Saturday, August 26, 2006

From Killing Joke to Killer Joke …

Someone put me on to a band I used to listen to ages ago namely Killing Joke. To refresh my memory I (of course) went to Wikipedia. As then always happens, Wikipedia led me on to other things … The band name ‘Killing Joke’ is derived from this Monthy Python sketch called “The Funniest Joke in the World”. The premises of this, so incredibly funny joke, is fatal hilarity. The fatality of the joke being, whoever reads it will die from laughter.

The story reads as follows: Ernest Scribbler, a struggling writer, creates the funniest joke in the world. Having done this he dies laughing. The paper on which the joke is written is then found by his mother, whom imagining it being a suicide note reads it, and of course dies laughing.

Attempts are then made by others to read the joke. For example is very sombre music used as an aid.

The British army eventually gets hold of the joke and decides to use it in it’s warfare against the Germans. The lethality of the joke makes for extreme carefulness, of course, while translating it. The translators are thereby only allowed to translate one word at a time. A translator who accidentally reads two words at one time is hospitalised for weeks.

The fate of the joke is, to at the end of the war, be buried under a monument bearing the inscription: “To the Unknown Joke”



World's Funniest Joke

No comments: