Jonty, it probably was from the Onion - I only copy-and-pasted it from an email that was sent to me, I make no claim whatsoever as to originality! Still think it's fairly apposite for such a literary fforum as this though...

Talking of which, here's another one from the same source:

LIFE ON MARS
The year is 2222 and after accumulating enough frequent flier miles, Mike and Maureen land on Mars. They meet a Martian couple and are talking about all sorts of things. Mike asks if Mars has a stock market, if they have laptop computers, how they make money, etc. Finally, Maureen brings up the subject of sex. "Just how do you guys do it?" asks Maureen. "Pretty much the way you do," responds the Martian. Discussion ensues and finally the couples decide to swap partners for the night and experience one another. Maureen and the male Martian go off to a bedroom where the Martian strips. He's only got a teeny, weenie member -- about half an inch long and just a quarter inch thick. "I don't think this is going to work," says Maureen. "Why?" he asks, "What's the matter?" "Well," she replies, "it's just not long enough to do anything for me!" "No problem," he says, and proceeds to slap his forehead with his palm. With each slap of his forehead, his member grows until it's quite impressively long. "Well," she says, "that's quite impressive, but it looks like a long pencil, it's still pretty narrow...." "No problem," he says, and starts pulling his ears. With each pull, his member grows wider and wider until the entire measurement is extremely exciting to the woman. "Wow!" she exclaims, as they fell into bed and made mad, passionate love. The next day the couples rejoin their normal partners and go their separate ways. As they walk along, Mike asks "Well, was it any good?" "I hate to say it," says Maureen, "but it was damn good. How about you?" "It was horrible," he replies. "All I got was a headache. She kept slapping my forehead and pulling my ears."

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brown suit, Gucci shoes, Ray-Ban sunglasses and YSL tie leaned out the window and asked the shepherd,

“If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?”

The shepherd looked at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looked at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answered, “Sure.”

The yuppie parked his car, whipped out his notebook and connected it to a cell phone, then he surfed to a NASA page on the internet, where he called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, and then opened up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas. He sent an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, received a response. Finally, he prints out a 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized printer then turns to the shepherd and says,

“You have exactly 1586 sheep.”

“That is correct; take one of the sheep.” said the shepherd.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and bundle it into his car.

Then the shepherd says:

“If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?”

“OK, why not.” answered the young man.

“Clearly, you are a consultant.” said the shepherd.

“That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”

“No guessing,” answers the shepherd.

“You turned up here although nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don’t know cr*p about my business.”

“Now give me back my dog!”

I love this one :)

A woman brought a very limp parrot into a veterinary surgery. She lay her
pet on the table and the vet listened to the bird's chest. After a
moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said "I'm sorry, Polly
has passed away. The distressed owner wailed "Are you sure? I mean you
haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a
coma. The vet, having encountered a disbelieving customer many times
before, sighed, turned and left the room, returning a few minutes
later with a black Labrador. As the bird's owner looked on in
amazement the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the
examination table and sniffed the dead parrot. The dog looked at the
vet with sad eyes and shook his head.

The vet patted the dog an took it out, but returned a few moments
later with a cat. The cat jumped up and also sniffed delicately at the
ex-bird. The cat sat back, shook its head, meowed and ran out of the
room.

The vet looked at the woman and said "I'm sorry but like I said your
parrot is most definitely 100% certifiably ... dead". He then turned
to his computer terminal, hit a few keys, produced a bill and handed
it to the woman. The parrot's owner, still in shock, took the bill.
"£150!" she cried, "£150 just to tell me my bird is dead?!" The vet
shrugged. "If you'd taken my word for it the bill would only have been
£20, but what with the lab report and the cat scan ..."

Groooan.

Groan? oh dear, and you haven't even read my comment about newts yet Simon....

A horse and a chicken were very good friends, one day they were walking in the fields when suddenly the horse fell in a ditch, he couldn't get out and he was going to drown.

The chicken ran back to the farm, but there wasn't anyone to help. The farmer had gone to town on his tractor. Luckily the farmer's BMW Z3 was in the farmyard with the keys in it. The chicken found a rope, jumped into the car and drove back to the horse. The chicken tied one end of the rope to the bumper of the car and the other end to the horse, the chicken then got the horse safely out. She took the car back and the farmer was none the wiser.

