Airlines, like many other organizations, are often known by their initials. In some cases the original form may not be well known, as in QANTAS = Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.
Here is a large collection of PJs based on the names and initials of airlines. Beware that many of these are quite bad, and also that many refer to unknown and defunct airlines. I have added a few more below the link:
PIA (Please Inform Allah) is usually followed by AI (Allah Informed).
BOAC: Bend Over Again Christine (Google for Christine Keeler or Profumo scandal).
Pan Am, officially Pan American Airways: Pandemonium Scareways.
GARUDA (Indonesia): Good Airline Run Under Dutch Administration
And TWA has associated jokes like “Do you want TWA coffee or TWA tea?”, although not all their passengers would have been familiar with the American word here.
There are a few similar ones like these for railway companies.
Yes, academics have written lengthy analyses of dirty jokes and limericks. G Legman has written a number of books on these topics.
PJs and elephant jokes also deserve further study.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many elephant jokes, a small number of dog and cat jokes and hardly any jokes involving tigers and lions? Then there are phrases such as the “elephant in the room”.
And there are elephant limericks, although this one does not depend on the elephant:
A young man in sunny Yuma
Told an elephant joke to a puma.
Now his skeleton lies
Under desert skies.
The puma had no sense of huma.
Another indirect elephant joke:
A small boy misreads a sign at the zoo which says “African elephant”. He tells his father, “Dad, I saw a frickin’ elephant.”
This sign in a forest reserve is clearly not the mistake of the elephants:
And there are off-colour elephant jokes, such as these:
Learn something new: the two-humped camel is known as the Bactrian camel. Some can be seen in Ladakh. Presumably their ancestors had got lost when the Central Asian caravans were passing through some centuries ago.
For the moment, you need to remember than the one-humped variety found in most of western India and West Asia should correctly be called a dromedary.
The camel has a distant cousin called the llama. It has been immortalized in puns, besides verses like these:
An one L lama is a priest,
A two L lama is a beast.
I bet my silk pajama
That you can’t find a 3 L lama.
One of the “model answers” is a trainee llama who wears a L plate.
Another one is a “three-alarmer”, the most serious fire notified to fire brigades in the US.
And finally, an elephant joke which is almost like a shaggy dog story.
In 1986, a young man named Peter Davies from Chicago was on holiday in Kenya after his college graduation. During a hike through the bush, he came upon a young bull elephant standing with his right front leg in the air. The elephant was in obvious distress, so Peter approached the elephant carefully for a better look. He got down on one knee, inspected the elephant’s foot, and and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it….
As carefully as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which, the relieved giant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant looked down upon Peter with what seemed to be a curious expression… It stared at him for several tense moments. Peter knelt before this young giant frozen, thinking only of being trampled to death…. Eventually, the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned and walked away… Peter would never forget that encounter which would make a lasting impression on him for life….
Twenty years later, Peter was visiting the Chicago zoo with his young son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned toward them and began to approach Peter and his son. The large bull elephant looked down at Peter, lifted it’s right front foot off the ground. The elephant did this repeatedly while trumpeting loudly and staring at the pair. Recalling his incredible encounter in 1986, Peter could not help but wonder if it was possible that this was the same young bull he had encountered so many years before….
Peter summoned up his courage, climbed the railing into the enclosure, and walked right up to the bull elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted loudly, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter’s legs, and slammed him against the railing killing him instantly….. Probably WASN’T THE SAME fucking elephant….!
This is for all of those who send out those heart-warming bull shit stories on email…..
While this is not a joke, it is useful to know there is someone to complain to:
It is now open season for Yeddy jokes. So, for a change, we look at a famous Reddy joke.
As you know, N Sanjiva Reddy occupied Rashtrapati Bhavan in 1977-82. You may also know that two of his predecessors passed away in a certain bathroom in the building (Dr Zakir Hussain in 1969 and Fakhruddin Ahmed in 1977). It was said that whenever Mr Reddy went to use the bathroom the spirits of his predecessors would appear and chant “Reddy, Reddy, are you ready…….”
As things happened, he was not ready and lived out his 5-year term. Since then no Indian President has died in office, although Vice-President Krishan Kant was the only Vice-President to die in office in 2002 shortly before his term was to end.
Today is the anniversary of Apollo 13’s return to earth on April 17, 1970. You may have seen the 1995 movie, but if you have forgotten the details you can refresh your memory here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13
The gist of the story is that an explosion crippled the power supply on the “Command and Service Module” named Odyssey. To survive and return to Earth an elaborate patch was done to use the fuel supplies on the lunar module named “Aquarius”.
