my sweatshirt at the breakfast table one warm morning, my T-shirt started to come off too.
My husband let out a low whistle. I took it as a compliment until he said, from behind his newspaper, "Can you believe the price of bananas?"
Farm and Family
A man and his wife were taking an afternoon drive through the countryside. They had just had a big argument and were not talking to one another. Finally the husband decided to break the silence and say something sarcastic to his wife: “Look at all the cows and pigs in the pasture. Don’t they remind you of your relatives?”
The wife replied, “Yes, they do. They remind me of my in-laws.”
Flawed Flattery
Teeing off on the 12th hole at a golf resort, we stopped to buy cold drinks from the young woman driving the beverage cart. As my buddy reached for his wallet, he said to her, "You're in great shape. You must work out a lot."
Flattered, she gave him a big smile. "Thank you."
The next day a different young woman was driving the cart. "Watch this," I whispered. I walked up to her and said, "Wow, you must work out a lot."
"Yeah," she replied. "You should try it."
1-800-WasteMyTime
Unfortunately, Windows had been in the midst of a delicate and crucial undertaking. The next morning, when I turned my computer back on, it informed me that a file had been corrupted and Windows would not load. This was followed by some mysterious lines of code, which I took to be my computer saying "Serves you right, careless pea brain" in its native tongue. More graciously, it offered to repair itself by using the Windows Setup CD.
I opened the special drawer where I keep CDs that I have no intention of ever using. There was an IKEA how-to CD, which featured young Swedes assembling kitchen cabinets with nothing but a sardine can key and untrammeled wholesomeness. Mostly, there were CDs of music that my friends are always burning for me, unbidden, because they think I'll enjoy them.
But no Windows CD. I was forced to call the computer company's Global Support Center. My call was answered by a woman in some unnamed, far-off land. I find it vexing to make small talk with someone when I don't know what continent they're standing on. Suppose I were to comment on the beautiful weather we've been having when there was a monsoon at the other end of the phone? So I got right to the point.
"My computer is telling me a file is corrupted and it wants to fix itself, but I don't have the Windows Setup CD."
"So you're having a problem with your Windows Setup CD." She had apparently been dozing and, having come to just as the sentence ended, was attempting to cover for her inattention. I recognized the technique from a thousand breakfast conversations.
"We took that rug in weeks ago. Should I call the cleaners?"
"No, thanks. I'm good."
It quickly became clear that the woman was not a computer technician. Her job was to serve as a gatekeeper, a human shield for the techs, who were off in the back room, or possibly another far-off continent, playing cards and burning CDs for their friends. Her sole duty, as far as I could tell, was to raise global stress levels.
To make me disappear, the woman gave me the phone number for Windows' creator, Microsoft. This is like giving someone the phone number for, I don't know, North America. Besides, the CD worked; I just didn't have it. No matter how many times I repeated my story, we came back to the same place. She was unflappable and resolutely polite.
When my voice hit a certain decibel, I was passed along, like a hot, irritable potato, to a technician.
"You don't have the Windows Setup CD, ma'am, because you don't need it," he explained cheerfully. "Windows came preinstalled on your computer!"
"But I do need it."
"Yes, but you don't have it."
We went on like this for a while. Finally, he offered to walk me through the use of a different CD, one that would erase my entire system. "Of course, you'd lose all your e-mail, your documents, your photos." It was like offering to drop a safe on my head to cure my headache. "You might be able to recover them, but it would be expensive." He sounded delighted. "And it's not covered by the warranty!" The safe began to seem like a good idea, provided it was full.
I hung up the phone and drove my computer to a small, friendly repair place I'd heard about. A smart, helpful man dug out a Windows CD and told me it wouldn't be a problem. An hour later, he called to let me know it was ready. I thanked him, and we chatted about the weather, which was the same outside my window as it was outside his.
Sleepless in Suburbia
Sit Back and Relax
There is a special room in hell where the flames are extra hot and you must sleep sitting straight up. The sign on the door says: Reserved for People Who Reclined Their Seatbacks the Entire Flight. Most of us understand the discomfort we are inflicting on the poor schmo behind us and try to limit our reclining for the lights-out portion of the flight. If everyone leans back together, in the manner of a synchronized, unattractively upholstered Esther Williams swim routine, then no one is unfairly crowded.
