John is in prison and he gets a letter from his father, who is getting up in years. His father says he doesn't know how he's going to prepare the garden this year without his son's help.
John knows his mail is being monitored at the prison, so he writes back to his Dad and tells him, whatever you do, don't dig up the back yard.
The next day a bunch of cops show up and dig up the whole yard, looking for the missing money, but they never find a thing.
John then writes to his Dad and tells him to go ahead and plant the garden. "It's the best I could do under the circumstances."
Joke Poo: The Internship
Title: The Internship
Sarah is interning at a shady tech startup, living on instant ramen and caffeine. She gets a desperate text from her mom, a meticulous accountant nearing retirement. Her mom says she can’t possibly balance the annual books without Sarah’s advanced spreadsheet skills.
Sarah knows all company communications are monitored. So, she texts back: "Mom, whatever you do, DO NOT touch the cloud server labeled ‘Financial Projections – v2.0 FINAL’."
The next day, the IRS barges into the startup, seizes all the company’s computers, and spends weeks auditing everything, looking for hidden offshore accounts. They find absolutely nothing.
Sarah then texts her Mom: "Okay, now you can start working on the books. It’s the best I could do with my limited access privileges."
Alright, let’s break down this joke and cultivate some new comedic blooms.
Joke Dissection:
- Core Concept: A prisoner uses a coded message to have his father’s garden dug up by the police, knowing they won’t find anything but achieving the practical outcome of having the ground prepared for planting. It’s a play on outsmarting authority and finding loopholes.
- Key Elements:
- Prison: Represents confinement, limited communication, suspicion.
- Coded Message: Relies on implication and understanding between father and son.
- Father/Son Relationship: Implies a history of criminal activity and trust (or at least, shared understanding of illegal activity).
- Garden: A symbol of normalcy, simple needs, and a connection to the land.
- Money: Suggests a past crime; the buried loot is the object of the police’s fruitless search.
- Police: Represents authority, suspicion, and predictable behavior.
- Irony: The attempt to hide something illegal results in an entirely legal benefit.
Comedic Enrichment:
Now, let’s take these elements and craft something new:
Type of Humor: Amusing "Did You Know?" / Witty Observation
New Humor:
Did you know: Coded messages in prison aren’t always about escaping or organizing illicit activities. Sometimes, they’re about gardening. Inmates, with their limited resources and abundance of time, have developed elaborate code systems. "Tell Mom to use Miracle-Gro" might actually mean, "Bury the evidence deeper." And "Don’t forget to water the tomatoes" is code for "Meet me at the west wall, 3 AM".
Type of Humor: New Joke Variation
New Joke:
A mathematician gets thrown in jail for tax evasion. He gets a letter from his wife: "Honey, I don’t know how to solve this integral. I desperately need your help to find the area under the curve."
Knowing his mail is monitored, he writes back: "Darling, whatever you do, don’t integrate between 2 and 5. It doesn’t converge."
The next day, a team of accountants arrive and spend hours attempting the integration, trying every method they know. They leave frustrated and empty-handed.
The mathematician writes back: "Go ahead and approximate with Simpson’s Rule, or just count the squares. It’s the best I could do under the circumstances."
Explanation:
I used the same structure as the original joke (letter, coded instruction, futile authority action, secondary benefit). But replaced the elements with those of Math. Integration instead of digging and area under a curve instead of digging up money. I hope you found this funny!