2500 Jokes to Start 'Em Laughing (7 page)

I'll say one thing for this town: It has a very religious Sanitation Department. They only take up a collection once a week.

I don't ask for much out of life. I just want to live in a city where the garbage is collected at least as often as the taxes.

Yesterday the head of our Highway Department said he's very aware of the condition of our streets. In fact, he was personally going right out to fill eighteen holes. Then he picked up his golf clubs and left.

Life is so unfair. If you come across on the
Mayflower,
you're honored. If you come across on Forty-seventh Street, you're arrested.

I stepped out of my hotel and right away I met a girl who was mentioned three times in one of the greatest war songs every written: “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching!”

I won't say what some of these girls look like, but if someone puts an arm around you—you hope it's a mugger!

I've found that cleanliness is next to godliness—but in a six-year-old, it's next to impossible.

It's very discouraging. We have a six-year-old and the only four-letter word he doesn't know is “soap”!

I mean, it's one thing to be dirty but this kid has a belly button you could grow mushrooms in!

When he says he can't hear too well, we don't take him to an ear doctor. Roto-Rooter!

There's no question about it, we have a problem. You can tell that by the three different kinds of soap we have in our bathroom—Lux for my wife, Dial for me, and Brillo for him!

Have you ever tried to give a six-year-old a bath? Sometimes I think the dirt is tattooed on!

And there are always telltale little signs when your kid isn't taking enough baths. Like, he has the only bathrobe in town that gets dirty from the inside.

We try to bribe him to take baths. One time we got him three toy boats. I won't say what the water looked like when he was through, but two of them went aground!

They gave an aptitude test in school and it really worries us. Sixteen kids were best suited to be a doctor. Twelve kids were best suited to be a lawyer. Eight kids were best suited to be an accountant. And he was best suited to be a swamp!

You know how some parents pin a kid's mittens to his coat? We also pin something to his coat—Airwick!

Unfortunately, the kid has answers. One time I said, “Why can't you be like Daddy and wash all that nasty dirt off your face?” He said, “I'd rather be like Mommy and cover it up with powder!”

The greatest problem facing the American family today can be summed up in six words: Ovens are self-cleaning and kids aren't!

Kids really stick together. If you took a bath once a month, you'd be a little gummy too!

I have one favor to ask. For the last three weeks I've been practicing this speech in front of my dog. So if you want to make me feel at home, when I get to the finish, please don't applaud. Just bark!

In conclusion, let's all join together in singing the last stanza of: “I'll Never Forget Sally Standing Aghast, As Her Panty Hose Slowly Sank to Half-mast!”

I have to be going now. I placed an order for twenty dollars' worth of groceries and I want to be home when they slip it under the door.

And so, in closing, let me leave you with three phrases that, more
than any others, sum up the spirit of the Christmas season:
PEACE ON EARTH, GOODWILL TO ALL MEN, AND BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED
!

And so in closing, let me leave you with the words of that famous horticulturist Luther Burbank, who said: “Never look down on a lily. Tomorrow that lily may be looking down on you!”

I leave you with this thought:
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR.
But remember to draw the blinds first.

CONVENTION CLOSING:
And so, as we head home with faith in our hearts, information in our minds, bills in our pockets, and towels in our luggage …

ADJOURNMENT:
And now, in the immortal words of Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer: “Let's get the hell out of here!”

There's so much trouble in the world. Yesterday a five-year-old kid was in a department store with his mother and she said, “Hang on to my skirt.” The kid got a hernia from reaching.

Everybody likes to put on airs. I have an uncle who introduces himself as a man of the cloth. Big deal—he's a tailor!

I go to one of those neighborhood clothing stores that has an answer for everything. If you like a suit that's half a size too large, they don't alter it. They buy you two pizzas and a malted!

Everything you buy today is imported. Look at this shirt. You know what the washing instructions were? “First—find a flat rock!”

I had a forty-two-dollar suit made in Hong Kong and it's just great—once you get used to the diagonal zipper.

Forty-two dollars and it's custom-tailored. I custom every time I wear it.

I like that suit. Who's your tailor—Dear Shabby?

Our daughter is learning dressmaking. Last week she cut out a dress pattern on the floor. She wound up with two dresses. One silk and one broadloom.

My daughter had a very embarrassing experience Saturday night. She went to a party and someone else was wearing the very same outfit she was—her date.

More and more we're beginning to look like the civilization of ancient Egypt. You can't tell the daddies from the mummies.

I'm not going to say anything about the way kids look these days. Bum's the word!

I saw a kid going to school this morning wearing an undershirt, blue jeans, no socks, and no shoes. My mother wouldn't have let me leave the house like that if it was on fire!

I just figured out why so many kids wear sandals.

So they can count up to twenty.

My wife has one pantsuit with big brass buttons down the front, and every night I have this same nightmare—that I'm arrested for molesting a cop!

My wife wears support stockings that are so good, she's the only woman I know who can faint standing up!

Girls, every time you get a run in one leg of your panty hose, cut off the leg with the run in it and save the panty hose. Eventually, you will have a set of panty hose with one good right leg and another set with one good left leg. Put them both on, one over the other, and you'll have a perfectly good pair of panty hose! It's efficient; it's economical; and it confuses the hell out of sex maniacs!

My wife has one outfit that's so sexy we can only send it to a mature dry cleaner.

I complain about kids a lot, but when my oldest son leaves for college in the fall, he'll leave an emptiness behind him. It'll be in our savings account.

Behind every kid who completes four years of college there stand two parents who are also graduating—magna cum bankrupt.