I had a seatback diva in front of me last week. We were barely airborne, and there she was in my lap. Using my computer would now entail making a slit in my belly flab and inserting the front half of the keyboard inside me, so that the bottom row of letters were rendered inaccessible and I would have to make do without the words banana, vixen, balaclava and many other colorful favorites.Defeated, I tried to watch the little TV mounted in the seatback in front of me. Alas, the screen was so close to my face that my eyes were crossing. Emeril had become a set of perfectly choreographed twin Emerils, which was one or possibly two more Emerils than I could handle. In desperation, I turned to my complimentary copy of the Sky Mall catalog and began to read. A mail-order company was selling "the Most Compact Washing Machine in the World," enabling, I don't know, Keebler elves to do laundry in their tree. "Tiki Head Tissue Box Dispenses Tissue Through the Nose!" another ad reported excitedly.
"Who would buy this?" I said to the man in the middle seat, but he was busy waving down a flight attendant. "Miss?" He was holding up his knees. "Is there room in the overhead bin for these?"
We hit a pocket of turbulence and Bloody Mary mix slopped onto the chinos of the man next to me. I pointed to the Most Compact Washing Machine in the World. "You need this," I said. The man did not smile. His expression was just like the Tiki Head with tissues up its nostrils, displeased and clearly embarrassed about the situation yet resolutely stoic.
More and more, you must board a plane like a general going to war. You must constantly defend your turf -- your wee, airless kingdom. The occupier of the next seat will make his move upon your armrest the moment your vigilance flags. You will return from the bathroom to find an elbow planted in the little vinyl peninsula where your people once roamed free.
The battle for armrest dominance has grown ever more intense in the era of the laptop computer. The airplane seat -- designed to be a chair, and never very good at it -- has now been asked to perform double duty as an office. Soon people will be bringing fitness equipment and hobby craft aboard, and the company that makes the elfin washers will need to get started on looms and rowing machines.
Complex rules apply to the space beneath your seat, for it belongs, technically, to the person behind you. Not long ago, I was on a transcontinental flight when I was awakened by the woman behind me. "Excuse me?" She was holding a plastic juice cup. "Excuse me? This is coming in my section." I had put my empty cup under my seat and it had slid backward, crossing an imaginary line in the carpeting. She was peeved. Her eyes were squinty and her nostrils were flaring, as though about to dispense tissues through the nose.
People were staring, so I took the cup. Later that night, a pantyhosed foot made a stealth assault on the back of my right armrest. It was her: the Juice Cup Border Patrol.
"Excuse me?" I nudged the foot ungently. "This is coming in my section."
Several hours went by without incident. I was beginning to drift off, when I heard a driving, tinny noise: ch-ch, ch-ch, ch-ch, ch-ch ... The woman behind me had mobilized the most fearsome weapon in the modern airplane arsenal: the Overly Loud Headphones.
I waved my hot towel in surrender.
Home Sickness
No! We thought it was quaint!
Here's how delusional we were. We had plumbing problems (of course), and in an effort to fix a leak, some plumbing guys were crawling around under our house. They emerged holding some yellowed, crumbling, rolled-up newspapers, which they'd found wrapped around our pipes, apparently as insulation. We carefully unwrapped one of the newspapers and found that it was a Miami Herald from 1927. It had a story in it about Charles Lindbergh.
So there we were, confronted with stark evidence that our pipes, in addition to leaking, were very old. It's like being aboard a boat in the middle of the Pacific and discovering that not only were you sinking, but also your hull was made entirely of Triscuits.
How did we react to this horrible news? We were thrilled! Charles Lindbergh! It was so charming! The plumbers were also very excited, but in their case it was because they knew we would be putting all their children through Harvard.
Our House Delusion Disease is very powerful. Usually, when you buy an old house, you hire professional house inspectors. These inspectors are very thorough: They spend a whole day crawling around the house, and then they give you a detailed, written report, which says "Do not buy this house, you idiot!"
Not in so many words, of course. The report breaks the house down by major defects, then sub-defects. The house, according to the report, consists entirely of defects. You read the report, but because you have OHDD, none of it actually penetrates your brain, even when the inspector goes out of his way to warn you about serious problems:
INSPECTOR: I want to show you something in the living room ...
YOU: Don't you love that room? It has such character! The molding!
