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I’ve written a couple of jokes in my lifetime. All of them are very, very, very bad and exquisitely unfunny. The latest one just came to me as I was listening to a certain Beatles song. It goes like this:

Q: What do you call an insane nut?
A: A coo-coo cashew

I remember the first one I ever came up with. I was living in North Gower, Ontario and I was very young. North Gore is a rural area and at the time, (but not so much now — although, still somewhat…) it was extremely remote; very “back-woods.” North Gower was a farming community and there were many cattle ranches in the area. And, yes, as a pass-time the youth in the area would indeed engage in the ancient art of “cow-tipping.” You see, cows often sleep standing up, and their balance while sleeping isn’t the greatest. So, if you quietly sneak into a pasture full of cows, late at night, you can creep up on them, give them a good shove, and they’ll tip right over. …or, at least, that’s what you tell city-folk™ visiting the area. (By the way: Do you know what we used to say about cow-tipping when city-folk™ weren’t around? That cow-tipping was just a lot of bull! …Ha! Get it?)

Of course, you would only ever do this to a cow, and nobody in their right mind would ever attempt tipping a bull. The reason should be obvious: the bull would wake up, charge you, and you’d find yourself flung about 30 feet in the air. So, nobody has ever even tried to tip a bull. One day I told a friend of mine, whom I had gone cow tipping with (when certain city-folk friends had been visiting) on a number of occasions, that there was another reason that people didn’t tip bulls. I told him that I had attempted to tip a bull on the previous night and had learned this reason. The story I related to my friend went like this.

Last night I sneaked into old farmer Dunlop’s pasture. I walked up to a sleeping bull and gave it a good push. The bull wobbled back and forth for a while, but remained standing. So, I gave it an even harder shove. Again, the bull wobbled back and forth, but continued to remain standing. So, I mustered every ounce of strength I had, got a good running start, and gave the bull the mightiest shove I could. Again, the bull wobbled back and forth, and again the bull remained standing. Then, to my amazement, the bull looked at me and spoke! It asked: “What are you doing?” and I replied that I was trying to tip him over while he slept. The bull then told me that such an act was impossible. “Why?” I asked the bull. “Well, you see,” said the bull. “We bulls wobble, but we don’t fall down.”

Perhaps you have to be of a certain age to get that joke. But, either way… Yeah, pretty bad, I know. I was, like 10-ish years old, or something. Cut me some damned slack, for cryin’ out Pete’s sake!

Oh, and after the burial at sea of John Kennedy Jr., myself and a few members of my family were watching a news report regarding the incident on TV. Ted Kennedy was on board a naval vessel overseeing the ceremony of scattering John Kennedy’s ashes. My uncle asked me if I knew why he was being buried at sea, and my response was: “That’s where Ted Kennedy dumps all his bodies.” — Get it? A sort of weak-sauce reference to the whole Mary Jo Kopechne / Chappaquiddick thing. Yeah, a pretty weak joke, I know. But, a short time later a friend of mine, who hadn’t been present at the time my uncle and I were watching the news report, and, except for one or two brief meetings over the years, didn’t know my uncle, said to me: “You know why JFK Jr. was buried at sea? Because that’s where Ted Kennedy likes to dump all of his bodies!”

Strange but true.