Jokes you make that are unappreciated and yield awkward silences

See also jokes about "issues" and the Leviticus 15 sense of the word.

haha I feel like half the jokes I tell fall into this category.

Me too, and so it has been always.

It is kind of my WOODEN LEG; I think I am funnier than empirical evidence indicates.

I had a professor once make some kind of joke to me, something relating to being biased against fat people. Afterwards, talking about it with some people from the class, I was standing up to get a beer and did a sort of bad-comedian impression, doing that whole collar-tugging schtick and putting on a Rodney Dangerfield voice, and I said: "I don't have a problem with fat people -- you should see the women I date!"

A (very fit and thin!) person I had recently dated stood up and left the bar.

I was totally unable to recover from this, no matter how much I explained that it was, you know, kind of an imitation of that kind of comedian, that it wasn't a joke I was making, that I wouldn't have even made it ironically if I'd thought there were any way anyone would interpret it as being about anyone I'd dated. ... It was an epic disaster of a joke. Completely disastrous.

But honestly, I'd have thought that doing the Rodney Dangerfield collar-tug and voice and that whole kind of "take my wife, please" tone would have made the function of the joke pretty clear, you know?

It was a crap joke, though, I guess, even ironically. Can you tell that I still feel bad about this disaster?

<awkward silence>

hahahaha that is epic

A whole bunch of ILXors got to see me crash and burn while Ned was showing pictures of his NZ trip. He got to a picture of an island that was shaped exactly like a glans, so of course I said, "HAHA IT LOOKS LIKE A COCK" and Ned basically said, "And this picture is blah blah blah" and everyone else nodded sagely and I basically went "ugh, that sucked".

xxp No, why don't you keep explaining.

Abbots, I would laugh at hairshirt jokes and also sackcloth and ashes and the rending of garments and et cetera. But you have to have a certain kind of crazy in your background to find that stuff funny, I suspect.

(multi-xpost) I think we all make jokes like this sometimes, the difference is that some of us aren't perturbed by an awkward silence and take it in our strides.

I meant stride, not strides - I didn't mean that we take it in our trousers...

This really describes all of my jokes.

Me and a friend spent an afternoon slaving over the creation of this joke once long ago:

I was sitting next to woman in a bar and asked if I could have some of her sweetmeats. She said "No, the sweetmeats belong to me and my friends." "What do you mean?" I said.
"It's OUR CAKE!"* she replied.

*'Archaic'**
**'Sweetmeats' being an archaic term for cake.

In retrospect it was a wasted afternoon.

Yeah, okay, I kinda suspected that outlining my disastrous joke here would compound the disaster by making me look like a dick again.

A whole bunch of ILXors got to see me crash and burn while Ned was showing pictures of his NZ trip. He got to a picture of an island that was shaped exactly like a glans, so of course I said, "HAHA IT LOOKS LIKE A COCK" and Ned basically said, "And this picture is blah blah blah" and everyone else nodded sagely and I basically went "ugh, that sucked".

Hahah, oh man. (Actually if you want to relive that a bit I only just uploaded said photo set the other day, but I don't know if said photo is among them.)

Although perhaps it's this one.

<3 dan & nabisco

Kind of looks like a turtle to me.

Like LOCH NESS MONSTER.

I just watched a hilarious movie in which the funniest things are the most inexplicable, and also the fastest to pass by and be gone in the wake of the plot and other dialogue. So I'm going to support throw-away lines that go half-heard and unexplained.

Oh! There was also a time when I didn't create awkward silence but instead punching and hurt feelings. The joke was TOTALLY unappreciated, though.

At one point when we were dating, I was hugging and tickling J031. She said, "Stop touching my fat!" I instantly cracked up.

"What?" she asked.

"I'm not telling you," I managed to stammer between giggles.

"What? Why not?" she asked.

"It was a funny thing that popped into my head, but if I tell you, you're going to get really, really mad. So, nothing," I said, still giggling.

"Oh, come on!" she said. "I promise I won't get mad."

Against my better judgment, I gave in and said "Well, what I thought- and I don't mean this at all, I just think it's funny- was 'If I was going to touch you fat, I'd do this!" and grabbed her ass.

And there was much beating and wailing and rending of garments (not hers) and gnashing of teeth (again, not hers).

"We stiiiiiiiiilll together."

what movie, laurel?

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang!

This one time I was so drunk that I fluffed the preamble and blew the punchline

those are the worst porn star names ever

My husband and I do a lot of inappropriate joking about each other in front of other people and we get many-a shocked silence. "If I called my wife an evil, drunken slut, she'd kill me!" I guess that's why we're together.

TRU LUUUUV.

