Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Terrorist Jokes

I’ve heard very few terrorist jokes since 9/11. I don’t mean that comics and humorists are unwilling to joke about the terrorism; the national funny-bone moratorium ended a couple of months after 9/11, and there’s been plenty of good humor about terrorism since. What I mean is that I’ve heard very few terrorist joke jokes, in the sense of funny stories with punchlines that get passed around mostly by word of mouth, like blonde jokes or lawyer jokes.

But I did hear some terrorist jokes in the late 1970s, during the first wave of Islamic terrorism. I can only remember two of them now. Both of them involved “Aggie terrorists” – you see, I grew up in Texas, and Aggies (Texas A&M students) are the butt of all jokes in Texas. In other parts of the country, it was probably Pollacks, morons, or some other group. What was the first group you heard it took five of to screw in a lightbulb, one to hold the bulb and four to turn the ladder? For me, it was Aggies.

Anyway, here they are. I’m replacing Aggies with morons to achieve more universal appeal:
Q: Did you hear about the moron terrorist who tried to blow up a bus?
A: He burned his lips on the exhaust pipe.

Q: Did you hear about the moron hijacker?
A: Yeah, he tried to hijack a train to Cuba.
Ah, the good old days, when hijackers actually wanted to go somewhere instead of destroy something. It’s almost quaint.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dr. Schlambaugh, a senior lecturer at the Chemical Engineering Department,University of Oklahoma, is known for posing questions on final exams like: "Why do airplanes fly?"

In May a few years ago, the "Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer " exam paper contained the question:

"Is Hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with proof."

Most students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or similar. One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we must postulate that if souls exist, they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls also must have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it does not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for souls entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some religions say that if you
are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than
one of these religions, and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to
Hell. With the birth and death rates what they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change in the volume of Hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of the souls and volume needs to stay constant.

[Answer 1] So, if Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature in Hell willincrease until all Hell breaks loose.

[Answer 2] Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase in souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure
will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate (given to me by Teresa Banyan during freshman year) that "it'll be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and taking into account that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then [Answer 2] cannot be correct;
...... thus, Hell is exothermic.

The student got the only A.

Devex3 said...

Actually, you got the end of that joke wrong, funny videos. It ends :

So which is it? If we accept the postulate (given to me by Teresa Banyan during freshman year) that "it'll be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you". Also, we postulate that God exists. As, when I was having sexual intercourse with Teresa last night, she said "Oh God yes!", we can assume that God exists, and, as I have had sex with her, hell has frozen over. therefore, hell is endothermic.