Marilyn's Photos - Oct 17 2025 - Jokes from Before
I had a thought about how many jokes there might be. AI didn’t pop up with an answer at all. In fact, google didn’t retrieve very much. Given there are so many jokes on the internet on so many subjects, it seems unusual. AI didn’t retrieve very much at all, as though humour, wit and jokes are not very interesting to talk about, only interesting to experience.
I decided to start at the beginning - the first book of jokes. The Philogelos dates to the 4th or 5th century CE and is a Greek collection of 265 jokes. The title translates into “the joker” or “the one who loves laughter”.
I found a site HERE with a number of the book’s jokes reproduced in Greek, trasnlated into English and then interpreted in comic strip format. So many thousands of years between us and our humour stays constant.
Joke 22
An idiot bumps into a friend and says, 'I heard you had died!'
“Well, as you can see,' replies the friend, 'I'm quite alive.'
'But the guy who told me is so much more trustworthy than you.'
Joke 43
People tell a young idiot that his beard is coming in, so he goes to the front gate to welcome it. When his friend realizes what he's doing, he says, 'No wonder people think we're idiots -- how do you know your beard isn't coming through the back gate?'
Joke 154
At a dignitary's funeral in Kyme, someone goes up to the officials and asks, 'Who's the dead guy?'
One of the Kymaeans turns around and points. "The one lying in the coffin.'
Joke 160
A Kymaean goes to visit a friend and stands out- side his house shouting for him. A neighbour sticks his head out of the window and says, 'Shout louder -- then he'll hear you.' So the Kymaean yells out, 'Hey! Louder!'
i found some shipping container storage units in a Belleville park when we were there. It made me wonder why they are painted different colours. Do the colours have meaning in terms of the contents? I found one article on storage units where light blue is used for hazardous. This seemed appropriate to find this very moody blue with these letters. Ode to Xi could be the name of the collection. Here is the original and a collage image.
No comments:
Post a Comment