No no Dan, you don't understand!

cool, i dig that flick xxxpost

laurel: the one with val kilmer & R. Downey, jr.? I loved that!

also: nabisco's story = my life encapsulated

I can't ever find the thread it was originally posted on, but there's a post somewhere on here about this dude at a bachelor party. The stripper comes out (who's black) to the tune of "You Sexy Thing" playing on the jambox. The ILXor claps his hands and exclaims rather loudy, "ALL RIGHT, IT'S HOT CHOCOLATE!"

The whole room, including the dancer, kinda glares at him for a moment since apparently no one knows it's the name of the band playing at the moment.

Wish I could find that thread since I think about it everytime I hear that song.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

That's the best thing I've read all day.

I still remember one time when I was in high school a bunch of guys were discussing the Seinfeld where George pretends to be an architect. I tried to join in by quoting what I thought was one of the most obviously funny and memorable lines "You know I've always wanted to pretend to be an architect". In what I like to think is tribute to my perfect (although not very Costanza-like) deadpan, everyone just kind of suppressed their contemptuous smirks and said things like "Well, you could try to actually *be* an architect. It's a worthwhile goal" etc.

"Oh, come on!" she said. "I promise I won't get mad."

Dan, did you really believe this? :-)

I once made a joke about stuttering to.. a stutterer. :-( I was ten.

Dan, did you really believe this? :-)

I was naive! I also thought I was charming! (NOTE TO THE GUYS: It is not at all charming to tell your gf that she has a fat ass, no matter how many "srsly I'm kidding and would never ever ever ever say anything like this in anything but a joking, ironic matter" riders you tack on before shooting yourself in the face.)

for what it's worth, those of you who have relived your awkward joke experiences here have made me laugh. so, y'know, you're still getting something out of previously failed jokes. or the experiences of, whichever.

I like this thread.

My partner has a way of saying 'One ramjob and you think we're lovers!', which is basically her shorthand for playfully telling someone not to pull too many requests for special favours - for example, if they want one too many of her cigarettes. Once she said it at our neighbours' house. They are devout Catholics. Fortunately they let it pass.

I had to look that up

Not at work I hope.

My last boss, who was gay, had his birthday, and I usually put together the card, doing something in photoshop. We're trying to work out what image to put on the front. Someone I work with says, "Put 'old gay man' into google images." So we do, and see flood of images best forgotten. Put something else on card, move on.

When it comes to the party, I am merrily chatting to boss, and bellow into sudden silence, "Yeah, we looked for images of old gay men, but it was all a bit alarming. Ho ho ho."

Long silence, startled-kangaroo-in-headlights look from boss. Party ends soon after.

http://i36.tinypic.com/2cnhvgz.jpg

(NOTE TO THE GUYS: It is not at all charming to tell your gf that she has a fat ass, no matter how many "srsly I'm kidding and would never ever ever ever say anything like this in anything but a joking, ironic matter" riders you tack on before shooting yourself in the face.)

"but i meant it as a compliment," no matter how sincere, is not going to get you in her good graces either, as i learned last week

I feel like I do this when talking about my deceased Dad - who was a minister and Scottish and kind of a character.

Like, when a guy who I didn't know well stood up to use the men's room I said: "Shaking hands with the unemployed! That's what my dad always said!"

Uh-oh...

http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/6892/cockstonelm5.jpg

any of you talk in chat rooms regularly? like soulseek for me, I find myself telling lots of inappropriate jokes, or saying the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time, it always cracks me up, but probably not so much for other people, but if you can make insanity amusing, I say go for it. Wordplay is really fun, and most people don't seem to mind, so going off the wall is much more fun in chatrooms.

but I can't explain what actually goes down in my chatroom very well. For instance, I was going on about a deathray earlier... but, well you had to be there

u know typical stuff

i remember back in like 2000 i made a lame joke about george w bush looking like alfred e neuman and everyone was like 'who?'

I was once at a bar with a group of my FELLOW ACADEMICS & shared an hilarious Rodney Dangerfield one-liner: "These days, it seems like I can only get laid because of who I am. A rapist." I really think this is a great joke but these folks did not. A deafening hush fell & everyone glared at me. I was away from home, you see, with people I did not know well -- the people I go to graduate school with at home will laugh at even the most offensive of jokes.

Lesson: don't spring that joke on a cold audience. Do some warm up gags first.

Actually what made it worse was, it was led up to by a complex anecdote that involved some Holocaust jokes that my friend from Jerusalem had told me. I didn't TELL those, I just mentioned them. I should never even have brought up these most controversial of joke topics, but in my defense, the table of people I was with were having a VERY dull time. I was trying to spice things up.

I just flew in from Auschwitz and, boy, are my arms tired... from pulling all those gold teeth out of skulls.

