The University of Hertfordshire recently concluded a research project to find the best jokes in the world. Here they are :

Best Joke in the world
A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn’t seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?”

The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard.

The guy’s voice comes back on the line. He says: “OK, now what?“

Second Place
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson go on a camping trip. After a good dinner and a bottle of wine, they retire for the night, and go to sleep.

Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”

“I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes” replies Watson.

“And what do you deduce from that?”

Watson ponders for a minute. “Well,

Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.

Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo.

Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three.

Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.

Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe.

But what does it tell you, Holmes?”

Holmes is silent for a moment.

“Watson, you idiot!” he says. “Someone has stolen our tent!”

Top joke in USA
A man and a friend are playing golf one day at their local golf course. One of the guys is about to chip onto the green when he sees a long funeral procession on the road next to the course. He stops in mid-swing, takes off his golf cap, closes his eyes, and bows down in prayer.

His friend says: “Wow, that is the most thoughtful and touching thing I have ever seen. You truly are a kind man.”

The man then replies: “Yeah, well we were married 35 years.”

Top joke in Canada
When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300°C.

The Russians used a pencil.

Top joke in Belgium
Why do ducks have webbed feet?

To stamp out fires.

Why do elephants have flat feet?

To stamp out burning ducks

Top joke in Germany
A general noticed one of his soldiers behaving oddly. The soldier would pick up any piece of paper he found, frown and say: “That’s not it” and put it down again. This went on for some time, until the general arranged to have the soldier psychologically tested. The psychologist concluded that the soldier was deranged, and wrote out his discharge from the army.

The soldier picked it up, smiled and said: “That’s it.”

Top joke in UK
A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says: “That’s the ugliest baby that I’ve ever seen. Ugh!” The woman goes to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: “The driver just insulted me!”

The man says: “You go right up there and tell him off – go ahead, I’ll hold your monkey for you.”

Top Joke in England
Two guys are sitting on a bar stool. One starts to insult the other one. He screams, “I slept with your mother!” The bar gets quiet as everyone listens to see what the other weasel will do. The first again yells, “I SLEPT WITH YOUR MOTHER!”

The other says, “Go home dad you’re drunk.”

Top Joke in Wales
A turtle was walking down an alley in New York when he was mugged by a gang of snails. A police detective came to investigate and asked the turtle if he could explain what happened.

The turtle looked at the detective with a confused look on his face and replied “I don’t know, it all happened so fast.”

Top Joke in Northern Ireland
A doctor says to his patient, “I have bad news and worse news”.

“Oh dear, what’s the bad news?” asks the patient.

The doctor replies, “You only have 24 hours to live.”

“That’s terrible”, said the patient. “How can the news possibly be worse?”

The doctor replies, “I’ve been trying to contact you since yesterday.”

