POOR JOKE!!

Well this post is dedicated to the plethora of poor jokes which when cracked draw boo’s from crowd and are looked down upon as indicative of poor sense of humour. Well I was thinking about all the poor jokes that I have heard till now and had some interesting observations about the types of poor jokes.

1. I prefer to call these open-ended PJ’s. Well here you actually have a situation, may sound real/hypothetical, but then you have to hit upon a particular proverb/name/movie/ song lyrics that may satisfy the situation. It’s like searching a pin in a haystack. Some of the typical situations are below.

a) Most often the PJ’s are a variation/twisting of the song lyrics or movie names. To guess the real meaning you have to decode the situation and then fit it in a known song/movie name/proverb. A teaser:

The Maratha Regiment was fighting hard on the border against theenemies....They had to cross the border to capture the enemybase....but no one was able to cross the border and go across. fearing death .Just then Hawaldar Pawan Kumar Jhonke ...got up and crossed the border and nothing happened to him. Why??
Kyon ki Panchi Nadiya PAWAN K JHONKE... Koi sarhad na inhe roke..



b) Sometimes the PJs are based on real tangible common things around you and can be so open-ended that you have to run your mind wild before settling on something. Sometimes you may not be even impressed with the answers. A teaser (this is one of the original by a friend of mine):

Who is the most wella (one who has no work at all) man in the world?
You may think and argue that it’s a software engineer, politicians but here is something smarter- The man sitting outside McDonalds!!!



c) Sometimes the PJ’s are variations (either pronunciation or spelling or may be even additions) of something that has been previously said and are again debated for funny rating. A teaser (again a real one from my friend. The answer was given by me although in a slightly different context):

Q. What do you call someone who is drunk and has been made fool of ?
A. P. K. Kataria
Q. His wife is fooled when she’s not drunk. What’s her name?
A. Beena. That way her full name is Mrs. Beena P. K. Kataria




2. I somehow find in case of open-ended PJ’s, there can be too many answers to these, smart or stupid, might depending on the person to person but some are closed-ended ones where you might have a situation and you may be typically asked, why, how. They may be mathematical or scientific principles twisted to a joke. I have seen very less of these jokes. A teaser:

Q. What is PJ?
A. Poor Joke
Q. What is P+iJ?
A. Complex Poor Joke
Q. But it does not funny and always demonstrates that there is still poverty despite governments’ claims.
A. Because joke is the imaginary part and poor is the real part.



3. The real poor jokes as I would like to call them are the ones totally unrelated stuff or like those thriller movies like Bluffmaster, been there and done that and then ended with a I-am-smart-enough-to-plot-that kind of note. It’s these PJs which are real turn-offs. A teaser:
What is RED and goes TRING TRING TRING ????
A TOMATO....... AND THE TRING TRING TRING WAS TO CONFUSE YOU......

Well sometimes the PJs might fall in more than one of the above categories. For example, what would Dharmendra say to Hema Malini if he wants to tell her to call him up? Well, Ring De Basanti. It’s a mixture you can say of the two categories 1 and 3. A particular reaction to a PJ is purely individualistic, that is understandable, but I think they deserve more recognition than what they currently receive.
Well I was saying that most often they don’t draw cheers from the crowd but I really think that they are a kind of witty jokes somewhat “thinking out of the box”. Isn’t that a good part of the joke. Very often I have seen these PJs come back as brain teasers (and sometimes as Sardar Jokes too!!) which is actually a better part of PJs. For example: explain in one sentence this representation:
0
B.Tech.
Ph.D.

You will really appreciate the answer and although you may argue against it, it has slight element of brain teasing element in it. Well the answer is: 2 degrees below zero. And if you think you’ve got the hang of it try these:
1) /r/e/a/d/i/n/g/
2) TE (EXAM) RM
3) R A E G
The motive is not to give some brain teasers here but to draw an analogy between brain teasers and PJ’s (those which are not from category 5). In normal social friendly conversation one can’t be discussing a brain teaser all the time so why not PJ’s. And if you still didn’t get the answers to above, first learn to appreciate PJ’s ( and secondly here are the answers.
1) Reading between the lines
2) Mid Term Exam
3) Reverse Gear

And to see how these brain teasers can be used in normal conversations, well have a look at the picture here to see what it really means. I leave it on you to decide which category this PJ falls in!