We need a Make a Bad Joke Worse thread.

Aimless that's not funny. My grandfather died in Auschwitz. He got drunk & fell off his guard tower.

Aimless that's not funny. My grandfather died in Auschwitz. He got drunk & fell off his guard tower. Thankfully, his fall was broken by a jewskin trampoline. The actual cause of death was chronic cirrhosis.

Hey, I hope I didn't offend anyone with that joke. I really love Jewish people. They make great lampshades.

OH NO, HAVE I GONE TOO FAR

As I recall, we had a Make A Bad Joke Worse thread, where every punchline was: "You don't understand: (insert godawful inanity) was the name of my dog!"

The Search function seems to pass over this thread in silence, and it may have gone down the ILX memory hole. We of the Never-Never do not forget so easily.

I did a Google search on this & it yielded "You don't understand -- throwing shoes at president George W. Bush is the name of my dog!", from this thread Iraqi journalist throws shoes at Bush

Should I create a new thread for "(x) is the name of my dog" jokes

That'd be funny if someone named a dog "Ruff Sex." That way you could go on & on at great length about how much you love "Ruff Sex," & then if someone gets freaked out, instant punchline.

http://www.deafdc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/ouroboros.jpg

My parents were building a house, and a subcontractor was putting in heating ducts. I came up to him and said, "wow, you're actually using duct tape on DUCTS, I've never SEEN anything like that before". Blank look.

I thought my screenname "bunniculingus" was like the funniest thing ever for about 3 seconds, unfortunately in that 3 seconds I told everyone about it

one time i was gettin to know this girl and she mentioned that she had scoliosis and i said 'scoly moly' and she gave me the easter island stoneface -_-

i was pretty happy with myself tho

bunniculingus owns btw

Laurel OTM at very top of thread. A friend of mine often says to me re Bible trivia, "I dunno, What do you think? You know that stuff," even though I haven't opened the book since I was 13.

Should I create a new thread for "(x) is the name of my dog" jokes

YES. Of course.

The worst reaction to a joke I ever managed to elicit occurred a couple of years back when I was travelling around Europe with some friends.

The three of us had reached the end of our trip and were due to fly back the next day. We went out for a final meal with our last remaining funds, and I decided to amuse my companions with a shaggy dog story in lieu of other conversation.

This story was known as the White Knight joke and had been told to me by another friend during a long train journey a year or so before. At the time I had found it pretty amusing and good way of killing time.

Basically the White Knight is employed by the King of the realm to recover a priceless artifact that has been stolen from the Palace. In return the King says he will grant the White Knight whatever prize he desires. The teller of the tale then proceeds to narrate the adventures of the White Knight in wearying detail for as long as he can keep it up. After an hour or so, or whenever your audience gets too bored, you wrap up with the punchline: the White Knight returns to the Palace with the recovered artifact; the King asks what he desires as a reward; the White Knights says "Your daughter's hand in marriage"; the King says "What daughter?".

Yep, it is really lame, dumb, Dad joke, that is more irritating than funny, but the amusement is in the telling. And bear in mind this would only be deployed in a situation where you had nothing better to do and had run out of other conversation topics.

So anyway I'm telling this joke. One of my companions finds the whole thing pretty funny and immediately twigs that it is in fact a shaggy dog story that is going to end stupidly. However, the other guy doesn't: after a half hour or so his brows are furrowed in concentration and after an hour he looks like he is getting distinctly pissed off. But I think , what the hell? We've got nothing better to do I will press on.

Eventually I get to the punchline, at which point irritated guy gets incredibly angry, shouts that he "doesn't appreciate being made to feel like an idiot" and basically refuses to talk to me any further. The next day I managed to mollify him somewhat, but after we flew back, he has never spoken to me or met up with me since and that was 4 years ago.

So I actually managed to lose a good (if not close) friend over a dumb joke. During the trip we'd all got on fine apart from the occasional, very minor spate that is inevitable when you are around the same people 24/7 for a couple of months. The power of Dad jokes for evil: a cautionary tale.

Ah, The Red and White Knight with the Black and White Horse (as told in an authentic Lanarkshire accent) is possibly the finest yarn you will ever be spun!

Punchline to the one I was told was - "too late, she's married"...

I still get tumbleweed when I (try to) tell it.

Yeah, I mean, I could have told it better and the first time someone told it to me they did it really well. But, you know, 50% of my audience seemed to be enjoying it and either way, I don't if the punchline really calls for such an extreme reaction :-(. Anyway I don't think I will be attempting it again any time soon...

I get a weird visceral reaction to having been asked to put an emotional investment in something that turns out to be completely pointless - I can't explain it properly, because I can watch movies and TV shows and read books and enjoy a good joke as much as the next person, but a story like that would actually upset me. I wouldn't fall out with someone over it, like, but I would have been upset. That reaction seems a bit OTT.

ailsa, how'd you feel about Pulp Fiction?