INSPECTOR: About the molding -- I wanted you to see this. (The inspector takes a screwdriver and taps it against the molding. The molding disappears in a smokelike puff of wood particles. Then a large part of the wall itself collapses, leaving a gaping hole, through which can be seen, in the gloom, an exposed wire that periodically emits a shower of sparks, illuminating a dripping pipe covered with green slime. A rat darts by, pursued by what seems to be a boa constrictor.)
YOU: Ha ha! These quirky old houses! That can be repaired, right?
INSPECTOR: Well, I suppose it could, if you're willing to ...
YOU: I'm not worried about cosmetic problems, as long as the house is structurally sound. (You stamp your foot on the floor to emphasize this point. Your foot goes through the floor.)
INSPECTOR: Um, that's another thing. Your floor joists have been almost entirely eaten away.
YOU: (retracting your foot) Termites? No biggie! A lot of these old houses have termites! We can just have it treated by ...
INSPECTOR: Actually, it's beavers. They're building a dam in the basement.
YOU: (silence)
INSPECTOR: I've never seen that before.
YOU: (recovering) Well, the kids have been wanting a pet!
At this point the inspector, who has dealt with OHDD before, gives up and edges out of the room, taking care not to put too much weight on any one part of the floor.
You, of course, buy the house. As a true OHDD victim, you would buy this house if it were on fire. Once it's yours, you begin calling what will become a never-ending parade of highly paid craftsmen, who will spend so much time at your house that eventually they will become a part of your family, and invite you to attend all their children's graduations from Harvard.
Macho, Macho Man
Taking my marching orders, the first thing I did was to exhale for the first time in three years, letting my belly settle back into its natural position draped over my belt. I then canceled my membership in the Tiramisu-of-the-Month club.
Gone, too, was the easy sympathy I doled out to my three-year-old daughter after she pulled the head off her Polly Pocket doll for the 12th time. "Now it's a Marie Antoinette doll," I told Quinn, knowing that tough love was the best love. Gone was my simple acquiescence when my wife, Jennifer, informed me we'd be watching the Melissa Gilbert retrospective on Lifetime Television.
"Sorry," I told her, "this TV has been reserved for a special edition of 'Killing Cattle With Mike Ditka.' "
Part of the machosexual compact is to fulfill traditional male roles -- to be the rock, the decision-maker. So as commander-in-chief of our little tribe, I canceled our family trip to Hersheypark. "Machosexuals," I explained, "don't have chocolaty good times. We have adventures." But being a benevolent dictator, I presented an alternative.
"Who wants to go bareback rhino racing in Zimbabwe?" I asked.
Machosexuals are a patient lot, so when Jennifer said, "No, we're going to Hersheypark," I knew that perseverance was in order.
"Wanna take a steam bath in an active volcano in Indonesia?"
"No."
"Fly a MiG-29 at mach 3 over Moscow, going 60,000 feet straight up in the air at a 90-degree angle until the engine stalls and we tumble back to earth in a free fall, coming just ten feet off the ground before pulling up?"
"No."
"Kayak down Victoria Falls? Go skinny-dipping in the Arctic? Walk over to the mini-mart and eat five-day-old sushi?"
No, no and no.
"You don't like to have fun, do you?"
Click! Jennifer turned on the TV and raised the volume until Melissa Gilbert's voice drowned mine out.
Then, after much wrestling over the remote, we agreed that I should be kicked out of the house.
So off I stomped to the nearest watering hole to be with my fellow bulls. I was glad to see everyone had read the same memo as me. Gone were the cosmopolitans and chocolate martinis. In their place was only one choice: "Barkeep," I said, "gimme a Milwaukee's Best!" A cold, frothy one appeared before me.
There was backslapping, swearing and a quick debate on wearing helmets while motorcycling (everyone was against it). And we used the old bar food favorite, edamame beans, to throw at a poster of Brad Pitt.
After raising a glass to the machosexuals of yore -- Bogie, Duke Wayne, Attila the Hun -- we took out our knives and whittled some sticks before calling it a night. Back home, I snuck into the house to avoid Jennifer. We machosexuals pick our battles and in so doing know that tiptoeing is not the same as retreating.
In the living room I found Quinn crying over her headless doll as Jennifer struggled with duct tape.
I grabbed some glue, and Jennifer handed me the doll. I reattached the head as best I could. It slipped a bit before drying, giving it that cock-eyed, self-assured look that's so attractive in a plastic doll. Quinn climbed into my lap, and the three of us played with her Polly Pockets.
