Oh well, let’s talk about funny stuff. Scientists and linguists are thrilled to have found ancient “Yo Mama jokes.”
3500 years ago, a student in Babylon did the inevitable and carved jokes about “beer,” “intercourse,” and “your mother” into a tablet. Now researchers have done the inevitable and published an elevated dissection of said jokes in a reputable journal. In recognition of the great future minds who will a millenia from now ponder “Two And A Half Men,” let’s give due attention to this tablet, shall we? It’s pretty awesome.
Discovered by the archaeologist J.J. van Dijk in 1976, the tablet has since been lost without a trace, like so many single socks. Fortunately van Dijk left images behind, which researchers Michael Streck and Nathan Wasserman were able to analyze in a recent paper for the journal Iraq. Streck and Wasserman call the 6 riddles within “wisdom literature,” or aphorisms, but the structure of them isn’t far off from our modern-day jokes. Due to the tablet’s less-than-perfect state, the translations are a little patchy. Still, behold, an alcohol reference:
In your mouth and your teeth, constantly stared at you, the measuring vessel of your lord.
(-What is it?)
Beer.
True, it’s not what you’d call a knee-slapper, but “your teeth,” according to Streck and Wasserman, could also be read as “your urine.” And everyone knows “urine” is “funny.” Moving on, a twosome concerning those twin foci of late-night talk show hosts: sex and politics. Number one:
The deflowered (girl) did not become pregnant.
The undeflowered (girl) became pregnant (-What is it?)
Auxiliary forces.
This one is “unclear,” according to Streck and Wasserman. We call it “surrealist.’
And:
He gouged out the eye:
It is not the fate of a dead man.
He cut the throat: A dead man (-Who is it?)
The governor.
This is apparently a reference to a Bayblonian governor’s power to sentence people to death, according to Streck and W. In the comedy world, “speaking truth to power” commentary is often more direct than clever (see Louis CK’s tweets about Sarah Palin), so…perhaps this is the Babylonian equivalent of a “Politically Incorrect” intro? Finally, we come to the jewel in the crown, a joke that foreshadows the greatest MTV show to star Wilmer Valderamma. Say hello to “Yo’ Mama: The Streets Of Babylon.”
…of your mother is by the one who has intercourse with her. What/who is it?
[No answer]“Your mother”? “Intercourse”? If this isn’t a precursor to the greatest take-down since McCarthy’s “You know how I know you’re a communist?” series, we’ll eat our most ancient hat. Thank you Babylonian school system, for requiring your students to perform very important joke documentation for future generations.
How many avant-gard artists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Blue fish.
I would have killed in Babylon.
No word on how they felt about nasty, loud, Catholic school girl sex. However, given the fact that they procreated enough to lead to you and I my guess is that they were in favor of it. The same cannot be said of Lindsay Blankmeyer.
A New York woman has filed a lawsuit against her former Roman Catholic college in Boston, claiming administrators didn’t do enough to help her when she complained that her roommate was having too much sex in their dorm room.
Lindsay Blankmeyer said in a federal lawsuit that she suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder before she enrolled at Stonehill College, but was driven into a suicidal depression after school officials wouldn’t give her reasonable housing alternatives to get her away from her roommate at the school in Easton, Mass.
Blankmeyer said her roommate had sex with her boyfriend while she was trying to sleep just feet away and also participated in “sexually inappropriate video chatting” while Blankmeyer was in the dorm room.
After trying unsuccessfully to persuade school officials to force her roommate to move out or to give her an acceptable private room, Blankmeyer ended up living at a hotel, according to the lawsuit filed earlier this week.
“Stonehill refused Lindsay’s request for a single room and in the following weeks and months Lindsay fell into a dark and suicidal depression requiring her to take a leave of absence from school and undergo extensive psychiatric and medical treatment,” the lawsuit states.
Blankmeyer eventually completed her final semester of school at her home in New York and received a bachelor’s of arts degree in September 2011. Blankmeyer enrolled as a freshman in 2007 but the lawsuit said problems began her senior year.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston earlier this week, seeks unspecified damages.
Stonehill spokeswoman Kristen Magda said the college responded “swiftly and professionally” to Blackmeyer’s complaints about her roommate, first trying to resolve the dispute through mediation with a residence director, then by giving Blankmeyer “multiple options” for campus housing, including a private room.
“At no time did the student notify college staff that her concerns involved her roommate’s sexual activity,” Magda said Friday.
Blankmeyer’s lawyers did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
In the lawsuit, Blankmeyer says the college offered her two options, one was moving to another dorm where she would live in a room that was previously used as a study lounge and was a “small cubicle-like space.” The other option was to move to a dorm with a reputation as a “party dorm” to live with a girl Blankmeyer did not know.
