What's your best/worst joke?

@AccessBlaster It really happened to me. sort of.
Until several years ago, when I saw someone talking to his dog while walking him, I used to think the owner must be out of his mind. How can an animal understand what a human says.
All my life I was against having a pet, but one day my wife was diagnosed cancer. I decided to buy her a puppy, what she had wished for years. I hoped he can comfort her in some way.
Now, I mostly find myself talking to our dog.
Sometimes my wife says: Dogs can understand what we ask them to do, but he certainly has no idea how to help you with your engineering questions.
 
I hope your wife is doing well. My wife is a squirrel whisperer, she talks baby talk to them they seem to respond.
 
AccessBlaster said:
I hope your wife is doing well. My wife is a squirrel whisperer, she talks baby talk to them they seem to respond.
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Thanks for your kind words. 6 years have passed since that day, and although the percentage doesn't drop to 0, but I think we'll be OK.
 
We're on our second dog; I wasn't allowed to have one as a kid, so when I met my future wife and saw her talking to her dog I thought it was ridiculous. While I don't think they understand everything we might say to them, they understand tone for sure and no doubt grasp whether you're happy with them or not. I was converted by our first dog.

What's most important is that they not only understand something about what you're saying, they act like they give a damn, which is more than you can say for cats.
 
Micron said:
We're on our second dog; I wasn't allowed to have one as a kid, so when I met my future wife and saw her talking to her dog I thought it was ridiculous. While I don't think they understand everything we might say to them, they understand tone for sure and no doubt grasp whether you're happy with them or not. I was converted by our first dog.

What's most important is that they not only understand something about what you're saying, they act like they give a damn, which is more than you can say for cats.
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When my wife was still traveling with me in the RV she wanted a pet, so I got her a pet rock. That reminds me, I got her that pet rock in the parking lot of a restaurant up Pat's way. I don't remember the name but in between the tables were bookshelves. With each meal paid for you could take home a book. That Restaurant still up there Pat?
 
Animals and babies understand tone, not content. My dad lost a bet this way. My late Aunt Hattie told him it was all about presentation. Dad, of course, KNEW that I understood every word he said to me even though I wasn't even 18 months old at the time.

Aunt Hattie, in her best droning monotone, said, "You are such a cute baby, lovable in every way, ready for anyone to love ...." and so on. I was more or less uninterested.

So then she used a cooing, higher-pitched "sweet voice" as she said "You dirty-butt little dumb-head, you ought to be horsewhipped. You couldn't be uglier if you volunteered for an ugly-stick whipping.... " and so on. I laughed and smiled and reached for her, while Dad fumbled for his wallet.
 
The_Doc_Man said:
Animals and babies understand tone, not content.
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Not entirely true. I'm going to guess you've never had a dog or your comment is meant to be taken some other way. Our dog knows a few key phrases and responds appropriately, and she's no genius like some dogs. You're basically saying it matters how you say "sit".

Then there are animals who know some sign language, and I'd definitely class that as content - same as "fetch" or anything like that.
 
Is a dog self-aware?
1. Do they recognize their own reflection?
2. Do they know their own mortality?
I say no.
 
@AccessBlaster
We have a lot of dogs here who are trained to help sick or blind or in some way need a help owners, mostly golden retriever. You can spot them in trains, restaurants, shops. We're not allowed to touch or pat them while they are doing their job, because we may distract them. They must be focused on what they are trained for. I've seen so many times, how clever and smart they are. I've always seen how one of them helped his owner surviving a heart attack. He run and took an AED from a nearest booth, put it on his owner's chest and asked the passers to use it on the patient, before any of us surrounding his owner to even decide what we can do.

During these past few years, since I personally live with a dog, I can say they understand us more than other animals who are in a higher level of awareness. Do you have a dog yourself? Or have you ever had one?
 
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Dogs can be trained to recognize command words and object names. In a sense, I was being facetious about tone vs. content - though tone helps sometimes. But my cousin's AKC dachshund understood "Go" and "Bus" (my cousin drove a school bus) and "Car" (when not driving the bus) and "Pack Up" (which meant the dog would grab his blanket.)
 
Tera said:
We have a lot of dogs here who are trained to help sick or blind or in some way need a help owners, mostly golden retriever. You can spot them in trains, restaurants, shops. We're not allowed to touch or pat them while they are doing their job, because we may distract them. They must be focused on what they are trained for. I've seen so many times, how clever and smart they are. I've always seen how one of them helped his owner surviving a heart attack. He run and took an AED from a nearest booth, put it on his owner's chest and asked the passers to use it on the patient, before any of us surrounding his owner to even decide what we can do.

During these past few years, since I personally live with a dog, I can say they understand us more than other animals who are in a higher level of awareness. Do you have a dog yourself? Or have you ever had one?
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Yes, I had many dogs over my lifetime. The last dog we had was a Pomeranian that lived 19 years. We also had a cat or two. We are currently taking a break from dogs, but we stay busy with the squirrels and wild birds.
 
