Yesterday I had to explain what a light bulb joke is - to somebody from Mongolia – they seem to not have discovered that joke yet or don’t find it funny. The joke in question was already highly on the meta level, that is, the answer was not involving a number at all and only funny if you already heard at least a few of those typical how many to screw in or change a light bulb jokes:
Question: How many Feminists does it need to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: THAT’S NOT FUNNY!
[Actually, it was this one, but then one cannot post it without having to explain how much one is aware of that feminists nowadays are not (at) all like that and yadyyadyyadda. (As a matter of fact, I was active with German feministas about 20 years ago, and you know what, having that experience, I laughed my butt off! And I have black friends, too, you know. ;-) )]
Anyway, the puzzled look on the face of the person from Inner Mongolia left me with the task to quickly come up with a simpler joke, and as my joke memory is non-existent and I did not even remember the historical one about the three Poles, you know, one holding the bulb and two turning the ladder, I was kind of in a bad situation: Come up with a light bulb joke off the cuff. You guessed right; thus put on the spot, all that I came up with is a really bad one about mathematicians. Then I hit the internets.
Anyway, it got me to thinking, as I lay in my always sleepless nights, about how to come up with a light bulb joke. First trials resulted only in utterly boring questions, like
Question: How many security guards does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Only answer to this one is really: Who even cares?
Is there a method to come up with better jokes? “Screw in a light bulb” obviously offers the sex angle, so I chose:
Question: How many sex addicts does it need to screw in a light bulb?
Immediate answer to reach a really low, prepubescent level: 69.
Not funny, not even remotely. What to do? Go on the meta-level, like almost all post-modern extra intellectually pretentious light bulb jokes have to be now in order to be presentable.
Improved, but still dreadful!Question: How many sex addicts are necessary to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: Only one, but he will screw it again and again and again.
Straw-man: He or she will screw it again and again and again!
Sock-puppet: Shut up!
Then it hit me: As a blogger, now as I thought already for three minutes about something, it is high time to make a blog post out of it. This can obviously only happen if the question is:
Question: How many science bloggers does it need to change / screw in a light bulb?
This allows me to ask you all to participate with your suggestions so I can get a rush out of fooling myself to belong to the funny social ones with the bloggy community spirit. Ha ha ha.
I have two terrible entries that you need to beat, which should be easy:
Question: How many science bloggers does it need to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: None!
OK, you hate it. Who really wants to hear the truth so blatantly? Damn Germans.
For the second entry, I cleverly left the 101 level to transcend straight to the meta-meta one, namely not just put a dose of meta into the answer, but put the punch line after the answer, mhuahahah:
Question: How many science bloggers are necessary to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: In my experience, one is totally sufficient.
Comment1: I have not got a PhD or anything, but I do know all about relativity, and whatever you mean by “bulb”, if it is out of pure light, I know for sure that it cannot possibly be screwed, because it goes with light velocity already, and if you screwed it, it would go with faster than light then on the right side, and so if you screwed it, it would go backwards in time and so unscrew itself [see my sticky slime model of gravity for the theory of everything on blogspot, just google Super Sticky Slime Model (SSSM)]
Dave
Comment2: Yea, right, anti vaxer climax denier, typical case of the pural of anectotes is NOT data. Wake up! BTW - I loked at you profile and you are not qualivied in this field, so stop your shite!
Anonymous
Comment3: Hi, great post again. Am I going to see you down at the San Diego summer session?
Linda
Comment4: Where are your references? Right: none! J. Shmoddlefoggle et al [Int J Sci Invest 5(7):2635-39 (2007)] have long ago proven that it is two, one of them being necessarily Shmoddlefoggle, but go ahead, sure, tell us it is one, whatever.
Shmoddlefoggle
.......
Anyway, now I wait for your answer to “How many science bloggers does it need to change/ screw in a light bulb?” Then we vote for the best and send the winner some really crappy useless something. Then we will be happy.
Oh - by the way, I should probably mention that changing the question slightly in order to add meta right into it for example is definitively allowed. Best would be some sort of one-liner without any answer necessary at all.
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