Monday, February 24, 2014
4 comments:
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Mimi, they say the way to know that a joke is truly horrible is when it has to be explained. "Primary chromatic" and "spherochromatism" are lens aberrations (defects inherent in the design) that have to do with the color of the light. The idea of the joke is that the engineer in question, being a blonde, doesn't realize that the "white" in "black and white" is comprised of all colors, and that color aberrations do indeed have to be corrected.
Yes, it's terrible. It's sort of a "Silly Sally" joke (precursor to "blonde" jokes). If you've never heard a Silly Sally joke, it may be that they're a regional phenomenon. -
6:20 PM
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Jim, your explanation makes it perfectly clear--NOT! I don't recall "silly Sally" jokes; guess we east coasters aren't as sophisticated as Indianians. We had plenty of similar local "humour," though.
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3:59 AM
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Silly Sally jokes were told (around here, at least) when I was a boy. They are similar to the "blonde" jokes of more recent times, but are distinguished from them by: (1) the fact that they're about Silly Sally, and (2) they always contain the setup line "Silly Sally just laughed and laughed." An example:
Silly Sally had climbed a tree in her grandma's front yard. Her grandma came outside and told her to get down from that tree right away -- all the boys were under the tree looking up her dress at her underwear. Silly Sally just laughed and laughed -- she knew she wasn't wearing any underwear!
Yeah ... maybe the passing of Silly Sally jokes isn't exactly a great cultural tragedy, is it? -
1:53 PM
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Now that you mention the Silly Sally genre, it sounds a lot like a similar one we told as kids--I just can't remember the name of the heroine. Jokes were certainly related, though, in their sophistication and high level of culture. Here's one: (Somebody's) mother said "I got it at the Safeway" and (somebody) laughed and laughed, because she knew there was no safe way.
So risque! -
3:55 PM
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Had a delightful lunch with my new (Wellspouse) friend, Mary L. yesterday. No problem getting to TGI Friday's in Toms River--in fact, ...
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Did you hear about the blonde optical engineer? She designed a camera lens, and totally ignored both primary chromatic aberration AND spherochromatsm. When her colleagues demanded to know why she left these aberrations uncorrected, she laughed and laughed. After all, she knew the camera would only be used to take black-and-white pictures!
Oh, I just crack myself up sometimes, I really do!