Linkstew

Here's another joke in the "It's Irony" series:

Inventor of the 'eat as much meat as you want' Atkins Diet had a heart attack. When asked if he had any comments on his protein-rich diet in light of his recent cardiac arrest, Atkins replied, "It's irony."

(Credit where credit is due: Kevin emailed me this link and the joke.)

A few days after we came up with that first ironic joke for my ironic punchline, Dave came up with another one:

What did the doctor tell Tonya Harding after she broke her leg doing a jump and had to have her knee replaced with an artificial joint?

It's iron-knee!

The only real problem with this joke is that it's a little dated these days, but I'm sure future circumstances will arise for which the basic premise will be able to be recycled.

So during the Whistler trip, I finally found a joke for my "It's Irony" punchline. On one of the train rides, I explained the punchline and my sad lack of a joke for such a good punchline to my company, and after some thought, Tyler finally came up with an appropriately ironic joke:

What did the coroner say after determining that Andrew Carngegie had been stabbed to death with a railroad spike?

"It's Irony."

While I was taking my final tonight, I noticed my shirt was a little wet. I looked down, and saw a tear, and a red stain forming, and realized that the test had "ripped me a new one" when I wasn't looking. I touched the stain and then tasted my finger, and I wondered to myself, "Why does blood taste so sweet?"

It's irony.

Well, it didn't quite go like that, and the final wasn't actually that bad. But you see, I tend to take breaks to amuse myself during long tests, and during my final tonight, I ended up coming up with this jokeless punchline that I'm absolutely in love with: "It's irony." As in, employ some nice freestyle english footwork to arrive at the adjective irony, meaning "Of or pertaining to iron."

The best joke I've got for it so far (which, to give credit where credit is due, was offered up by Jan) is the above referenced "Why does blood taste so sweet?," which hopefully explains that whole little story above. But the problem with that joke is that it's just not... ironic enough for the punchline.

So, I'm still mulling over other possible jokes for the punch-line, and enjoyably, by the nature of folklore, a punch-line can have as many jokes as it wants. So, offer up suggestions! Try them out on your friends, family and co-workers! And most importantly, um... I can't think of a most importantly.

Oh, well, finally, it's perfectly possible that this punch line already exists in the wild (Hm, are punch-lines a form of joke parasites?), and that I just happened to have coincidentally bred a related strain during my final. And if that's the case, and I am just ripping off some clever person, please grind my ego down to a stump, and crush the filings into my foot. And then, when I ask if you can see anything stuck in my foot, you, can tell me "It's irony."

So it turns out that I was more of an impairment to my playing Super Smash Brothers Melee than the Folklore Archive of Doom was.

Knowing that they would ship separately, I pre-ordered Super Monkey Ball and Super Smash Brothers Melee in the same order back in the middle of October. Super Monkey Ball shipped without a hitch back in early November, and I had it a week and a half before I got my Gamecube.

Super Smash Brothers Melee, on the other hand... It should have shipped on Monday, but I got no word from ebgames. On Tuesday, I woke up to the sound of my roommate playing the copy of Pikmin he'd ordered, so I checked my email but saw no word on Melee. Looking at my order status on ebgames' site, it said my order was "On Hold." A few hours later, I got an email saying that there had been a problem processing my order, and that I should call them to straighten things out.

So I called them, and all I was told was that my card had been declined. This worried me, since I just use my debit card as a credit card, and I was suddenly concerned that maybe many more checks than I'd expected had been cashed and I was out of money. I had them cancel the order so that I could figure out what was wrong. If I was out of money, the game could wait until I got paid on Friday.

I called Bank of America, and after anxiously listening to their Patriot Songs CD for 20 minutes while on hold, I was told "Well, your card is activated, you have money in your account, no other charges were incurred on the same day... I'm not really sure why it was declined... Maybe you mistyped the expiration date?"

So I looked at my receipt, and there, plain as day, was the expiration date listed as "11/01" (as opposed to the correct 11/02). Which explained why Super Monkey Ball shipped fine in November of '01, yet Super Smash Brothers Melee got gummed up in December of '01.

Of course, I was a little taken aback that my Super Monkey Ball order had gone through at all with the incorrect expiration date. Apparently, they only check that the expiration date hasn't passed yet. I always assumed that they used the expiration date as a sort of checksum, to double verify the credit card information. And I wish it were used that way, too.

So I placed a new Super Smash Brothers Melee order on Tuesday night, and it shipped on Wednesday, and I got it on Thursday.

I suppose it's possible that I subconsciously mistyped the expiration date, knowing deep down that I'd be getting this most-wanted game right when I had 80 other things to be doing. And hey, guess what? It sure was effective.