Humor

Comedy

Here's some funny stuff. If not, the joke's on me.

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Nanologos

Recent achievements in nanotechnology at Monsanto have the company in the news, and are inadvertently pleasing the crowd of activists opposing the growth of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In a desire to copyright various strains of grains that have been developed at great expense by Monsanto, company scientists have recently developed strains of corn that have corporate logos embedded on the nanomolecular level.

This achievement, which took seven scientists (working in their spare time) two years to develop, means that corporate branding can be verified by the simple application of an electron microscope to any grain sample, where corporate logos will be visible.

Monsanto spokesman Harvey Preminger said, “This makes it very difficult for competing companies to develop strains using the genetic research that we have pioneered.”

One recent glitch in this achievement of corporate nano-branding, however, has been the appearance of Monsanto logos on the actual end product. Iowa field trials in Appanoose, Grundy and Marshall counties have yielded a disease resistant, fully developed corn ear, but with tiny iterations of the Monsanto logo on each grain of corn.This development has caused great delight in the “truth in labeling” anti-GMO crowd. Says Linda Schudde of Agency, Iowa, “It only serves ‘em right to say what they are so we can know what they are.”

Preminger had no further comment at press time, due to additional emerging rumors of Monsanto logos showing up on newborn feed cattle calves in Blackhawk County.

Grumblings from the Monsanto art department have emerged, centering around the lack of true color definition in the logos, and comments such as “I told them it was Pantone Color 306, not 360” have been heard.

No official word is forthcoming.

U.N. Fines

The United Nations has announced a series of sanctions against member states that do not meet its standards, and has resolved to levy a series of fines against countries and even individual citizens. The fines, although modest in size, according to UN spokesman Torsten Schmidt, “express our relative degree of disagreement with member state behaviors.”

Citing the notoriety that criminals gain when high reward monies are attached to their name, Schmidt says, “we don’t want them to get all puffed up, so the fines are rather small, but they are real fines, and must be paid in person by the head of state or individual cited, at the security desk in the lobby of our New York City facility.”

Osama Bin Laden topped the fine list with a charge of $5, for “one sided thinking.”George Bush was fined $4.95 for attacking Afghanistan without asking permission. Israel was charged $3.65 for not fixing up a nice place for the Palestinians to call their own, and the Palestinians were charged $2.75 for not recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

In a related story, Dowling Woods, homespun philosopher of Osceola, Iowa, announced his first annual international Woodenhead awards. The" 2002 Cleopatra, Queen of Denial" award was given to the entire Arab world for not believing that Osama Bin Laden tape was real, while the United States won the "2002 Ostrich Nation" award for, on the whole, thinking that Islam was an island in the Persian Gulf.

Chuckle Up

US aviation officials have announced research on a new “humor test” which is to be given to all passengers attempting to board U.S. domestic flights.

Preliminary research indications are that fundamentalist sects are lacking in a sense of humor. Therefore, says Eastern Airlines spokesman Delaine Feggestad, “if they don’t get the joke, they don’t get to fly.”This policy resulted in a brief increase in apparent job opportunities for stand-up comics, who were interviewed for jobs in airline security checkpoints. However, preliminary testing indicated that some comics are funnier than others, and so some checkpoints would move passengers faster than others, while others were delayed.

Researchers have more recently switched to recorded humor, and initial experiments, held in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport found that lines were slower for comics such as Rita Rudner as opposed to Jeff Foxworthy (of “you might be a redneck” fame). However, research results were reversed for the same comics in East Coast urban areas.

Comic Steve Martin, when asked about the fact that lines went faster for competing comic Robin Williams than for Martin’s recorded material, said, “I can’t help it if there were more terrorists in my line.”

Word Fashion Report

Several words went in and out of style recently. The big winner was “recuse,” made famous by Jeb Bush’s decision to recuse himself from the controversy surrounding presidential election vote counts in Florida involving his brother, George W. Bush.

This formerly obscure word has been thrust into national prominence, and occurrences of the word have jumped from a low of 76 in a Google.com search made before the presidential election of 2001, to it’s current high of 276,934 hits. The word has even found it’s way into general use, in phrases such as “I’ll have to recuse myself from a discussion of how you look in that dress.”

On a down note, the word “fundamentalist” has fallen in popularity, and conservative Christians are at a loss to describe themselves without seeming to align themselves with Islamic extremists. Liberal scholars expressed delight at the quandary, “It’s just no fun to be a holy roller nowadays,” says Janet Mencken, Grinnell College Assistant Professor of Literature.

Proposed terms for the formerly fundamentalist Christians are “Back to Basics Christians,” and “Bottom Line Christians.”

No consensus has been reached.