• Accuse people of “glue sniffing addictions” in public.
• Add blank entries to a list, to make it look like it’s longer.
• Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to others that you “like it that way”.
• After visiting the local donut shop, sit on the floor cross-legged and insist in a childish voice that you haven’t received enough chocolate sprinkles.
• Announce when you’re going to the bathroom.
• Answer every question with another question.
• As soon as one of you says a statement instead of a question, shout “I win!”.
• Any time a member of the opposite sex tries to talk to you, hold your hand up to prevent them from saying anything and say, “Look, I know what you’re going to ask me… For the last time, no, I will NOT go out with you.”
• Arrive at a meeting late, say you’re sorry, but you didn’t have time for lunch, and you’re going to be nibbling during the meeting. Then eat raw potatoes.
• As much as possible, skip rather than walk.
• As people talk, smell their shoulders.
• Ask 1-800 operators for dates.
• Ask people to prove everything they say. (e.g. “I’m Bob, nice to meet you…” “PROVE IT!”)
• Ask people what gender they are.
• Ask the waitress for an extra seat for your “imaginary friend.”
• Ask to “interface” with someone.
• Ask your co-workers mysterious questions and then scribble their answers in a notebook. Mutter something about “psychological profiles.”
• At a golf tournament, chant “swing-batabatabata-suhWING-batter!”
• At a restaurant, repeatedly send your food back for changes and after awhile insist that, “This isn’t what I ordered!”
• At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.
• At random times in a conversation, say “Hi,” “Hello Sir, how are you?” or “Have a good day, thank you.”
• At the laundromat, use one dryer for each of your socks.
• Bark like a dog whenever anyone says the word “the.”
• Be “in conference” all the time.
• Before exiting the elevator, push all the buttons.
• Begin all your sentences with “Ohh la la!”
• Block the entrances of elevators, buses, and subways.
• Bring 15 things into the dressing room.
• Bring a portable CD player to a concert and listen the CD because you insist that it is “Just better quality”.
• Buy goldfish and ask the clerk if they come with chips.
• Buy it, wear it, return it.
• Buy large quantities of mint dental floss just to lick the flavor off.
• Call every girl you know “dude”.
• Call every pager number you know and leave the number for your local McDonalds.
• Call everyone a communist.
• Call into work and tell them you have something better to do today.
• Call other people “Champ” or “Tiger.”. Refer to yourself as “Coach.”
• Call someone and ask for someone that you know is not there then hang up. Call again about a half hour latter and ask for the same person then hang up again. Wait another half hour and call again and ask for that person again and then hang up again and wait a hour and call the same number and say that you are the person that you have been calling for and ask if you had any messages.
  Call the operator. When asked, “Can I help you?” reply, “No thanks, just browsing.”
• Call your neighbors collect.
• Change Channels five minutes before the end of every show.
• Change your name to “John Aaaaasmith” for the grea.t glory of being first in the phone book. Claim it’s a Hawaiian name, and demand that people pronounce each “a.”
• Chew on pens/pncils that you’ve borrowed.
  Claim that you must always wear a bicycle helmet as part of your “astronaut training.”
• Claim you are fluent in over 6 million forms of communication – constantly, every time any language is mentioned, even if the comment is not directed to you.
• Clear your throat every three or four words while speaking.
• Click your mechanical pencils or your pens during a test in school.
• Close your eyes and start snoring whenever anyone tries to talk to you.
• Consistently refer to everyone as ‘mortal.’
• Construct elaborate “crop circles” in your front lawn.
• Construct your own pretend “tricorder,” and “scan” people with it, pronouncing the results.
• Continually try to get all of the people who write you letters to put cellophane tape over their stamps so that you can wipe off the postmark and reuse them.
• Continue to ask someone, “Is this annoying? Is this annoying?” over and over and over.
• Continuously mumble during a conversation.
• Continuously open your briefcase or bag and say into it, “Have you got enough air in there?”
• Convince people you are deaf and talk in an incredibly phony sign language.
• Cultivate a Norwegian accent. If Norwegian, affect a southern drawl.
• Dance fast to slow music and vice-versa.

Declare your apartment an independent nation, and sue your neighbors upstairs for “violating your airspace.”