Who knew playing with dolls could be so much fun?
Itching for a Fight
It all started simply enough. Soon after we moved to the country, my wife, Jennifer, decided that our backyard was sorely in need of some landscaping work.
"What's wrong with it?" I asked. "Look at how fat and sassy our grass is. I bet we have the fattest, sassiest lawn in the neighborhood."
That's when Jennifer let me in on a little secret. There is no grass on our lawn. Only fat, sassy poison ivy.
I pointed out that unlike everything else in the yard, the ivy was thriving and maybe we should go after something else, like that malingering rosebush.
"Why evict the one thing that actually wants to be here?" I reasoned.
Here's why: Jennifer doesn't like poison ivy. Something about the word poison makes her think it can't be good for you.
So we called in landscapers to get estimates. The first took one look at our lawn, then called his car dealer and ordered a BMW, the one that comes with a chauffeur. The second charged by the blade of grass. That's when I drove into town looking for one of those cheap illegal aliens the media insists is on every street corner in America.
"Are you an illegal alien?" I asked the first man I saw.
"No, I'm the mayor," he said.
"Are you an illegal alien?" I asked another.
"No, I'm your neighbor."
"Are you an illegal alien?"
"No, I'm your wife, you idiot," said Jennifer, shoving a rake in my hand and telling me to take care of things myself.
One of the problems with poison ivy is you can't simply grab it by the collar and toss it out like some drunk from a bar. You have to suit up for battle -- rubber gloves duct-taped to a long-sleeved shirt buttoned to your neck. Long pants with the cuffs duct-taped over your socks and work boots. A scarf wrapped tightly around neck and face, duct-taped to goggles and hat, completes the jackass look. Armed with pruner and weedkiller, I was no longer simply a homeowner unable to find an illegal alien to do the work he didn't want to do. I was, in fact, a Knight of the Backyard Realm.
Since I had no idea what poison ivy looked like, I kept my plan of attack simple: Anything remotely planty goes. Ferns? Gone! Hosta? Gone! Rosebush? Gone! Trees? Gone! Mailbox? Gone! I was Sherman marching on Atlanta, laying waste to anything in my path. What the weedkiller didn't get, I ripped out by hand. What I couldn't rip out, I ran over with my car.
"That's the Japanese maple!" screamed Jennifer.
"Now it's mulch," I said, grinning devilishly over the whirring engine of my '95 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.
By the end of the day, I'd rid the yard of all the poison ivy save for one sorry little clump. Like the heads of the vanquished left on spikes outside medieval castle walls, it served as a warning to any of its kin that might dare to show their three shiny leaves around here.
Hot and tired, and feeling pretty damn good about myself, I unraveled the four rolls of duct tape that had adhered to my body and stepped out of my sweat-soaked clothes, 27 pounds lighter than when I entered them. The shrieks of horror from my 78-year-old neighbor spying my near-naked body startled me so, that I tripped down a small embankment -- only to be saved by the soft, pillowy embrace of the remaining clump of poison ivy.
As I bathed in calamine lotion, Jennifer figured out that all my tireless work had reduced our home's value by a third. So she hired one of the landscapers to return the yard to its previous state of disrepair. We went with the guy who charged by the blade of grass. With no lawn left, how expensive could it be?
Customer Service
Your call may be monitored and/or recorded for staff entertainment purposes. For security reasons, please enter the last four digits of your junior high school locker combination, followed by your mother's pet name for your father on evenings when she's had too much sherry.
To save us money and expedite the dismissal of customer-care representatives, our express automated-speech response system is now available. To use this system, press 1. To speak to a customer-care representative, call the Peterson County unemployment office. To hear these options again, hang up and call back.
Welcome to the express automated-speech response system. Please say your 67-digit personal account number, located on the upper lower left middle corner of the one page of your bill that has gone missing, followed by the pound sign. If you thought * was the pound sign, say Ding Dong.
I heard: 89437590427964385043275 9478847686350542356889448590824837698072459. If this is correct, say Yes. If this is not correct, it's your fault. You are mumbling, or have a funny accent.
For payment information, say Payment. If you have calls and charges you don't understand, say Pinhead. To hear these options again, say Attention Span of a Gnat. To hear the call of the long-toed stint, say kirrrrr-PIP! wacka wacka wacka!
