Introduction

There is a very real possibility that the world will change dramatically within the next year with the death and disablement of four or five billion people. These people will be the victims of a joke that is funny enough to kill, and which will sweep across the globe in the first ever joke pandemic. When it hits, business will grind to a halt as people laugh themselves sick. Most will die from the laughter. Those strong souls that survive and make it into work will be ineffective at their jobs, spending all day laughing between cubicles and relaying e-mails to friends that say, "have you heard the one about..." Factories, notorious as breeding grounds for crude and offensive jokes, will be turned into mausoleums. It is estimated that the U.S. economy will shrink by as much as 40%, and the global economy by as much as 60%, causing widespread hardship and suffering for the survivors, all of this with the lingering irony that their lost loved ones had perished because they couldn't take a joke. I'm here to tell you the one thing that you can do to prepare.

Disease Intensity

There is no known cure for the pandemic joke. Its humor combines the concentrated comedy of Buffalo Bill episode #8, Jerry Lewis Week, the sinister subtlety of The Bob Newhart show, episode #51, the Peeper, and the eye-opening shock of Richard Pryor's album, "Was It Something I Said?" When told to the unprepared, this joke has a mortality rate of 73%, putting it in the class of the typhus, cholera, and being declared an enemy combatant by the Bush administration.

It would be easy to deny the possibility of outbreak and go on living as if everything were fine, but if we fail to prepare, the consequences are severe. I would like each of you to look at the person seated on your left and right. It's likely that eighteen months from now, one of those persons will have died from hearing the pandemic joke, and the other will be greatly sickened and disabled for as much as a month recovering from it. That's no joke. Well, actually, it is a joke, but it's not funny. I mean it is funny, very funny; so funny it'll kill you, and that's why it's not a joke. Except that it is a joke.

Disease Inception

If a person who hears the pandemic joke thinks it is funny, that person begins laughing uncontrollably. Even for persons that are only mildly susceptible to the joke, the intense laughter causes the victim to snort, and snorts are always funny, which intensifies the humor and leads to discharge in the ocular tear ducts, and acute pain in the abdominal cavity. This is known as stage two effects of the pandemic joke.

Stage Three Effects

If Stage Two effects persist for more than one minute, the victim slips into stage three effects, which are characterized by loss of bladder and bowel control. If you are alone, you have a 78% chance that you will stop laughing immediately, because it is not at all funny to soil your own trousers. But if the loss of bladder and bowel control happens in a group setting or a public place, such as at church, your place of work, or even here at Toastmasters, there is a cascading effect of increasing the humor for those around you when they catch a whiff of what you have done. Once again, look at the person on your left, and on your right; do you think it would be funny if they just dropped a load? So even if you are not amused by soiling your own pants, soon someone nearby will eventually soil their pants, causing you to laugh.

It comes down to the first law of physical humor: if something bad happens to me, that's tragedy; but if something bad happens to you, that's comedy.

Final Stage

The final stage of the disease is identified by convulsive giggling, which is sometimes known as the death giggles. Convulsive giggling restricts your bronchial tubes, causing asphyxiation and death. And there's nothing funny about the Death Giggles. It is a lot like choking on vomit, which also is not funny, unless the vomit is not your own; that is very funny.

Joke History

I can't come out and tell you the pandemic joke, but I can tell you its history. Like many strange and infectious diseases, the pandemic joke first appeared in Southeast Asia. It was discovered during the Vietnam War, and was, in fact, the greatest cause of casualties among American servicemen, followed closely be veneral disease. The Viet Cong, borrowing an age-old technique of taunting their enemies, would yell, "Hey G.I. Joe: your sister sews socks in hell." This crude and mostly ineffective tactic was refined when a captured American soldier, who happened to be Jewish, was tricked into writing comedy material that he was told was for a variety show to be staged for Ho Chi Minh. In 1971, the Viet Cong used one of these jokes, known then as Joke Fifty-One, in an attempt to overrun Hill Forty-Three. The joke wiped out an American Battalion, and was used effectively for a period of six months, threatening to deliver military victory to the North. The VC made the mistake, however, of translating it into their own language, killing several battalions of their own irregulars, and restoring the war to its previous balance.

Analysts at the Pentagon, themselves almost entirely void of humor, working with transcripts from field radio communications, were able to piece together a picture of what had caused the carnage. They sent in a Division of Amish operatives who were able to contain the joke and rescue its author. It has been stored in secret Government laboratories for almost forty years. It is so funny that the beginning of the joke is under lock and key at Los Alamos, and the punch line is in an abandoned resort in the Catskills Mountains. Where once cheap comics plied their trade along the Borscht Belt, now deadly serious scientists scramble to find a vaccine.

Joke as Weapon

At first, efforts were concentrated on weaponizing the joke. Many scientists, lab assistants, and second rate comics were lost in this effort as the joke proved too unstable to control. But of course the original joke was out there in the wild, and occasionally revealing its deadly potential by wiping out entire villages as it quickly spread across Asia, contained only by its extraordinarily high kill rate. It is now thought to be in possession of terrorist groups who are merely looking for an opportunity to unleash it on the world in a way that will cause the most damage. They are waiting only long enough to immunize their own people so that they will be prepared to rebuild the world. We are now in a race to immunize as much of the population as possible before the pandemic joke's destructive force is unleashed.

Immunizing Techniques

Thus far, the only proven immunizing agent is to spend a weekend with Dick Cheney, as that seems to suck the humor right out most Americans. It is a case, however, of the cure being worse than the disease. In early studies, normal Americans placed in intimate contact with Dick Cheney do develop resistance to the pandemic joke; however, side effects include an intense desire to send other people to war, a need to blame all the world's problems on Albanians, saluting while yelling "Il Duce", and an urge to kick dogs.

There is a less dangerous technique, although it is not nearly effective. At home, in your leisure time, begin to watch as many good situation comedies and funny movies as possible. The belief is that by exposing oneself to as much humor as possible, the comedic senses will be dulled, much in the same way that married couples grow tired of sexual intercourse with each other once the honeymoon is over. I recommend a steady diet of Faulty Towers, the Life of Brian, Buffalo Bill, and Seinfeld seasons three through seven. Futurama, The Boondocks, and Southpark should also be studied and memorized. Lull yourself to sleep with National Lampoon comedy albums. If you must listen to the radio in the morning, listen to Bob and Tom, but try to ignore Chick.

Conclusion

If anyone doubts that terrorist groups are not working to dehumorize their people, you should consider the recent frackas over the cartoons mocking Mohammed, and the riotous outcry over their publication. I believe this was a carefully staged test of the terrorists' efforts to immunize a large population. If that's not a large group of people that are in serious need of some humor, then I don't want to be around when such a group does arrive.

Mickey Hadick

February 2006