Recession laughs

A friend sent me the following bits of humour generated by the ongoing recession. It is good to see that some people can still laugh over what is putting creases on so many foreheads. If I am unwittingly infringing on someone’s copyright, do tell me and I’ll take this post off the air:

Ali Baba and the forty thieves are now Ali Baba and thirty thieves. Ten were laid off!

Batman and Robin are now Batman and Pedro. Batman fired Robin and hired Pedro because Pedro was willing to work twice the hours at the same rate!

Iron man is now "air-pooling" with Superman to save fuel costs!

A director decided to award a prize of Rs.1000 for the best idea for saving the company money during the recession. It was won by a young executive who suggested reducing the prize money to Rs. 100.

Women are finally marrying for love....and not money!

The only "deposits" being made on a Ferrari are the ones made by birds flying over them.

Q: With the current market turmoil, what's the easiest way to make a small fortune? A: Start off with a large one.

Q: What's the difference between an investment banker and a large pizza?A: A large pizza can feed a family of four.

Q: Why have Dubai real estate agents stopped looking out of the window in the morning?A: Because otherwise they'd have nothing to do in the afternoon.

Q: What's the difference between an American and a Zimbabwean dollar?A: In a few weeks... nothing.

Q: What's the difference between a bond and a bond trader?A. A bond matures.

Q: Did you hear Goldman Sachs has a new cafeteria?A. It is called the Warren buffet.

The broker told him that he has been sleeping like a baby. "Really?' replied the customer. "Absolutely," said the broker,"I sleep for about an hour, wake up, and then cry for about an hour."

Recession Bumper Sticker: The recession is worse than a divorce. You lose half your fortune and still have your wife.

The Difference between Communism & Capitalism: In communism we nationalise the banks and then push them to bankruptcy. In capitalism we push the banks to bankruptcy and then nationalise them.

A priest, a rabbi, and a mortgage broker were all caught in a shipwreck. Sharks are soon circling around. The sharks eat the priest. The rabbi starts praying fervently, but to no avail, as the sharks eat him as well. The mortgage broker is really getting worried, as a shark is coming for him. But, instead, the shark puts him on its back, carries him to shore, and lets him off. The mortgage broker asks, "How come you didn't eat me too ?" And the shark replies, "Professional Courtesy!"

The laughter of the wise

Genuinely humorous people, you will notice, have the rare ability to laugh at themselves. The reason most people cannot do that is that they take themselves too seriously. That is a common affliction not only of saints and statesmen, but also, I have noticed, of government clerks and schoolteachers, newspaper editors and run-of-the-mill parents! If you instinctively believe (though you might never admit it) that the world revolves – or ought to revolve – around you, you cannot make fun of yourself now and then.

 

Birbal – the fabled courtier, not necessarily the character in history – was supposed to have been one who could pull his own leg sometimes. On one occasion he is supposed to have put Akbar at position number two on his list of the biggest fools in the kingdom (and he gave the emperor satisfactory reason for so doing, seeing that his head didn’t roll, but that is another story), and placed himself right on top of the list: because he was fool enough, he said, to make a career of humouring such a foolish overlord!

 

There have been honorable exceptions among saints, philosophers and statesmen, of course. Some of my greatest heroes are among them. Socrates, who had a shrew of a wife, sagely observed that a man who finds a good wife becomes a householder, a man who is not so lucky has to find solace in philosophy. Abraham Lincoln, when called ‘two-faced’ by a critic in Congress, pointed at his own face and remarked – ‘Look at this mug! If I had another face, would I use this one?’ When someone bowed low before Vivekananda and addressed him as god incarnate, he is supposed to have pointed to his midriff and said ‘You think God has a pot belly?’ And Mahatma Gandhi often had his audience in splits by lampooning himself. When someone asked him if he did not feel ashamed to present himself before the King-Emperor clad only in a short dhoti, he shot back ‘Why? The king was wearing enough for both of us!’

Good stuff!

Click here if you are keen on reading some really fun stuff regarding words and their wonder, a subject of which I am just as fond as this writer is.

My town is blazing and I am reeling in the heat and praying for rains. I don't dare to pray simultaneously for inspiration for some new blogpost here at this point: the gods might get angry at my importunations. So if you are visiting often in search of something new, do please bear with me for a while.

Dennis the loveable 'menace'

I have always been fond of comic strips, and Dennis the Menace has ranked consistently high on my list of favourites. The precocious child is not only always good for a laugh, but again and again a thousand times over he forces you to take a good hard look at yourself – through his own naughtiness and folly, he keeps telling you ‘You are just like me, only maybe too timid, too boneheaded or too lazy to express yourself the way I do!’ And he makes you think that the world might have been a much better place if more of us were as honest and frank and lively and loveable as he is.

One of my perennial favourites is when he asks his mom and finds out that his dad and she and he were born in places far away from one another – ‘Funny how we got together, isn’t it?’ And another where the long-suffering neighbour Mr. Wilson tells his wife ‘What frightens me, Mary, is the thought that that boy could grow up to be the President of the United States!’ And all those numerous occasions when he has given his parents and neighbours and ‘Ol’ Margaret’ and the parish priest and shop attendants red faces or left them gasping at his careless insouciance. As I saw in the strip in my newspaper this morning: A couple have come visiting, and he takes one look at the lady’s skirt and exclaims ‘Hey Dad! I thought you said she wears the pants in this family?’

If you cannot laugh with Dennis, you are a bore. If you dismiss him as merely a child, you are a very shallow person. And if you merely laugh and do not take a few moments off to ponder, well, God probably didn’t give you much of a brain…