Timing a Joke

As the vast majority of you no doubt already know, the most important part of telling a joke is timing. Well, that, and humor. For instance, chances are, interns at Comedy Central may very well probably get a punchline far faster than, say, rednecks in Arkansas. And most of time, wrong timing should probably be blamed on the comedian. After all, the intelligence of his audience(or more commonly, the lack thereof, is almost always his respective responsibility to predict. However, occasionally, I sometimes tend to have suspicions that the audience may well be slightly responsible. Case in point:

I was trying to tell my friend a joke. Not a very funny or creative one, but hey. I don't exactly have very high hopes of his getting those.

“What's the difference between a Nazi and a gay person?” I asked

“No idea. What?”

Me: “45 degrees. Get it?

Him: “Nope”.

Me: “Ok, hold your arm out straight in front of you at exactly shoulder height. Now, imagine that you are the rightful ruler of the world, and of the supreme race. Move your hand higher, so that your fingers are pointing skyward. Got it? Good. Now lower your fingers, like, really girly, and imagine you're gay.” I waved my own hands for extra emphasis. “Now do you get it?”

Him: “Not really. Just gimme a few more mi-

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass, leaving behind memories that became legend. Legends fade to myth, and myth to stories, until even those stories are long forgotten when the Age that gives it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Information Age by some, a butterfly gently flapped its wings, causing a minor disturbance in the air which became a slight breeze. The breeze wasn't the beginning, there are neither beginnings nor endings in the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

The breeze blew forth east across the Greenland plains, gaining surprising momentum as it hurries past, becoming a wind as it blew through the huts and houses on the coast, chilling the people gathered around the hearths. It blew across the icy oceans and onto England, where it blew people's hats and clothes on the clothline, making a general nuisance of itself. It blew across the British Parliament, throughout all of London, then South across the English Channel, into Paris, the wind stirring emotions as lovers gaze at an ugly tower, it flew straight south across, to Rome and then Vatican City, where priests gather around and the Pope, and while snoring, listened to his speeches about the importance of returning to traditional values and marriage between a man and his slave.

It blew South and East, across the ancient lands of Greece, across the country of the over-sized chicken, across, Syrian terrorists and Afghanistani drug dealers, Iranian nukes and Iraqi contractors, then across the Himalayas, where it had a pretty rough time traveling, across the Tibetan monks, who were kindly re-educated by wise Chinese teachers with food, books, computers, and AK-47s. It flew to Beijing, where people cursed the smog and thanked the wind, across the Yellow Sea, becoming a storm, to Pyongyong, where it caused raining frogs which the grateful peoples thanked Kim Jong II for causing great rain and meat on their tables, to yet another sea, by which the storm died down, becoming a wind once more, into the Tokyo districts, where the populace worked a mere 12 hours a day.

It then slowly but surely crawled across the Pacific, into California, where illegal immigrants partied at their Promised Land, throughout Las Vegas, where the breeze gave relief to those people apparantly enjoying themselves at 120 degrees of sheer heat, then sped past the plains into Arizona, where 90 professionals failed to explain to John McCain the many and intricate complexities of starting a computer. It blew even faster and headed slightly northwards, straight into the heart of DC, where Bush chatted amicably with Obama, then heading about ten miles off to a school, where the greatest and proudest moment of our time happened-

My friend: “Oh, I get the joke now. The angles of the hands! Hahahaha!!!Good one!”

The timing was impeccable.