ethnic jokes jokes

For more than 30 years, New York magazine has run a contest in which contestants take a well-known foreign language expression, change a single letter, and provide a definition for the new expression. Here are some favorites.

Harlez-vous français?
CAN YOU DRIVE A FRENCH MOTOCYCLE?

Cogito Eggo Sum.
I THINK; THEREFORE I AM A WAFFLE.

Rigor morris.
THE CAT IS DEAD.

Repondez-vous s'il vous plaid.
HONK IF YOU'RE SCOTTISH.

Que sera serf.
LIFE IS FEUDAL.

Posh mortem.
DEATH STYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS.

Pro Bozo publico
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL CLOWN.

Apès Moe le deluge.
LARRY AND MOE GOT WET.

Haste cuisine.
FAST FRENCH FOOD.

Veni, vidi, vice.
I CAME, I SAW, I PARTIED.

Mazel ton.
TONS OF LUCK.

Aloha oy.
LOVE; GREETINGS; FAREWELL; FROM SUCH A PAIN YOU SHOULD NEVER KNOW.

Visa la France.
DON'T LEAVE YOUR CHATEAU WITHOUT IT.

L'état, c'est moo.
I'M BOSSY AROUND HERE.

Cogito, ergo spud.
I THINK, THEREFORE I YAM.
(OK, more than 1 letter.)

Veni, vidi, velcro
I CAME, I SAW, I STUCK AROUND.
(OK, another exception.)

When young Jose, newly arrived in the United States, made his first trip to Yankee Stadium, there were no tickets left for sale. Touched by his disappointment, a friendly ticket salesman found him a perch near the American flag. Later, Jose wrote home enthusiastically about his experience. "And the Americans, they are so friendly!" he concluded. "Before the game started, they all stood up and looked at me and sang, .... 'Jose, can you see?'"

THE ORIGINAL VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN CANADIAN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come the winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

The CBC shows up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. Canadians are stunned by the sharp contrast. How can it be that, in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Then a representative of the NAGB (The national association of green bugs) shows up on The National and charges the ant with green bias, and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism. Kermit the Frog appears on the Nature of Things with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings "It's not easy being green.

"Jean Chretien makes a special guest appearance on the CBC Evening News to tell a concerned public that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the Reagan/Thatcher summers. Sheila Copps exclaims in an interview with Peter Mansbridge that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."

Finally, the Liberals draft the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. John Turner gets his law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal hearing officers that Chretien appointed from a list of single-parent welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday's between 1:30 and 3 PM.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he's in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

And on the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are showing Jean Chretien standing before a wildly applauding group of liberals announcing that a new era of "fairness" has dawned in Canada.

There was once a Scotsman and an Englishman who lived next door to each other. The Scotsman owned a hen and each morning would look in his garden and pick up one of his hen's eggs for breakfast.

One day he looked outside and saw that the hen had laid an egg in the Englishman's garden. He was about to go next door when he saw the Englishman pick up the egg. The Scotsman ran up to the Englishman and told him that the egg belonged to him because he owned the hen. The Englishman disagreed because the egg was laid on his property.

They argued for a while until finally the Scotsman said, "In my family we normally solve disputes by the following actions: I punch you in the nose and note how long it takes you to recover, then you punch me in the nose and note how long it takes for me to recover, whomever recovers quicker wins the egg."

The Englishman agreed to this and so the Scotsman held the heaviest object he could find, took a few steps back, then ran toward the Englishman and punched him as hard as he could in the nose. The Englishman fell to the ground and was howling in agony and holding his nose for thirty minutes.

Eventually the Englishman stood up and said, "Now it's my turn to punch you."

The Scotsman said, "Keep the lousy egg."