At that time there was a popular musical called “Hair”-popular partly because it featured brief scenes of nudity-which was a big thing in 1969. One of the popular songs was “The Age of Aquarius”, which you can listen to here:
When the astronauts were picked up and safely landed on an US Navy carrier, it was but appropriate that the band played “The Age of Aquarius”.
Like other popular songs, it gets due coverage in Wikipedia:
And a video with better visuals (but without lyrics):
The bit about “astrological gibberish” is particularly amusing:
“Astrologer Neil Spencer denounced the lyrics as “astrological gibberish”, noting that Jupiter forms an astrological aspect with Mars several times a year and the moon is in the 7th House for two hours every day. These lines are considered by many to be merely poetic license, though some people take them literally.”
In fact, the opening lines of the song feature in an episode of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” where he is debunking astrology.
And in recent times, it has given rise to memes like this:
And finally a yuge collection of supposedly famous quotes from US presidents. This goes all the way back to George Washington, including the more obscure Presidents such as James K. Polk and Rutherford B. Hayes.
Joke writers have a tough time with President Trump. He creates so many opportunities for jokes that they have little to do. Or he says something which is too difficult to decipher, and it may or may not be funny. One such occasion was the use of the word “bigly” which is supposed to be a new word he invented.
However, experts have concluded that it was a wrong transcription of the more common “Big league”, particularly as his brand of New York English was not understood by most. More on this here:
But British English has its share of pitfalls with words often being spelt in a way which do not reflect the pronunciation. Like Cholmondoley. Think you can pronounce it?
The humorous possibilities in Cholmondoley being pronounced as Chumly was not lost on music-hall comedians of a century ago, who were noted for their low level of humour. Some examples can be seen here:
Maybe one day the national selectors will accidentally include me instead of Hardik Pandya. (Something of this sort happened because of confusion between two J.Yadavs some years ago).
Every adman dreams of an advertising slogan or visual which would be remembered for generations-and preferably simple. Here is one about Maytag products (one of many from the company with the same theme):
For many years, refrigerated rail wagons and ships have been carrying freight across the world while refrigerated containers have come in more recently. The generic term for them is “reefers”.
Anyone familiar with 20th century American slang would know that reefer is another popular slang term for marijuana. It does seem to have a remarkable number of synonyms such as ganja, grass, Mary Jane, pot, cannabis etc. There is a well known ‘public service film’ produced on behalf of the US government in the 1930s called “Reefer Madness”, which film historians consider to be a rather clumsy attempt at educating the young about the dangers of drugs.
It has been nominated for awards for “worst film of all time”, though there are more deserving candidates such as “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, “Manos-the Hands of Fate” and “The Beast of Yucca Flats”. There was also a companion film called “Sex Madness” which has a similar reputation. You can see these films of ill-repute on Youtube.
Someone in the US started the Razzie Awards (for raspberry) for worst film, worst actor etc exactly on the lines of the Oscar awards. This continues to thrive. Some stalwarts like Sharon Stone have won multiple awards. Bollywood caught on to this later and someone started the “Ghanta awards” which are still awarded each year. The initial symbol of this was a prominent Bollywood villain in the nude with a strategically placed ghanta (though this picture seems to have vanished from the net now). Well, it was photoshopped from this picture:
Back to reefers and the unfortunately named West Indian Test cricketer named Floyd Reifer. (Yes, you can see a PJ coming but this time it was not devised by me). He started off his Test career (as a specialist batsman) with 29 versus Sri Lanka in 1997. That was to be his career best score. His Test career seemed to be over in 1999 by when he had made a total of 63 runs at 7.87 (not too different from Vizzy’s career average). Even the more nerdish followers of Test cricket thought they had seen the last of him, although he continued to score heavily in domestic cricket.
Over 10 years later, he got another opportunity to play for the West Indies and that too as a captain when, in one of their periodic crises, the WI first XI and most of the second XI decided to boycott a 2-Test series against Bangladesh. A hurriedly put together third XI took the field. The captain made some brave speeches about his team beating Bangladesh in these circumstances, prompting local journalists to ask if he had been “smoking something sounding like his name”. Here you can see the sum total of his career:
As you know, Bangladesh won the series 2-0 and the captain and most of the West Indies players of that team vanished without a trace. Their only new face from this series who is still around is Kemar Roach.
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