Weekend Assignment #80

 Okay. John Scalzi (you all know J.S.) has afforded me the opportunity to reprint one of my old favorites, for any who might have missed it.

Weekend Assignment #80: Share a favorite joke. Keep it clean, of course. Otherwise, go nuts.

There once lived a woman whose husband worked long hours and enjoyed stopping in at the bar after work, frequently arriving home very late and quite drunk, and often in a bad mood. This made life increasingly lonely and unhappy for the woman, so one day she decided to purchase a pet to provide a pleasant antidote to her grumpy and remote husband.

Entering the pet shop, she spent some time looking around at the variety of animals, unsure what sort of companionship she craved, and finally, in frustration, she turned to the proprietor and inquired of him what he thought might make a suitable pet.

"I have a lively and affable bird here that you might like," he said, leading her over to a creature that resembled nothing so much as an enormous toucan, with black and white feathers and a gaily colored beak.

"What type of bird is this?" the woman asked. The proprietor, who was setting up a terrarium, said, "It's called a 'crunch bird'." "Why is it called that?" she asked. He explained, "It's the literal translation of what the inhabitants of its native region call this bird. Watch."

He plucked a decorative branch from the terrarium and placed it upon the countertop. "Crunch bird, branch," he said. The bird speedily flew to the branch and, with its exceedingly sharp, serrated beak, reduced the branch to a small pile of chips within the space of a minute.

"It will consume anything that you order it to, if you preface the name of the item with the words 'crunch bird', so you must exercise some care," the proprietor said. The woman carefully approached the bird, which gazed soulfully up at her, nuzzled her hand with its beak, and made a low warbling sound. "I'll take it," she said.

That night her husband spent a particularly lengthy time at the bar, and upon arriving home, began to berate his wife for some imagined wrong. His loud and indignant voice elicited a raucous squawk from the bird. Rolling his bloodshot eyes in the direction of the creature, he snarled, "What the hell is that?" "It's a crunch bird," his wife said. He roared, "CRUNCH BIRD, MY ASS!"

Extra credit: Seriously: Do people think you're funny?

Well, that depends. Does it mean I'm funny if people point at me and double over, guffawing, as tears of uncontrollable hilarity pour down their cheeks? (There's no way I can be serious about this. Scratch the extra credit.)

Peace.