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Michael Kay scripsit:
> Oh dear, jokes really don't travel well, do they? Can you explain it for
> non-Americans?
A bagel is a small round loaf of bread with a hole in it, physically
resembling a ring-doughnut, but the bread is much denser: classically
the dough is boiled before it is baked. Bagels are usually split
longitudinally before (optionally toasting and) eating; common
accompaniments are butter, cream cheese, and the aforementioned lox,
which is smoked salmon thinly sliced.
Both of those, and most particularly the combination, are Jewish
delicacies. Since Jews in the U.S. are mostly to be found on the coasts,
inhabitants of the interior are not too familiar (at least traditionally,
and in jokes) with their ethnic cuisine or the terms that apply to it.
This leads to another joke about a similar innocent who tries matzoh-ball
soup for the first time; this is chicken soup with small round dumplings
made of unleavened flour (matzoh) used for Passover. The innocent eats
his soup and says "Say, this is really good! Tell me, what other parts
of the matzoh do you eat?"
I trust this one will survive the trip across the Atlantic better.
And now, in proper XML-DEV tradition, a meta-joke (with equal-opportunity
insults):
* When you tell a Frenchman a joke, he laughs when he hears it.
* When you tell a German a joke, he laughs twice: once when he hears
it, and once when he understands it.
* When you tell an Englishman a joke he laughs three times: once
when he hears it, once when he understands it, and once when he
retells it to his friends.
* But when you tell a Jew a joke [prestissimo e fortissimo] he
interrupts you halfway through to tell you his 'improved' version!
John Cowan, goyisher Hiberno-Deutscher
--
John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com> http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith. --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_
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