Science has proven that cats know their name, but many times choose to ignore that fact.
 
1. Do they recognize their own reflection?
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my dog is not vain enough to spend time in front of the mirror - there's much more interesting stuff going on elsewhere.

As an aside, recently we were coming down in the morning to water all over the kitchen floor - we blamed the dog (he's getting on in years) and took him to the vets for tests to see if there was an underlying problem. All the tests came back OK, the vets were mystified and keen to spend lots of our money on more exotic tests. We said no when we realised the dishwasher had started leaking! Our boy is back in our good books:D
 
Back on track - it took about 80 years but it came true...

HOF.jpg
 
There are protected classes of people it's just a fact of life. If you have ever been involved with "Progressive Discipline" you find out right away you have to tiptoe around certain subjects and ethnicity regarding discipline. In our leadership meetings the lawyer always conducted the meetings to drive home the point certain classes of people were off limits for discipline.
 
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Regarding the Isaac Butterfield interview:

The problem with humor in the "woke/cancel" culture is that no young people seem to understand its origins. Think about EVERY GOOD JOKE you ever heard. Does it, or does it not, hinge on someone's misfortune?

Think of "slapstick" comedy which involves people getting hit by a noise-maker stick. "The Three Stooges" and a LOT of Bugs Bunny cartoons with Elmer Fudd as the "foil" are examples of violent-situation comedy. The Roadrunner/Coyote cartoons used to make my laugh my head off. While that is not all of humor, it represents a huge proportion thereof. Consider circus clown acts.

The movie "Victor, Victoria" is a hilarious sexual-confusion comedy (with good music) in which there is terrific humor. One of the funniest movies I ever saw was "Arsenic and Old Lace" where the laughter is about two little old ladies who had killed a dozen lonely old men and buried them in the basement. Add to that an insane nephew and a homicidal maniac brother coming home to hide out.

It is possible for a "clever joke" to make us laugh - but think about really funny situations. SOMEONE is the "butt of the joke" and we laugh. A very large part of that feeling may relate to the idea we are feeling superior to the "butts" and are laughing because we escaped that fate. Human humor can be incredibly mean. Listen to Ron White or any political comedian and see how deeply they bite down on their victims.

Even family-oriented SITCOM humor involves embarrassing situations. SOMEONE has had something go wrong. Either someone said or did something stupid. Someone reacted to getting their feelings hurt. The problem might have been minuscule on the scale of life's big picture, but consider the funny situations from old-time TV.

This kind of introspection will make you hate yourself for a while until you reconcile with it. Human humor is all too often a nervous laugh along the lines of "Oh, how stupid/unluckly that person is - and I'm glad it isn't me."
 
The_Doc_Man said:
Regarding the Isaac Butterfield interview:

The problem with humor in the "woke/cancel" culture is that no young people seem to understand its origins. Think about EVERY GOOD JOKE you ever heard. Does it, or does it not, hinge on someone's misfortune?

Think of "slapstick" comedy which involves people getting hit by a noise-maker stick. "The Three Stooges" and a LOT of Bugs Bunny cartoons with Elmer Fudd as the "foil" are examples of violent-situation comedy. The Roadrunner/Coyote cartoons used to make my laugh my head off. While that is not all of humor, it represents a huge proportion thereof. Consider circus clown acts.

The movie "Victor, Victoria" is a hilarious sexual-confusion comedy (with good music) in which there is terrific humor. One of the funniest movies I ever saw was "Arsenic and Old Lace" where the laughter is about two little old ladies who had killed a dozen lonely old men and buried them in the basement. Add to that an insane nephew and a homicidal maniac brother coming home to hide out.

It is possible for a "clever joke" to make us laugh - but think about really funny situations. SOMEONE is the "butt of the joke" and we laugh. A very large part of that feeling may relate to the idea we are feeling superior to the "butts" and are laughing because we escaped that fate. Human humor can be incredibly mean. Listen to Ron White or any political comedian and see how deeply they bite down on their victims.

Even family-oriented SITCOM humor involves embarrassing situations. SOMEONE has had something go wrong. Either someone said or did something stupid. Someone reacted to getting their feelings hurt. The problem might have been minuscule on the scale of life's big picture, but consider the funny situations from old-time TV.

This kind of introspection will make you hate yourself for a while until you reconcile with it. Human humor is all too often a nervous laugh along the lines of "Oh, how stupid/unluckly that person is - and I'm glad it isn't me."
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Your so right. Just yesterday I was in a hardware store returning some work glove. The women cashier was kidding me about the reading the label. So i said yes I should know what I am buying. I asked her if the store carried henways. She said what's a henway. I said about 3 and a half pounds. All her men co-workers and one customer had a good laugh at her expense.
 
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