Jokes

Thanks to Alex and the Goatlord I’ve not had to write any jokes in ages. Perhaps I’m even getting out of practice. Perhaps I’m simply recharging for something great down the line.

One of this things that’s always interested me about jokes is that they tend to be better enjoyed when there’s very specific information in them. When you read a joke that’s specific to you, you gain a sort of recognisability aspect and you get a little ’boost’ from knowing that information that you worked to get has allowed you this obvious pleasure.

Scott Adams talks about it in his book ’Joy of Work’. He’s also mentioned it on his blog, which is always a very good read.

I read a joke that was posted by rspeed on digg.com in relation to IE7 coming out. It was very specifically targeted at me and it may give you some indications as to what my job is to see it. It goes,..

IE7’s support for internet standards from the perspective of anthropomorphized rendering engines. Apologies to John Gruber.

IE7: Hey guys, did you see that my beta supports CSS2!?
Gekko: Pff... I did that years ago.
KHTML: Oh hey... that reminds me. I’m kinda new in town, can you guys tell me how to use this CSS3 stuff I got?
Gekko: Woah, where’d you get that!?
KHTML: Eh. My buddy Safari made it the other day. Why?
Gekko: Aw man, that’s so cool! I’m gonna do that!
KHTML: K!!
IE7: CSS3? Is that like :hover? I have that!
Gekko and KHTML: *roll eyes*
IE7: Hey, did you guys see my alpha-layered PNGs? Isn’t that cool!? Guys?

My response to that is,..
LOL