One Hundred Almost Hilarious Jokes

By Ebenezer Jackson-Firefly

This is a compilation of one hundred (generally inoffensive) jokes, some short, some long. Each joke is given a title and is numbered, and there is a list of the jokes by title and a list by number.
They vary in length - from very short (a couple of lines) to fairly long (thirty lines plus).
After the main body of jokes there is a section which explains each one for readers who might not have fully understood the joke.
This could be useful for readers who are not native speakers of English - or even readers from other parts of the English-speaking world where the humour (or humor) of some jokes may be incomprehensible or opaque.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ebenezer Jackson-Firefly
• Release date: Jul 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310198687

Book preview

One Hundred Almost Hilarious Jokes

By Ebenezer Jackson-Firefly

Copyright 2015 Ebenezer Jackson-Firefly

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9781310198687

Text of Front Cover: One Hundred Almost Hilarious Jokes. / Readers’ Comments: / I laughed and laughed (Fictitious comment inserted by the author) / I almost laughed (Somebody who gives up very easily) / Ai diduhnt laf (An advocate of simple spelling) / The jokes are ALMOST HILARIOUS? Don’t make me laugh. (Someone with no sense of humour) / Buy this book now! By order of the Government. / Only 7% hilarious – and that’s being generous (A generous statistician) / Ebenezer Jackson-Firefly / Hilarious = causing great merriment. First used in English c1820. Adapted from Latin HILARIS (= cheerful) < Greek HILAROS. Same as the male name HILARY (Latin HILARUS), and the female name HILARY (Latin HILARIA) (A tiresome pedant with a dictionary) / Reminder! Buy this book now!

COPYRIGHT

This book should not really be copied as Mr Jackson-Firefly is a pauper, and is but one step from imprisonment for the crime of being too poor for the good of a prosperous society. This being so, he has intimated to us that he would prefer the book to be purchased rather than copied and freely distributed along electrical wires and by invisible radio waves, or however literary works are bootlegged nowadays.

A little income might allow him to afford an extra dollop of porridge at breakfast time, or an occasional piece of fruit, such as a lemon or a carrot (that is, if you subscribe to the view, as the great Ebenezer Jackson-Firefly does, that a carrot is a fruit). We appreciate your cooperation in helping the author stave off hunger and ward off destitution, and in helping him in his longstanding quest to find the last joke on Earth, said to be under a stone at the side of a wood somewhere.

The Editor.

LIST OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION (1% of the book)

2. CONTENTS: JOKES BY TITLE (6% of the book)

3. CONTENTS: JOKES 1-100 ACCORDING TO NUMBER (6% of the book)

The jokes begin here:

4. ONE HUNDRED JOKES (70% of the book)

5. DON’T GET IT? THE JOKES EXPLAINED (20% of the book)

1. INTRODUCTION

This is the eleventh compendium of jokes by the noted jokester Ebenezer Jackson-Firefly (the nom de plume of Hezekiel Jackson-Firefly, which in turn is a misspelling of Ezekiel Jackson-Firefly).

His first three joke books were published back in the mists of time, in April and May 2012, a particularly fecund period for the propagation of the Gospels of Laughter. A similar flurry took place in January 2013, when his fourth and fifth bestsellers flowed from his brain via his fingertips and a quill pen with ink made from boiled walnut shells, vinegar and salt, onto the vellum he prefers to use for his literary creations, and then via myriad ways into electronic text format.

Then, in dribs and drabs, came volumes six, seven, eight, nine and ten, when jokes and humour went out of fashion for a while, and Mr Jackson-Firefly's geese wandered off for a few months and took with them his supply of quill feathers. In addition, the walnut tree which supplied the walnuts which supplied the walnut shells, having stood for two hundred years in a park, was removed (clandestinely and illegally) on the orders of a multinational ink company to whose notice Mr Jackson-Firefly's home-made ink fabrication activities had come.

The word 'bestsellers', in a preceding paragraph, is used loosely, as to date only one person has bought any of his books. In all of 2012 nobody bought a single copy. The same happened in 2013. And in 2014.

In 2015, one volume was sold in a faraway country to somebody called Johnnie, who pointed out that many jokes featured a character called Johnnie, and this had damaged his reputation among his fellow-prisoners (he had been incarcerated for falsely claiming that his name was Johnnie and that various novelists, poets, songwriters and historians had damaged his reputation by using this name in their works).

Mr Ebenezer Jackson-Firefly denies that the Johnnie of the jokes refers to this man who, in fact, is not called Johnnie at all, but in spite of the litigation and various death threats from Johnnie (who in fact is not called Johnnie) he is secretly proud to have sold one of his books for the first time.

As you may have noticed, Mr Jackson-Firefly has entitled this volume 'One Hundred Almost Hilarious Jokes’ as, evidently, he believes that there are one hundred of them. The reference to hilarity is more for reasons of euphony than veracity. The inclusion of 'almost' is to avoid problems in the future should a lawyer buy a copy of the book and find no jokes which could be properly described as 'hilarious', which is most likely the case.

As in the other collections, we have added a section ‘Don’t Get It?’ which explains the inner workings of the jokes for those readers who may not have seen the humour or understood the punch line. It might be useful too to readers whose first language is not English, or then again be of no use to anybody. It was included after a woman on a bus told me that it is now illegal to publish joke books without an explanation of the jokes. But it might have been a joke.

Mr Jackson-Firefly errs on the side of caution, and says we ought to include the explanations just in case it wasn’t a joke. But he is not happy about it because there is a danger that the explanations might be funnier than the original jokes, and if this turns out to be true, he’ll have to republish the book after inverting it in order to use the original jokes to explain the explanations.

The inclusion of the explanations encourage Mr Jay-Eff to devise an eccentric numbering system for the jokes which he is now is keen to patent. A search for the joke by adding the letter x to the joke number either at the beginning or the end should bring the reader to it instantly. Likewise, by adding the letter z at the beginning or the end of the joke number we have made it possible for the reader to find the explanation of the joke in the twinkling of an eye, before you can say Jack Robinson, as fast as lightning, etc.

Mr Jackson-Firefly tells me he has nothing more to add to this introduction; in fact, he hasn't added anything, though he has mumbled various suggestions which I didn't understand at all as I typed - he was at the time eating dry corn flakes from a bowl, and rebellious as always, has ignored the conventions of polite society - 'It's rude to talk with your mouth full' (he talks with his mouth full) - various prohibitions, and the wisdom of the ages.

Other examples of this rebellious spirit of his are legion. For example: 'Wet Paint. Please Do Not Sit On This Bench' (he sits on the bench), 'Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise' (he goes to sleep very late, on the sofa), 'Look before you leap' (he leaps without looking) and 'Please mind the gap' (he never travels on the London Underground railway network).

Now that he has finished off my corn flakes, he in busy in the pantry hunting for my other breakfast cereals, and any lemons he