Tee Hee-mail

The other day, while checking my cyber-post, I came across a document in your inbox. Dan Fielder investigates the rise and rise of email humour. entitled '11 Reasons Why Email is Like a Penis'. It was a mildly amusing text, but on reflection the really funny thing was that I didn't even bat an eyelid that someone should send me something with such a name.

As the seventh of those 11 reasons puts it: 'In the long distant past, email's only purpose was to transmit information vital to the species.

Some people still think that's the only thing it should be used for, but most folks today use it for fun most of the time. Nowadays we mostly use email to exchange gossip and gags, anecdotes and apocrypha, personality tests and porno screen saves.'

Which, when you think about it, is all too true. It's a way of skiving behind the boss' back, of passing the time, of harmlessly flirting. Any work-related messages tend to be a disagreeable distraction. It makes you wonder what we ever did before email arrived - pull crackers all day long?

And as with cracker jokes, you have to wade through a great deal of sludge to come up with the gems. But every now and then, the wading is worth it. As, hopefully, this personal selection of cyber-humour will demonstrate.

Not surprisingly, one of the biggest sources of material is office culture itself and, in particular, the follies of our superiors. The following items, for instance, are taken from a sardonic list entitled, 'Tips from junior employees to senior managers on how to enhance the relationship':

Never give me work in the morning. Always wait until 5:00pm and then bring it to me. The challenge of a deadline is refreshing.

Tell me all your little problems. No one else has any and it's nice to know someone who is less fortunate.

Or try these, all of which are apparently genuine pronouncements from real-life management briefs:

What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.

We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.

This (memo) is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above.

Goodness. It's enough to make you do the sensible thing and just bunk off for the day. You'll need an original excuse, of course. Try one of these:

I won't be coming in. The voices told me to clean all the guns today.

I took two Ex-Lax in addition to my Prozac. I can't get off the john, but I feel good about it.

My stigmata's acting up.

I am converting my calendar from Julian to Gregorian.

I prefer to remain an enigma.

Office work tends to have a homogenising effect on the sexes. After all, it's a well-known fact that you could do the jobs of all your superiors - male or female - twice as well as they do. Which may be why there's so much cyber-humour out there seeking to remind us of the differences between men and women. Most of it crude and unoriginal, and so quite funny:

Q: Why did the man cross the road?

A: He heard the chicken was a slut.

Q: Why don't men often show their true feelings?

A: Because they don't have any.

See? Charmless but effective. Basically, as you doubtless already know, men are sex-obsessed, immature, poor performers in the sack who refuse ever to ask for directions. Women, on the other hand, can't stop talking, are addicted to shopping, will do anything to get what they want and take up all the space in the bathroom cabinet. I have to say the anti-bloke gags tend to be the funnier, particularly the burgeoning sub-genre of put-downs. This one comes from a valuable document known as 'Top 10 rejection lines given by women, and what they actually mean':

'I think of you as a brother,' = You remind me of that inbred banjo geek in Deliverance.

And this one is more subtle in its cruelty (well, slightly):

A bloke walks into a supermarket and buys: one tin of beans; one bag of crisps; one packet of burgers; one tub of ice cream; one cake; one yoghurt; one pint of milk. He takes them over to the checkout, where the girl asks him if he is single. The bloke says sarcastically, 'Yes, however did you guess?' The girl replies: Because you'e so ugly.'

But just to prove it's not all one-way traffic, here's the opening to a memo addressed to one 'Bob in Tech Support':

'I'm running the latest version of GirlFriend and I've been having some problems. I've been running the same version of DrinkingBuddies 1.0 forever, as my primary application, and all the GirlFriend releases I've tried have conflicted with it. I hear that DrinkingBuddies won't crash if GirlFriend is run in background mode and the sound is turned off.

But I'm embarrassed to say I can't find the switch.

I just run them separately, and it works okay. GirlFriend also seems to have a problem co-existing with my Leisure 3.1 and QuietTime programs, often trying to abort them with some sort of timing incompatibility ...'

There's a great deal of stuff like this out there, in fact, with people wondering what programs would be like if they were beers, or developing scenarios comparing the behaviour of rival programmers lining up at the urinal. My favourite was supposedly penned by a General Motors exec in response to a remark by Bill Gates. 'If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has,' Gates allegedly said, 'we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.' GM's stinging rebuttal imagined what cars would be like 'if GM had developed technology like Microsoft':

For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.

Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent of the roads.

Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

Such lists, in fact, are the basic currency of electronic wit. In only the last week, I've received:

10 things you don't want to hear at a tattoo parlour, eg 'The flag's all done and, you know, the folds of fat make a nice waving effect';

Top 10 sexually suggestive lines From Star Wars, eg 'That's OK, I'd like to keep it on manual control for a while,' (Luke Skywalker); and

45 things you wouldn't know without the movies, which reminds us that: 'The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. No-one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building you want without difficulty'; and: 'Television news bulletins always contain a story that affects you personally'.

But perhaps the best things are those that come from real life, or at least claim to. Like most of this stuff, I make no claims for authenticity.

But I'd like to think that following really are what they claim to be - 'Questions actually asked of witnesses by attorneys during trials', as supplied by the Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers' Journal:

Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?

A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

And:

Q: What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke that morning?

A: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"

Q: And why did that upset you?

A: My name is Susan.

And:

Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

A: No.

Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

And finally:

Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in the voodoo or occult?

A: We both do.

Q: Voodoo?

A: We do.

Q: You do?

A: Yes, voodoo.

That last one seems too good to be troodoo. Something else that's apparently authentic is this extract from a US High School assignment where students were asked to translate lyrics from Notorious BIG's rap album, Ready to Die, into what it calls 'standard English'. This verse is about the only one we can print here:

'And my jam knock in the Mitsubishi

Girls pee pee when they see me, Nava-hoes creep me in they tee pee

As I lay down laws like I lay carpet

Stop it - if you think your gonna make a profit.'

Translation:

'I enjoy playing my music loudly on my car stereo. Apparently, women enjoy this also because they become sexually aroused when they see me driving. Oddly enough, when I visit the Native American reservations, some of the more sexually promiscuous Indian women attempt to seduce me in their homes. Their intent is to divest me of my earnings. Such actions are unacceptable.'

So there you have it. From next month, we're launching a regular column in which we'll highlight the month's very best e-mail funnies. Send your jewels to me at dfielder@bogo.co.uk (text files only, please). You'll know them when you see them. As the 'Cowboy's Guide to Life' reminds us: 'It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.'

WHAT'S THE PUNCHLINE?

Much email humour is unprintable here in our 'family' magazine, but many of you will recognise the email gags that preface these punchlines:

Well did he drop off the 200 bucks he owes me?

It took us 10 years just to find a priest in Heaven! Do you have any idea how long it will take to find a LAWYER?!!

A pumpkin? Damn ... is it midnight already?

Read the card! Read the card!

Yesterday the largest sperm bank in the USA was robbed by an unknown group of people ...

This parrot-shooting's not much better either!

It feels great, but my thumb still hurts like hell.

TOMMY ON THE WEB - HERO OF COMEDY

Tommy Cooper lives on the Web. Here's some of his best stuff.And the back of his anorak was leaping up and down, and people were chucking money to him. I said, "Do you earn a living doing that?" He said: "Yes, this is my livelihood".

So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me: "Can you give me a lift?" I said, "Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it".

So I rang up a local building firm. I said: "I want a skip outside my house." He said: "I'm not stopping you".

Comic relief Here's an extract from something called 'the urinal test', which seeks to add mystique to that notoriously men-only zone. Imagine the following is a standard urinal with six places, the Xs indicating the ones that are occupied. Thus, - - - x - - - x - - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - indicates that urinals 3 and 6 are occupied. Your job is to guess where to stand, according to the unspoken etiquette of the urinal, when faced with the following combination: - - x - - x - - - - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - (Urinals 2 and 4 occupied.)

The answer: Urinal 6. It's the ONLY one to go to and every guy instinctively knows this. Here's a trickier one: - - x - - x - - x - - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - (Urinals 2, 4 and 6 occupied)

Guys? Correct answer: 1. You're stuck being next to at least ONE guy, so you minimise the impact and get a wall on your left. NEVER go between TWO guys if you can help it. Exceptions to this are stadium restrooms, where the herd thunders in.

In other words, blokes prefer not to stand next to each other when relieving themselves. Still, fun while it lasted and only on email - does anyone do any work any more?

E-mail overkill We don't need no more ...

Clinton jokes Ally McBeal screen-saves 'Englishman, Irishman, Mexican' jokes

LISTS OF ANAGRAMS*

Personality tests that ask you three silly questions and then claim to be able to sum up where you stand on love, career, marriage, morality etc

Lists of curious facts eg 'butterflies smell with their feet' etc * But did you know that 'To be or not to be: that is the question, whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' is an anagram of 'In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten'? Oh. You did.

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