• Decline to be seated at a restaurant and simply eat their complimentary mints at the cash register.
• Dedicate your life to politics, become president of the United States, then raise all taxes to 90%.
• Deliberately hum songs that will remain lodged in co-workers’ brains, such as “Feliz Navidad,” the Archies’ “Sugar,” or the Mr. Rogers theme song.
• Demand that everyone address you as “Conquistador.”
• Determine how many cups of coffee is ‘too many’.
• Develop an unnatural fear of staplers.
• Develop strategies for cutting into the front of lines.
• Disagree strongly with everything anybody says.
• Disassemble your pen and “accidentally” flip the ink cartridge across the room.
• Do not add any inflection to the end of your sentences, producing awkward silences with the impression that you’ll be saying more any moment.
• Don’t clean the dryer lint screen.
• Don’t leave a message at the beep, just hangup.
• Don’t rewind videocassettes before bringing them back.
• Don’t stand during hymns and anthems.
  dont use any punctuation
• Down a can of Coke in one drink and then burp loudly.
• Draw mustaches on posters.
• Dress like a “High-class rich person” and wash windows at random street corners.
• Dress only in clothes colored Hunter’s Orange.
• Drive half a block.
• Drum on every available surface.
• Drum your fingers during other people’s presentations.
• Eat out with friends and “forget” your wallet.
• Eat produce at the market; don’t buy it.
• E-mail Microsoft to tell them about bugs in Windows XP that aren’t actually there.
• Erect an elaborate network of ropes in your backyard, and tell the neighbors you are a “spider person.”
• Every time someone asks you to do something or says something to you ask “Is that a threat?”
• Every time someone asks you to do something, ask them if they want fries with that.
• Every time someone asks you to do something, ask them to sign a waiver.
• Every time you see a particular coworker, shout, “So we meet again!” and laugh evilly.
• Explain “the little green men” in detail to someone, and when they don’t believe you, accuse them of being one in disguise.
• Face the back when standing in an elevator.
  Fart in cramped places.
• Find out where your boss shops and buy exactly the same outfits. Always wear them one day after your boss does. (This is especially effective if your boss is the opposite gender.)
• Finish all your sentences with the words “in accordance with prophesy.”
• Finish each sentence with “Monkey See, Monkey Do”.
• Finish other people’s crossword puzzles.
• Finish the 99 bottles of beer song.
• Five days in advance, tell your friends you can’t attend their party because you’re not in the mood.
• Flirt with a friend’s spouse, lick your lips slowly, wink, etc.
• Follow a few paces behind someone, spraying everything they touch with a can of Lysol.
• For a relaxing break, get away from it all in the fish tank with a mask and snorkel.
• Force everyone to remove their shoes when they enter your office “to prevent contamination.”
• Forget the pooper scooper.
• “Forget” the punch line to a long joke, but assure the listener it was a “real hoot.”
• Frantically change the date on people’s computers back 50 years, and claim that you are trying to save humanity from the “Year 2000 Bug.”
• Get to know a friends bookie and place bets for them. Insist on keeping half of any money they win.
• Give a play-by-play account of a person’s every action in a nasal Howard Cosell voice.
• Give little kids clothes for their birthdays.
• Go canoeing and sing the Hawaii Five-0 theme.
• Go to a gumball machine insert coins until you have a matching pair of fake eyeballs. After attaining these, record the theme song of The Twilight Zone over and over again. Drive down the street wearing the eyeballs and playing The Twilight Zone theme very loud. When you get pulled over, leap into the passenger’s seat and claim, “He was here a minute ago, officer!”
• Go to a Metallica concert wearing a Michael Bolton T-Shirt.
• Go to a poetry recital and ask why each poem doesn’t rhyme.
• Go to a shoe store and try on every shoe, then say that you aren’t interested in buying shoes and leave.
• Go to McDonalds and ask for a BK Whopper.
• Go up the down escalator.
• Go up to a someone and say, “Are you annoyed by irrelevant questions?” And then walk away very quickly.
• Grin so wide it hurts your cheeks at every salesperson in town.
• Hang around national monuments all day, trying to get in other people’s vacation photos.
• Afterwards, give them your address and ask them to send you a print when they get them developed.
• Hide dairy products in inaccessible places.
• Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and “cc:” them to your boss.
• Hold the elevator until you have finished your conversation.
• Holler random numbers while someone is counting.
• Honk and wave to strangers.
• Hum songs that will remain lodged in co-workers brains, such as “Feliz Navidad”, the Archies “Sugar” or the Mr. Rogers theme song.
• In an office, lock all the doors behind you.
• In the memo field of all your checks, write “for sensual massage.”
• Incessantly recite annoying phrases, such as “sticky wicket isn’t cricket.”
• Inform everyone you meet of your personal Kennedy assassination, UFO, and OJ Simpson conspiracy theories.
• Inform others that they exist only in your imagination.
• Insist completely ridiculous things are true – like Bush is still President.
• Insist on buying airplane tickets for friends to “save them money.” Make sure the plane departs at 5AM and the tickets are non-refundable. Point out that you didn’t really save them any money.