Ailsa - I feel the same when I've watched a film or read a book and the conclusion is either botched, doesn't make sense or uses a deus ex machina - the film version of The Beach is the worst for this that I can ever remember, but any Irvine Welsh and (weirdly) Liverpool's victory in Istanbul will do the same for me

I wouldn't get that to the White Knight joke, though - that's an excellent payoff

That is a ridiculous reaction. Jokes like that are told at the expense of the tellee but dude clearly had soh bypass.

A friend of mine has a similar habit of turning even the most basic one-liners into long-winded rambles, strewn with ridiculous obsolete details. As soon as he launches into one I lose my composure and crack up because I know more or less where he's going (i.e. nowhere) and that it's going to take him a LONG time to get there. Usually ends up with anyone less familiar with him and his "technique" looking completely baffled and/or pissed off.

Films and books and actual real comedians are fine! No, it's long stories, people I know asking me to believe in something that is a load of old bollocks, that bother me. Bad and lazy writing annoys me, but this is something different.

xpost

Yep, I can see why someone might be a bit pissed off, and if I ever did tell it again, I would have to be very, very sure of my audience. And I was mortified at the time, because I hate falling out with people and the intention was to kill some time in an amusing way, not make anyone feel stupid. But seriously if you heard someone tell this joke, particularly in the less than pro way that I tell it, it is pretty obvious after about ten minutes that this isn't a "real" joke nor is it intended to "trick" you in any very subtle or effective way, if you are at all familair with the concept of the shaggy dog story. If the guy had told me outright to shut up because he was tired of my yakking then I certainly would have done. But he was a fairly mild mannered guy and although he looked slightly pissed off, young, dumb me didn't think to shut up.

Oh well, you live and learn.

xpost

Can I be clear and point out "that reaction seems a bit OTT" is relating to the reaction of ears are wounds' friend, and not mine, which, while weird, is just my problem and I try not to make it anyone else's - it's not their fault that I have this weird aversion to shaggy-dog stories.

I've got a tangential friend like that too xp. I think it's great, but others can really take that kind of thing badly. I've seen one guy actually physically attack my friend in the street as a result. I guess some people really can't handle fearing the joke's on them

I should also point out that when I say "I get upset", it involves tears and a general feeling of unhappiness that I can't put my finger on, not annoyance and/or violence. I have no problem with a joke being on me, but there is some trigger response that I can't identify a reason for, perhaps your friend has the same thing?

Maybe you could be right. Either that or he had some other underlying issues with me that I was oblivious to, and this joke was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I don't get chap's sweetmeats/cakes one.

I get it

Damn you.

I actually lolled while sitting at my desk over Oilyrags' "crib death" joke above.

There are so many better ways to rectify the shaggy-dog-story hurt than getting pissed. I mean, basically you gave dude license to perform any practical joke he liked on you and you would have been obligated to smile and laugh.

On the other hand, maybe he just used the bad joke as an excuse to end a friendship with a boring obnoxious creep.

A friend of mine has a similar habit of turning even the most basic one-liners into long-winded rambles, strewn with ridiculous obsolete details. As soon as he launches into one I lose my composure and crack up because I know more or less where he's going (i.e. nowhere) and that it's going to take him a LONG time to get there. Usually ends up with anyone less familiar with him and his "technique" looking completely baffled and/or pissed off.

These people are my favorite and I love them.

The one about the penguin who's car breaks down is excellent for that.

I had a professor once make some kind of joke to me, something relating to being biased against fat people. Afterwards, talking about it with some people from the class, I was standing up to get a beer and did a sort of bad-comedian impression, doing that whole collar-tugging schtick and putting on a Rodney Dangerfield voice, and I said: "I don't have a problem with fat people -- you should see the women I date!"

A (very fit and thin!) person I had recently dated stood up and left the bar.

I was totally unable to recover from this, no matter how much I explained that it was, you know, kind of an imitation of that kind of comedian, that it wasn't a joke I was making, that I wouldn't have even made it ironically if I'd thought there were any way anyone would interpret it as being about anyone I'd dated. ... It was an epic disaster of a joke. Completely disastrous.

― nabisco, Monday, August 4, 2008 9:30 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark

This makes me sooooo much not miss college.

^^^delete ""much"^^^^

As for the joke, the one about getting the blood out of the clown suit. You have to be careful who you tell that to.

when I was stoned once I told a 30 minute version of the brick joke

"jokes you make while stoned that are unappreciated" could be its own thread entirely

"jokes you make that are unappreciated while stoned"