Welcome to the automated payment information center. Our records show a payment of $149 was posted on January 23, 2002, following a 12-day processing period, during which time Accounts Receivable Clerk June Smetak was unaccountably absent and consequently your payment was recorded six days after the due date. A late fee of as much as we can possibly charge without government intervention has been posted to your account. Accounts Receivable Clerk Smetak has been promoted. Whoever said life was fair?
To exit the express automated- speech response system, press or say 1. To enter your 67-digit personal account number again for no special reason, press or say 2.
Please wait, a customer-care representative will be with you shortly, or be short with you, or something. Currently all of our representatives are busy helping dilute our profits. Calls will be answered in the order in which we feel like. Your expected wait time is 42 minutes. Your expected blood pressure is 210/130. You may hear clicks followed by silence. You may hear "Whole Lotta Love" done entirely in strings. You may hear yourself say regrettable things, which may be monitored and/or recorded. For example, our records show that you used the phrase "gabbling nitwit" during your last call to customer care. This has been noted in your record and will be reflected in the quality of service you receive and the tone of voice of the customer-care representative, should you somehow manage to reach one.
I'm sorry, 0 is not a valid prompt, even if pushed furiously 11 times in rapid succession.
To use our express automated-speech response system, press 1. To hear our website address, press 2. To speak to someone about your anger-management problem, press 3.
3 is not a valid prompt. Thank you for calling.
Spring Jokes – Silly About Spring
And There’s the Rub!
I have set all this aside, however, because I recently got a gift certificate for a local spa and have cajoled my friend Wendy into coming with me for a massage. We are now standing in the room known to ordinary (non-cleansing) people as a locker room. The sign on the door says "Women's Dressing." As though we are salads. Across the hall is the Water Closet. This spa has tried hard to be tony and European, right down to the medical background forms, which request that we "tick" boxes, rather than check them.
The locker room is pristine, and smells like no locker room I've ever been in. The smell turns out to be the lockers themselves: They're lined with cedar. "Check, I mean tick, this out," I tell Wendy. "In case moths attack while we're off getting our massages."
A beautiful young attendant arrives to show us how to operate the locks on the lockers. Then she leaves to get us bathrobes and towels.
Wendy looks stressed. "Do we have to tip her for this? I hate these places. I don't know how to behave. What do I tip? Do I take everything off? Do I leave on my underwear?" Wendy is going to need a second massage to relieve the stress that's accumulated while being here for the first one.
We are told to wait for our masseuses in the lounge. It's a gorgeous, perfect lounge with expensive cheeses and orchids and pitchers of lemon water. We pour ourselves some water and finish our medical forms. Wendy is reading aloud: "Are you pregnant? Ha! No, I just look like it!"
A different beautiful young attendant comes into the lounge to refill the water pitcher and clear away the empty glasses. She glances briefly at the flabby, wrinkly things on the sofa, as if giving thought to how she might clear those away too.
At last our masseuses arrive to take us to the treatment rooms. I watch Wendy disappear down the hallway, her voice trailing off: "I left my underwear on. Was that bad? I wasn't sure..."
My masseur, Leo, tells me to "disrobe to my level of comfort" and get under the sheet on the massage table. Then he leaves the room. I notice that a small pink flower is lying on the sheet at the head of the massage table, as though the last person was a shrub. The massage table is outfitted at one end with a small, heavily padded toilet seat. When he returns, Leo tells me to put my face inside the toilet seat, which he calls a "face cradle."
Leo says he'll be "opening up my muscles" and "getting blood into the area." This doesn't sound relaxing. It sounds like the tiger scene in Gladiator. I bury my face in the toilet and pray for leniency.
Eventually I relax. Things are going swell. Then Leo asks me if I want the "complimentary parafango treatment." There are so many things I need to learn before I can answer this question.
"Fango means volcanic," Leo adds, bringing me no closer to a decision.
"Oh," I say. "In what language?"
He doesn't answer. He must think I'm testing him. For the next few minutes, Leo gives me the complimentary silent treatment. This is fine with me. In my experience, conversations in which one party has her head in the toilet bowl are always trying.
I find Wendy waiting for me in the lounge. She got the parafango treatment on her feet. "And how was that?" I ask her.
"Really relaxing," she says in a strangled voice that I have heard her use only once before, when raccoons got into the compost. "Can we go now?" Wendy gets up and moves toward the door very fast, faster than you would expect for someone whose feet have been dipped in molten magma.