• Insist on giving weather forecasts in public. Claim to be AMS certified.
• Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions “to keep them tuned up.”
• Insist that Celine Dion is better than the Beatles.
• Insist that it was Bobby who shot J.R.
• Insist that your e-mail address be zena_goddess_of_fire@companyname.com
• Instead of singing 99 bottles of beer on the wall, sing 999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall!
• Invent nonsense computer jargon in conversations, and see if people play along to avoid the appearance of ignorance.
• Invite lots of people to other people’s parties.
• Keep changing the TV channel every two seconds.
• Learn “Ice Ice Baby” by heart and recite it endlessly.
• Learn Morse code, and have conversations with friends in public consisting entirely of “Beeeep Bip Bip Beeeep Bip…”
• Leave lipstick prints on people’s cheeks and foreheads.
• Leave pages in the copier.
• Leave someone’s printer in compressed-italic-landscape mode.
• Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 99 copies.
• Leave the outdoor Christmas decorations up until March or April.
• Leave the toilet seat up.
• Leave tips in Bolivian currency.
• Leave your Christmas lights up and lit until September.
• Leave your Metallica CD in Great Uncle Ed’s stereo, with the volume properly adjusted.
• Leave your pantyhose hanging in the shower.
• Leave your supermarket cart on the street or in the parking lot.
• Leave your turn signal on for fifty miles.
• Let doors slam behind you — in other people’s faces.
• Lick the filling out of all the Oreos, and place the cookie parts back in the tray.
• Lie obviously about trivial things such as the time of day.
• Lie to your therapist.
• Light road flares on a birthday cake.
• Listen to 33RPM records at 45RPM speed, and claim the faster speed is necessary because of your “superior mental processing.”
• Look at your hand in amazement and say, “Whoa, I never knew I had this!”
• Loudly recite people’s most embarrassing secrets in restaurants.
• Make appointments for the 31st of September.
• Make beeping noises when a large person backs up.
• Make scary faces at babies.
• Make up nicknames for all your coworkers and refer to them only by these names. “That’s a good point, Sparky.” “No I’m sorry I’m going to have to disagree with you there, Chachi.” (Hmmm, I guess our President has already co-opted this idea!)
• Move people’s bookmarks ahead three pages when they aren’t looking.
• Mow your carpet. (Or preferably somebody else’s)
• Mow your lawn with scissors.
• Name your dog “Dog.”
• Never break eye contact.
• Never make eye contact.
• Occasionally bark in a high-pitched voice.
• On a hot summer day, ride up and down the road and drench pedestrians with squirt guns.
• On a night other than Halloween, get a few friends together and dress like Jason from Friday the 13th. Have each of you stand a mile apart on a highway.
• On buses, attempt to convince the driver to take a really cool short-cut you know. Barter and haggle for your fare.
• On the public bus, keep asking the driver nervously, “are we there yet?”
  only type in lowercase.
• ONLY TYPE IN UPPERCASE.
• Open umbrellas in crowded hallways.
• Order a pizza and ask them if they can “please put the crust on top this time” in an exasperated voice.
• Order a side of pork rinds with your filet mignon.
• Outloud say “What?” and then answer “Never mind. It’s gone now.”
• Page yourself over an intercom, but don’t disguise your voice.
• Pay for your dinner with pennies.
• Pay tolls with $100 bills.
• Pee in the swimming pool.
• Phone McDonald’s and try to make a reservation for that evening.
• Phone random numbers and tell them you are holding their daughter hostage.
• Pick your ear wax and ask if you could use their sleeve to wipe it off.
• Pinch all the chocolate candies until you find the one you want.
• Place your shoes on the table.
• Play the electric guitar very loudly and badly, then when the neighbors ask you to turn it down, play even louder. When they come round to complain again, say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you asked me to turn it up!
• Plead with the person next to you for the window seat on the plane, and then get up fifteen or twenty times during the course of the flight complaining that you should have taken two spoonsful of “The Pink Stuff”.
• Poke anyone near you and say, “stop violating my personal space.”
• Pose as a client at a bank or other professional institution, and when you are seated in front of their desk, keep rearranging the items on top into different patterns and tell them you are “just reorganizing things.”
• Practice making fax and modem noises.
• Practice the art of limp handshakes.
• Press the “power” button on on someone’s computer or keyboard when they’re almost finished typing up a long essay, story etc. Apologize sincerely, claiming that you thought it was the focus adjustment.
• Pretend you are invisible.
• Pretend you have gone completely deaf.
• Pretend your computers mouse is a CB radio, and talk to it.
• Pretend your mouse is a CB radio, and talk into it.
• Pretend you’re listening.
• Produce a rental video consisting entirely of FBI copyright warnings.
• Publicly investigate just how slowly you can make a “croaking” noise.
• Push all the flat Lego pieces together tightly.
• Put a title like Senator or Doctor before your name when making dinner and hotel reservations.
• Put decaf in the coffeemaker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