Ah, I see, they thought that the young lady was making a lot of noise studying stellar-cartography.
“OH YEAH BABY! QUASARS!”
Oh well, police in Florida, of course it’s Florida, are reporting that they arrested a young couple who had a novel way of keeping each other happy. They stole bras.
Thousands and thousands of bras.
A pair of prolific bra thieves who police say stole thousands of dollars’ worth of brassieres from South Florida stores are behind bars, authorities said Thursday.
Tysheka Pink, 29, and Katina Summerset 39, were arrested Wednesday on charges of grand theft and organized scheme to defraud for the bra theft spree that dates back to October, according to the Boca Raton Police.
Boca Raton Police began investigating the case on Jan. 20, when a unknown woman distracted a clerk at the Victoria’s Secret store at 6000 West Glades Road while her accomplices stole over $3,000 in bras.
Detectives learned the bras had later been returned to another store. They also learned that two hours before the theft, Pink and another woman had returned stolen items from another theft to the Miami Beach Victoria’s Secret, police said.
The two women were wearing the same clothing as the women who ripped off the Boca store, police said.
Victoria’s Secret Loss Prevention Manager Osmany Benitez told police that Pink and the other woman had been returning merchandise worth over $6,000 to various stores between October 2011 and January 2012.
Boca police also learned that Boynton Beach detectives had active warrants for Pink for similar thefts.
On Wednesday, Benitez called Boca police to say he was following Pink and Summerset at the Town Center Mall, and officers arrived and took the two into custody.
Police said the pair had entered the Victoria’s Secret earlier in the day and left with a shopping bag filled with 90 stolen bras worth $4,500.
When detectives questioned Summerset, she told them she and Pink had been stealing clothing from different stores in Boca and Boynton for months, and that they either kept them or returned them, police said.
Yes, Pink is her legal name. Everything else just follows.
Of course, as every male reader here knows, the best way to get a girl to love you is to rob her.
A Pittsburgh-area man has been ordered to stand trial for robbing a girl he later called to ask for a date.
Twenty-six-year-old John Jardini was held for trial Thursday in Allegheny County Court for the alleged bus-stop robbery earlier this month.
KDKA-TV reports Jardini was arrested after he allegedly stole $60 from a girl at the bus stop while she waited for her mother.
Police say the Carrick man soon called the victim on her cellphone asking for a date. Investigators say he later assaulted her and her mother after spotting them in a store while police tried to track him down.
Jardini faces charges of robbery as well as simple assault and resisting arrest.
That’s right ladies, he’s still single!
Can you believe it?
Okay, I’m not a complete curmudgeon. Here’s a nice story about a man who went to buy a bicycle and ended up riding the woman selling it instead.
Online classifieds ended up getting Tyler Newman far more than he bargained for. While looking for a good deal on a road bike, the 27-year-old Riverton man ended up with a wife, too.
“I thought it was a great deal,” he said, standing hand-in-hand with Michelle Oliverson Newman, 22, at the Salt Lake LDS Temple. The two were wed Friday, following almost a year of courtship, which began with an advertisement posted online last May.
Newman had been looking for something to help him train for an upcoming triathlon and a used Dawes Lightning bicycle he found on ksl.com seemed to have the perfect price tag — just $300. Several other callers had inquired about the bike, but Oliverson said she held onto it for the seemingly “serious” first caller.
“Turns out I was really serious,” Newman joked.
When he showed up to check out the merchandise on a May day in 2010, Newman said he had a hard time keeping his eyes on the bike. Upon meeting, Tyler liked what he saw in both the bike and the seller.
The two exchanged a few questions and Newman soon became a little uncomfortable with the fact that Oliverson was acquainted with a former girlfriend of his, and had recently waited on his father at a jewelry store where she worked.
“She knew all these random things about me and I knew nothing of her,” he said. “I was pretty weirded out at that point, so I decided not to ask her out, even though I had wanted to.”
Although the ad indicated she was willing to negotiate, Oliverson said her customer just handed over cash for the asking price and walked away.
“I ran downstairs after and said, ‘Dad, this cute boy just bought my bike,'” she said.
It wasn’t too long before Newman mustered the courage to give her a call, pretending to have a question about the bike. … And the rest is history.
“She was really outgoing and I could tell she just loved life and had a good attitude about things,” Newman said about a first impression he recalled of his bride.
The story goes on to offer relationship advice that would get most people killed since it all comes down to “Go ahead and date random strangers.”
Don’t.
We’ve grown quite fond of you and would hate to have to identify your body.
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!