Sunday, December 10, 2006

 

The Lightbulb Joke


The lightbulb joke is an example of an endless-variations joke and has possibly thousands of versions covering every imaginable culture, belief, occupation and special-interest group. Generally the punchline is not complimentary to the group providing the subject of the joke. The generally acknowledged "original" goes as follows:

Q: How many [insert chosen group here] does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Ten — one to hold the lightbulb and nine to turn the ladder around.

The common pattern for a light bulb joke could be formulated as follows:

Q: How many members of a (given demographic group) does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: 'N+1 (where N is a positive whole number)' — one to hold the lightbulb and N to behave in a fashion generally associated with a negative stereotype of that group.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "The Lightbulb Joke". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 3:57 PM
Comments:
WHAT. This is stupid, they DELETED THIS? What ass-backwards doublespeak did they justify it with? non-notability? original research because there is no doctoral degree on the history and taxonomy of lightbulb jokes? Sweet christ, one expects an encyclopedy would document a piece of culture that is familiar to everyone and his pet rock
# posted by Blogger Giulia Q : 6:54 AM
 
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