Joke thread

There was a German family once, two parents and their young son. Although the son was nearly four years old, he had never once spoken a word; indeed, he hardly made noise around the house at all, save for crying or bawling to show his displeasure, as infants often do. Naturally, this caused no small amount of grief and distress for his parents, who were concerned that there was something terribly wrong with their son. They took him to multiple psychiatrists and counselors, but none ever had any conclusive statement; most even said the boy was completely fine.

So, the mother, in an effort to get her son to speak, would feed him soup every night, and as she did so, she would talk to him, trying to get him to join in on the conversation. She would talk about their family, the news, the weather, anything that was going on in their lives, anything at all, to get her son to talk. This went on for years and years, with no visible change.

One night, however, during such a supper, the boy suddenly stopped his mother and said in a matter-of-fact voice: "Mother, the soup is cold."

His mother was understandably overwhelmed, embracing her son eagerly, sobbing, demanding to know, "Why? Why? Why have you never spoken all this time? Your father and I were so worried! Why have you only decided to speak now?"

The son simply replied, "Until now, the soup had been satisfactory."

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as Euro English (Euro for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c." Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik emthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like fotograf" 20 persent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by " v".

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

Ze drem vil finali kum tru!

There was a space mission with a crew consisting of an astronaut and a chimpanzee. After their capsule had reaches orbit, the radio crackles to life: "Mission control, mission control, mission control to chimpanzee: Unfasten seatbelt and execute Mission Protocol 68-A." The chimp clicks his seatbelt open, floats across the capsule and types some commands into a bank of computers. The lights in the capsule come on and the maneuvering thrusters fire to point it towards earth.

The radio comes on again: "Mission control, mission control, mission control to chimpanzee: Showing your position correctly, execute Mission Protocol 68-B." The chimp types in some more commands and the capsule's solar sails unfold.

Again, the radio: "Mission control, mission control, mission control to astronaut: Unfasten seatbelt and execute Mission Protocol 68-C. Fee-" "I KNOW, I KNOW!", the astronaut shouts, "Feed the chimp, clean the capsule and don't touch any buttons!"

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are camping. Holmes wakes in the middle of the night, and nudges his companion. "Watson. What do the stars tell you?"

A groggy Watson blinks up at the night sky, and thinking back to his military training, says, "Well, from the position of Venus I determine it's around three o'clock in the morning; from the clouds approaching slowly from the south I assume we'll have a rainstorm about midday; Sirius tells me that, as we know, it's early August; and philosophically, the stars tell me that I am insignificant in comparison with the wonders of the universe as a whole.

Why, Holmes? What do they tell you?"

The great detective is silent for a long moment. Then...

"Watson, you tit. Someone has stolen our tent."