Category: jokes

Normal blogging will shortly resume, but in the meantime…

on gingerbread my little boy says: ‘I like the bread, but not the ginger’

and on peppermint: ‘I like the mint, but not the pepper’

ps I am shamelessly fishing for the punchline to a joke which I know is there, but just won’t be written by my brain…so be warned: any comments on this thread – especially the witty ones which give me a punchline to the above half a joke – may be incorporated into my next routine (unless of course you don’t want it to be – I’m shameless, but I’m not completely without morals).

It’s never my fault


soapOriginally uploaded by adelaide writer

On Saturday night, I tanked. I was on stage under a spotlight, with a microphone in my hand AND I FORGOT WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY. Which would have been fine, except that one minute later I DID IT AGAIN. Total, complete blank.

It worked out fine in the end. Because I made a different joke about how things weren’t going so well and that went okay.

And in the greater scheme of things it was the lesson I had to have, and once I’d had it, I realised it really wasn’t that bad. Everyone at some point is going to draw a blank. It was a friendly crowd, and they could see the funny side. And I’ve got enough confidence now that I’m not petrified of the audience. And I’ve also got a bit (a tiny, tiny bit) of backup material, so I could have gone to that if all else failed. Plus, now it’s happened, I’ve got a context for writing my ‘this has gone to shit, hasn’t it’ lines. So I was all around much less devastated than I could otherwise have been. And I got back to the funny part of my routine and ended on a high note. And I have, since, listened to my tape of the night. Yes, it was cringeworthy, but you know. Life goes on.

Nonetheless, I stopped at the bottle shop on the way home. I can’t tell you how badly that just went I said to the mister when I walked in the door, my arms loaded with a selection of beer and wine because I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to drink. Oh, he said I think I can guess. And then I drank more than I should have when you consider that we had to get up at 6 am to be on the road by 7 in order to be at Loxton by 11. And don’t you wish you knew more about that little adventure? And don’t I wish I knew less. Suffice to say, I am an excellent wife.

Anyhoo, after I had drunk too much and was in the bathroom cleaning my teeth, I happened to see this box. The one holding the soap which I had hastily pulled from the supermarket shelves that very afternoon. This is not the soap I normally use. I normally use this body wash thing which, for reasons too boring but numerous to mention here, had run out but not been replaced on Saturday morning.

Do you see what it says? Down there on the bottom? Non-Comedogenic. Have you ever heard of that? No, neither had I.

No wonder I tanked. All my jokes had been washed down the drain.

PS I tried taking a photo of my box, but my camera has been dropped one too many times and the focus button really doesn’t work well enough. So I got this one from here.

A happy tale of woe

The printer, once turned on, makes a soft, but annoying, whining sound and nothing more. No lights, no whirrs, no beeps. I have unplugged it, shifted it, hit it with varying degrees of gentleness, but all to no avail. It’s stuffed.

This limits my choice of readings to those pieces of which I have a clean and readable copy. This simplifies things to the point that I don’t have to think, and I do often like it when life works that way. When the universe says here is how it is. Hopefully, the Easter shopping will be dealt with similarly. Unlikely, I know, so I have started the shopping list.

Of course when I take the printer to the shop, they will say it’s cheaper to buy another one although I am very happy with this one, and at this stage, can’t really justify buying myself another one which also does photocopying.

In the meantime, I have been flicking through a photo album with a man who sighs and says ‘more forgetteries than memories these days’. And then he laughs and so do I, because we both like our own jokes.

How funny is that?

Guess what? I was the runner up! Second funniest new comedian in the state as judged in a competition.

The mister reckons I was a bit unlucky, and should have won, and so does my dad. It was probably the best I’ve ever performed, but I don’t feel unlucky or ripped off. I feel myself surprisingly genuinely pleased for the bloke who won, and not at all jealous of him. This pleases me, because that – a tendency to jealousise – is the personality flaw which I am currently trying to soften. Anyway, I thought I was going to be third, which was always going to have to be a kind of ‘moral victory’, because they don’t tell you who came third.

I’m stoked. People really did think I was funny, and they all laughed and afterwards people were saying ‘congratulations, you were great, you really made me laugh’. How cool is that?

One day, I will write a compare and contrast post about being a raw bridesmaid and being an unpublished manuscript one (the link within that link doesn’t work, sorry, but it used to be a good one). But for now, I’ve got a bit of grandfather care to be done, and maybe one day I’ll be able to make jokes about that, but right now it’s a bit too hard.

Thanks for the good luck wishes all.

About last night

I forgot to say, if you live in Adelaide, and you haven’t been, you absolutely must go and see Tom Crean Antarctic Explorer. It’s got five stars in this review and in this one MB wrote “You will go to the end of the earth to find theatre this rewarding”. And I reckon that’s about right. Plus, it’s in the Bakehouse Theatre which I really like and which will be having less perfomances in coming times. This would be the point to insert a piece of informed political commentary about the South Australian arts sector and some recent funding decisions, but I’m nothing if not half-informed.

And last night, I got through the semi-finals and into the state grand final of the Raw stand up comedy competition.

When I registered, I had no idea how I would go. Being slightly older than most novice comics (you might not know, but I recently turned 38), I’m not really part of the scene, so I didn’t know who was around or what they were doing. But once I’d won my heat, my personal goal was to make the state finals. I wasn’t going to slash my wrists if I didn’t get through last night, but I would have been disappointed.

Now, much as I’d love to win the trip to Edinburgh (and I guess we’d make it work even if I did take an overseas trip by myself only a small part of which was work, and the mister has not) my realistic assessment of myself is that I am in the second tier of talent. And no, this isn’t just me doing self-preservation. This is me being realistic about where I am right now.I remember that I watched the national final on the tele last year, and even then I wasn’t saying to the mister ‘you know that’s something I’ve always wanted to do, I could do that, do you think I could do that, I should do that, do you think I should do that?’.

So, like I said to my dad and the mister last night ‘I’m happy’. They rolled their eyes and tried to get me to write that down which of course I didn’t. As if I’d commit to long- (or even medium-) term happiness.

Also, yes, the people who said either no or just a small one please to that nightcap were the smart ones.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to clean the car, because late yesterday I discovered that all of those spiderwebs in the mirrors and doors are actually the homes of redbacks.

Pathetic joke

Should you ever find yourself with an inconsolable four year old, and his five year old brother who is not helping the situation one tiny bit, feel free to make use of this joke which I made up about half an hour ago (which doesn’t mean no one else has ever thought of it, just that I have never heard it if they did). Anyhoo, in the aforementioned situation of inconsolable-ness, it is sure to do the trick.

Knock knock

Who’s there?

Pop

Pop who?

Pop off

Is there anything more rewarding than walking down the passage being followed by the belly laughs of two bouncing boys who really should be asleep by now?