Yeast Infection

Happy New Year!

It's 2008, which, although not as futuristic a date as 2007, is some crazy sci-fi year. If you'd have told me when I began this blog that I'd make it to 2008 still writing, I'd have said you were a madman or woman (but, let's face it, probably man).

Actually, I probably would have said: 'Oh, really? Yeah, maybe', as I don't tend to fly off the handle anywhere outside the comfort and anonymity of the blogcube.

I haven't made any New Year's Resolutions, as I couldn't really think of anything. Sometimes I set myself really easy ones to give me a sense of self-satisfaction:

- This year I won't drink tea through a hole in my neck
- This year I'll stop reading the Finnish newspapers
- This year I'll avoid all silicon-based life-forms, or at least be cold and aloof if I meet them in town

But I'm too lazy to even do that. Instead, I have come up with a joke. It's a proper joke with a punchline and everything; something I don't usually do. So, drumroll please (just imagine one, ok?):

Why did the loaf of Hovis with AIDS offend the aristocrat?

Because it was ill-bred.

Ill-bred!

Ill bread!

A pun, by jove!

It makes sense, it has the desired format of a joke, it is like something from a slightly offensive Christmas cracker.

But on closer inspection, it isn't totally satisfying.

For one thing, the use of AIDS is unnecessary and gratuitously offensive. The joke would work if it was replaced by 'the flu' or 'chicken pox'. I must have chosen AIDS as it seems to make what is essentially a shitty joke a bit more edgy and contemporary, by adding an unpleasant element. I can't say I agree with that approach.

Also, it raises the question of whether the aristocrat is offended because of the poor breeding of the loaf, or because of the implied possibility of homosexuality. Of course, AIDS is not an exclusively gay disease, but the aristocrat (set in his ways, willing to judge a strange foodstuff) may be more narrowminded. This raises the spectre of hypocrisy in the aristocrat, as homosexuality is certainly not alien to that class.

It's a good thing I called him 'the aristocrat', thus signposting him as a deliberate type, rather than a fully-rounded individual, or I might have been accused of prejudice and over-simplification in my joke.

Another important issue I have raised is how the bread could have contracted the disease. Incapable of sexual intercourse (and even if infected by a shared needle), lacking the immune system necessary, it seems unlikely to occur.

It's a clash of cultures: the stereotype aristocrat on one side, the infected loaf on the other. I doubt the former would be offended, as they wouldn't be able to relate.

Now if the Hovis with AIDS had offended, let's say, a muffin with the mumps, it might be slightly more plausible.

The moral of the story is this:

proper 'jokey' jokes are always shit.