johninnit

When I lived in Germany, I bought this slim volume of side-by-side translations of English jokes, explaining them and their underlying principles to curious Germans. The main lessons I think were that the English were fond of puns and mean to the Irish. This piece of comedy Eirophobia in particular stuck with me…

An Irishman was working on the railroad when he heard a train coming along the track he was fixing. In panic, he jumped up and started sprinting down the track as fast as he could go, but he’d only managed a hundred yards when it caught up and ran him over. When he came to in hospital, the foreman asked him “Paddy, why didn’t you just run up the side of the track?”, to which he replied “Don’t be silly. If I couldn’t beat it on the level, what chance would I have had going uphill?”

Political correctness luckily means Irish jokes are now less vogueish than when I was a yoof, so how surprised was I to see the self same joke in today’s Guardian? (more…)

Last to the party, I know, but I only just stumbled upon Google’s neat-o search stories video maker. It binds together a sort series of searches and answers to make a YouTube vid for you. Very nicely done, and much worth 5 mins fiddle if you’re bored and don’t mind doing Google’s marketing team’s job for them. Here’s my effort.