A Blogger Walks Into a Bar

Looking at other fields, it’s often clear that they could be improved by the rigorous skills and discipline of blogging. Comedy, for example; so-called “jokes” are frequently unclear or confusing, so let’s see how one could be improved by the stringent analysis that only blogging can provide:

Sticks
So, you know that there are sticks, yes? They are part of a tree, and they are called a stick. And they are brown. Wood is brown, these sticks are wood, and therefore they are brown.

[Image: a stick]
[Caption: A Stick. Note colour (brown).]

The Word Sticky
Now, there is also the word sticky. Often when you append -y to a word it would mean “like a stick”, but in this instance it actually means “tacky” or “adhesive”, unrelated to *a* stick, in the sense of a piece of wood.

A Humorous Question
Thus here is a humorous question: what is brown and sticky? Now you are considering an item that is tacky or adhesive, yes, and is also brown, such as perhaps a small patch of syrup, or a dab of creosote, or more appropriately an unbranded wood preservative substance for of course creosote itself is regulated for the use of professionals only under EU Directive 76/769/EEC.

[Image: wood preservative]
[Caption: wood preservative substance meeting appropriate EU directives on benzo-alpha-pyrene and water extractable phenols]

You are perhaps even thinking that the answer is “excrement”, which is uproariously amusing, as excrement possesses intrinsic humour.

[Image: poo]
[Caption: Excrement]

The Answer
However I tell you the answer is as follows: a stick.

[Image: the same stick as before]
[Caption: A Stick.]

You will remember from the opening paragraph that the stick is brown, and from the second paragraph that “sticky” could be misinterpreted as “stick-y”, or “like a stick”, and of course a stick is unquestionably like a stick, thus rendering the answer technically correct, and yet at the same time confounding your expectations, from whence the humour is derived.

Thank you.

8 thoughts on “A Blogger Walks Into a Bar

  1. Dril

    Exactly the kind of trenchant and unflinching analysis we have come to expect of this blog. *claps* Bravo!

  2. Jonathan B

    I think this quote sums it up well, from the original A-Team:

    Murdock: That’s a remarkably good analysis of a very complex issue, Face.

    Face: Oh, thanks. You know, I should write a book!

    Murdock: Nope, nope. Just a pamphlet.

  3. Fnord

    I also find that many areas of life could be improved by the critical feed back of commenting.

    For example, since “What’s Black and White and Re(a)d all over?” is the first joke I ever heard, it is obviously the best joke that has ever existed. The comedy industry has been only gone downhill since they moved beyond strictly homophonic puns to cater to the lowest-common-denominator of people other than me.

    Since obviously all intelligent people share my preferences, all new jokes should imitate my favorite joke, whose quality is clear and not at all affected by nostalgia for the first time I heard it.

  4. Zoso Post author

    I’m heartened by such a splendid response, and will set to work on on the pamphlet forthwith.

    Fnord: excellent point. “A newspaper” was definitely the absolute peak of the comedy industry, when they upgraded the punchline to “a sunburned penguin” in the first expansion pack and abandoned the homophonic element of the comedic result it was clearly the start of the slide of the industry to catering for oafs and buffoons.

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