短篇笑话：异想天开

曾几何时，我们所钟爱的笑话简单质朴，不带任何色彩，不针对任何人。这样的笑话才能真正带给我们精神上的愉悦。

One of my grandsons, when he was about seven, liked to tell a story about two cows in a field. One cow said “Moo,” to which the other irritably replied:[1] “Oh, I was just about to say that.” That is an example of the kind of innocent joke that one hardly ever hears nowadays. It is not “cutting edge”[2]. It does not “push at the boundaries[3]”. It is just pleasantly funny in a completely unchallenging kind of way.

Jokes of this kind were popular with my parents’ generation but are now rarely told by anyone except children. My father used to like one about two pigeons that had arranged to meet in Trafalgar Square[4]. One of them was late and, when asked what had happened, said: “It was such a lovely day that I thought I would walk.” And then there was his one about the frog saying when God created him: “Oh Lord, how you made me jump!”

My mother’s jokes were a little sharper, but still a great distance from the boundaries at which people nowadays are so keen[5] to push. She had one about a man who had gone for an audition[6] with a singing teacher. Given the thumbs-down, he turned sadly to the teacher and said: “Could I just ask you one thing? Am I a bass or a baritone?”[7] “No,” was the teacher’s simple reply.

Humour of the absurd, of which Lewis Carroll[8] was a master, deserves to have a comeback. Parody and satire, as practiced by Craig Brown and Private Eye, still contribute greatly to the gaiety of the nation, but too much of what passes for comedy on radio and television today is just vulgar and cruel.[9] And such “cutting-edge humour” is especially lowering in grim economic times.[10] What we now need to cheer us are kindly jokes with no targets or victims.

Here’s another one of my father’s (though perhaps not his funniest): two residents of a lunatic asylum are sitting in deckchairs by the sea when a passing seagull releases a dropping on to the bald head of one of them.[11] An attentive warder says he will run and get some lavatory paper.[12] “He must be as crazy as we are,” says the other lunatic. “By the time he gets back, the seagull will be miles away.”

Vocabulary

1. moo: 牛叫声;irritably: 急躁地，易怒地。

2. cutting edge: 深刻的，敏锐的。

3. push at the boundaries: 指现在人们开玩笑有些“越界”，为追求效果不择手段。

4. Trafalgar Square: 特拉法尔加广场，位于伦敦市中心。

5. keen: 热衷的，渴望的。

6. audition: 试音。

7. thumbs-down: 表示反对或拒绝的手势;bass: 低音;baritone: 中音。

8. Lewis Carroll: 刘易斯•卡罗尔(1832—1898)，英国儿童文学作家、数学家，主要作品有《爱丽丝漫游奇境记》、《镜中世界》等。

9. parody:(对作家、艺术家风格或流派的夸张滑稽的)模仿;satire:讽刺;Craig Brown: 英国知名讽刺作家，常年给Private Eye等报刊供稿，Private Eye是英国老牌杂志，专门讽刺揭发名人、政客等的各种丑闻;gaiety: 欢乐，愉快;pass for: 被看作，被当作;vulgar: 庸俗的，低俗的。

10. lowering: 令人沮丧的;grim: 严峻的。

11. lunatic asylum: 精神病院，lunatic作名词时意为“精神病患者”;deckchair:(海边的)帆布躺椅;dropping: 粪便。

12. warder: 看门人;lavatory paper: 卫生纸。