A few weeks later the two friends were going for another walk when the chicken fell into a deep puddle and started to drown. The horse stood and thought for a while, straddled the puddle and said to the chicken
"Grab hold of what you can"
The chicken looked up and all it could grab hold of was hanging down between his legs and it wasn't his tail!

The horse pulled the chicken out to safety.

The moral of this story is.................




...............if you are hung like a horse, you don't need a BMW to pull chicks!

I'm into necrophilia, bestiaity and flagellation. Am I flogging a dead horse?



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

A family specialised in breeding white angora rabbits for showing. Theie rabbits won prizes all over the place and were the pride of their owners.

One day their neighbours were sitting at home watching TV when their cat came in, dragging a white, bedraggled and muddy rabbit. It was the prize-winning doe, and she was dead. When they went out to look they saw a hole under the fence into the neighbours' garden where the show rabbits were kept, with paw marks where the cat had got through.

They didn't know what to do, and they really didn't want to alienate the neighbours. Eventually they decided not to say what had happened, but to wash the rabbit, try and disguise the marks the cat had left, and put the rabbit back in the cage. So they put the doe in the shower, dried her with the hair dryer, and climbed over the fence. All went well and they put the doe back in her hutch.

Understandably, they were a bit reluctant to face their neighbours, so it wasn't until a month later that both men happened to leave for work at the same time. "Hey, something really odd happened a little while ago," said the rabbit breeder. "Oh?" said the neighbour, flinching. "Yes, you know our prize doe? She died and we buried her, and the next morning we found her back in her cage..."



_ _ _ _ _

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

A curate was about to go on his holidays with the family when they were held up because the cat was stuck up a tree. His wife had a brainwave, and suggested they tie one of the branches to the car and slowly drive forward until the branch became low enough for the cat to jump down.

Unfortunately the branch snapped, and the poor creature was catapulted (sorry) over a wall and to some unseen destination. Glumly the family went on holiday, not knowing where they were to look for the creature.

When they came back the first people they met from the church came up and shook the curates hand, and told him how his sermons had helped them. When asking why, the reply was that the family had decided to pray that God would answer them in the sort of way the curate had been talking about. So they all went into the garden and sat down together, and excitedly prayed that God would send them a cat. And one just fell out of the sky!

-------------

I'm not sure if this is a true story, but it was told by a curate.

Another ---

A man was riding his motorcycle by the side of a cliff when a sheep fell off a ledge and landed on top of him.

Not a joke, but told in a sermon as an illustration, and it was very hard to complete that sermon, I'm told.

What's red and invisible?

No Tomato.

I got this riddle in an email the other day (sorry, this is completely off topic) and I can't figure it out. 80% of kindergarten kids got it and only 7% of Stanford seniors (see, they're not really that smart). Please tell me if you know! Okay, here goes:

What is greater than God,
More evil than the devil,
The poor have it,
The rich need it,
And if you eat it, you'll die?

What is?

from me (who is stumped) :)



"What I need is a strong drink and a peer-group." -Ford Prefect

What is?

Nothing...

Oh GSD, I am so thick! No wonder I can't fit through doorways anymore!

from.. guess! :)



"What I need is a strong drink and a peer-group." -Ford Prefect

Shame on you all. I offered you a nice clean joke about the Pope if you e-mailed by noon today. Noon has come and gone, and how many e-mails have I had on the subject? None!

So much for my nice clean jokes...



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

Sorry, Sarah. Was out at a party last night, and I was being dropped off home afterwards, chris suddenly asked if I wanted to go see some Ice Age caves and a flint knapper today. So I sort of forgot about the Pope and had to run around getting ready to go out.

Haven't I told you that one anyway? Oh well, if I haven't I'll do it next time I see you. It's better told aloud. :-)

Ice Age caves and a flint knapper - sounds wonderful! I didn't know you got flint round here, though.



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

I think he brings it from Norfolk. He was also working some very nice white flint, from Leicestershire, which is quite rare. I was fascintated to see that the knapper was striking his stones from above, with a piece of antler or bone, and that chips were flaking away from underneath, by concussion. He had a variety of stone tools and other objects on display. The flint arrowheads were exquisite, really fine pieces of work. It was a nice afternoon out.

You haven't been reading too many Jean Auel books, have you, Skiffle?

No! Change the topic back to jokes!



---
Those who forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

Did you hear about the magic tractor?

It drove along the road and turned into a field...



:--

Do something pretty while you can...