It's $115 a credit and that doesn't include books. Do you know that some college books cost as much as $25? The last time I paid $25 for a book, I had to worry about Customs finding it!

Last week he brought home a new textbook. It has a wonderful title:
Proper English for You and I.

Nowadays there is only one sure way to get a decent high school education—go to college!

My son is a senior in college. I don't know what they're teaching him, but yesterday we were all sitting around the dinner table. My wife turns to me and says, “I sure hope he G-R-A-D-U-A-T-E-S!”

I don't want to start any trouble, but have you noticed what kids are handed during their graduation ceremony? Dummy diplomas!

I heard two parents talking and one said, “My son took eight years to go through college. He's a D.D.” The other parent said, “A doctor of divinity?” He said, “No. A dum-dum!”

And I just got a phone call from my daughter: “What's that? You're calling from college and you're pregnant. How did that happen? He told you it was perfectly safe. Why was it perfectly safe? 'Cause the stork flies South for the winter.”

Kids study psychology to learn about anger, hostility, rejection, indifference, and all the other things their parents have learned from
them.

I'm really worried about the lowering of standards in American education. I can remember when if a high school student wanted to go to college, the admitting office would take his qualifications. Now they take his pulse.

Today, to get into a good college you have to satisfy its SAT requirements. If you SAT in a high school for four years, you're in!

They're letting kids into college who don't even know how to write. For instance, they admitted one girl because she made straight A's. The B's she got a little crooked.

You can tell the colleges are lowering their standards. One kid took an aptitude test and he was stuck on the very first question. It said: “
NAME
?”

It kinda shakes you up to ask a senior the time and he says, “Wait a minute. I'll look at my ticktock.”

Did you hear about the speech major who was rejected by the college of her cherce?

My daughter picked a wonderful college to go to. It's in Massachusetts just a little outside of our budget.

She went about picking the school in a very serious way. She got this big fat book listing all the schools. She studied it. She wrote to twenty-three different colleges; applied to eight of them; visited five of them; and finally chose the one school that offered her the most of what she was interested in—boys.

My daughter went to one of those progressive colleges. She picked her own subjects, her own books, her own teachers, she never took any tests, and today she's living in a $90,000 house! Mine—who'll give her a job?

We can all profit by mistakes—particularly if our competition makes enough of them.

Our competition makes so many mistakes, there are three baskets on every desk:
IN, OUT
, and
OOOPS
!

I happen to know that my competitor's secretary loves to go to the racetrack and sit in front of the starting gate. It's the only chance she gets to see a horse's front!

I had a wonderful thing happen today. A cop was chasing a pickpocket, yelling, “Stop, thief!” And three of my competitors turned around.

I'll say one thing for our competitors: They know a good thing when they see it. That's why they're always writing for our catalog.

No, I'm only kidding. We have very fine upstanding competitors. The reason they're upstanding is they just had their furniture repossessed.

I think the boss is trying to replace me.

He's looking for a computer that grovels.

What this world really needs is something to put human beings back in the running again. Like a dumb computer!

I'll tell you how human machines have become. I know an electronic brain that only thinks of one thing—naked computers!

Then there's the girl who went to a computer dating service and said, “I want to meet somebody who's six feet six, strong, fears no one, and who'll bite me on the ear.” So they introduced her to an alligator.

Conservationists are people who pour trouble on oiled waters!

There are three reasons for being a conservationist.

(1) You will help prevent the destruction of the world as you know it.

(2) You will save hundreds of endangered species from extermination. And

(3) You'll finally have a reason not to buy your wife a fur coat.

At the last count 180 million trees have been cut down to provide paper for books that warn us about wasting our natural resources.

We have some of the most beautiful wilderness areas in the world. Unfortunately the people who dig them the most have bulldozers.

If we keep wasting our natural resources, 1984 will be something like this: A family gets up early in the morning and the father says,
“June 24th! Isn't it great? Our day to go up to the Berkshires and look at the tree.”

I'll get enthused about recycled paper when they can make trees out of it.

The ecologists want us to return our empties to the supermarket. I brought back six beer bottles and my wallet.

Have you noticed how, no matter where you go, you can't get away from empty beer cans? Some people think the world is going to end with a bang. Some people think it's going to end with a whimper. I think it's going to end with a burp!

Just look at what we're doing to the environment. I can remember when we
TIPTOED THROUGH THE TULIPS. NOW
we
FLITTER THROUGH THE LITTER
!

Recycling is when you use the same thing over and over again. In television it's jokes.

If you think “recycle” is a fancy word, I just met a textile reclamation engineer. He's a ragpicker!

Misery is spending $350,000 to bring out a brand-new product and your first customer is Ralph Nader.

You know how Ralph Nader is always investigating things that can hurt you? I just sent him a copy of my income tax return!

You have to give Ralph Nader credit for dedication.

Yesterday I saw him buying a Five Day Deodorant Pad and a calendar.

I'll tell you what kind of a world we're living in. I just saw a lifetime pen that's guaranteed for three months!

I just found out what they mean by
POPULAR MECHANICS.
They're the ones whose bills match their estimates!

I love to read
Popular Mechanics.
It's one of the few magazines you can buy where if you see something that's stripped, it's gears!

Business shows are all alike—you big-mouth your prospects and poor-mouth your suppliers.

I just came from one of those warm, friendly, cooperative conventions that feature give and take. Everybody was trying to give discounts and take customers.

They're playing a wonderful new game at this convention. It's called salesman's roulette. You sell a huge order to one of six firms. Five are going into textiles [
ADAPT TO YOUR FIELD
] and one is going into Chapter Eleven.