• Put everyone on speakerphone.
• Put your garbage can on your desk and label it ‘IN’.
• Race the old woman for the last bus seat.
• Rain on someone’s parade.
• Read over other people’s shoulders on the bus.
• Rearrange the keys on associates’ keyboards to spell unflattering things about their mothers.
• Recite every song from the Playstation games PaRappa the Rapper and Um Jammer Lammy.
• Recite Shakespearian poetry to everyone you meet.
• Recite the first 100 decimal places of Pi. Then ask if people want to hear it in binary, too.
• Remove single socks from laundry machines at public laundromats. Replace them bright red scarves which are especially prone to bleeding.
• Repeat everything someone says as a question.
• Repeat the following conversation a dozen times: “Do you hear that?”, “What?”, “Never mind, it’s gone now.”
• Reply to everything someone says with “that’s what YOU think.”
• Ride a unicycle to work.
• Ride on the shoulder until you pass all the jammed traffic; then cut in.
• Run around holding your elbows and asking people to please take the straightjacket off you.
• Run through the halls of your office building or school with your arms outstretched, making airplane noises. Periodically crash into pedestrians and lose a wing. Spiral to a crash and repeat.
• Sample every flavor of ice cream and tell the clerk what you don’t like about each one.
• Say to people, “Did you wear deodorant today?”
• Scuff your feet on a dry, shaggy carpet and seek out victims.
• Secretly learn to play the piano, then go to a friend’s house who has a piano. Claim you’ve never played before then play Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring perfectly the first time. Then say, “I guess I must kinda be a natural.”
• See if you can be the first one off the plane, even if you are sitting by the window.
• Select the same song on the jukebox fifty times.
• Send e-mail to the rest of the company to tell them what you’re doing. For example: ‘If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the bathroom.”
• Send e-mail to yourself engaging yourself in an intelligent debate about the direction of one of your agency’s programs. Forward the mail to a co-worker and ask her to settle the disagreement.
• Send emails to listserv when nobody else can.
• Send people annoying chain forwards with outrageous consequences like “If you don’t send this to 300 people in 4 seconds you will die instantly” and then insist that it is true and it happened to your uncle.
• Serve corn on the cob to people with dentures.
• Serve TV dinners, wine coolers, and Twinkies on Thanksgiving.
• Set alarms for random times.
• Shake with your left hand.
• Sharpen All your pencils to the same size EXACTLY.
• Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your ears.
• Sing along at the opera.
• Sing the “This is the song that never ends” song from Lampchop’s Play-Along.
• Sing the Batman theme incessantly.
• Sit in the home bleachers and cheer for the other team.
• Slap people and tell them to stop grabbing your ass.
• Smell smoke often and announce it.
• Snap your gum.
• Sniffle incessantly.
• Speak in a strong Welsh accent.
• Speak so quietly that people always have to get you to repeat it.
• Specify that your drive-through order is “to go.”
• Spend all day at a fast food restaurant and see how long it takes before you have to pay for your “free” refills.
• Spend an entire weekend pretending you are R2-D2.
• Spread fertilizer on half your neighbor’s lawn.
• Squeeze the toothpaste from the top, and while you’re at it, leave the cap off.
• Stand on a busy corner. Gasp, look and point up. See how many people look.
• Stand over someone’s shoulder, mumbling as they read.
• Staple papers in the middle of the page.
• Stare at people for about five minutes, making sure they know you’re staring at them. Then, slowly sneak up to them while humming the Mission: Impossible theme. Sniff their head, then run away. Repeat.
• Stare at static on the TV and claim you can see a “magic picture.”
• Start each meal by conspicuously licking all your food, and announce that this is so no one will “swipe your grub.”
• Start to build a Star Destroyer. Build a mock-up out of popsicle sticks.
• Step on the back of the shoe of the person in front of you.
• Step on the heels of the person in front of you, and ask them to watch where they’re going.
• Stomp on little plastic ketchup packets.
• Surprise old friend’s by visiting them at 3AM “to discuss old times”.
• Switch your neighbor’s lawn furniture with someone else’s.
• Tailgate the elderly.
• Take more than 10 items to the express checkout lane.
• Take off the eraser to every pencil in your house, or better yet, someone else’s house.
• Take photos of people walking down the street and then run away.
• Tap someone on the shoulder repeatedly.
• Tape a blank piece of typing paper to your dorm or office door and leave it up for ages; when someone finally writes on it, yell at them and tell them to please not deface your property.
• Tape pieces of “Sweating to the Oldies” over climatic parts of rental movies.
• Tell everyone you are Bill Clinton’s cousin.
• Tell little children the truth about Santa Claus.
• Tell people that they’re “putting on weight nicely.”
• Tell people their accent isn’t fooling anyone.
• Tell people their fly is down when they’re wearing sweatpants.
• Tell people they have bad breath.
• Tell small children that they don’t look very promising.
• Tell teenagers how things were in your day.
• Tell the ending of movies.
• Throw an Oh Henry in a public pool.
• Throw newspapers back at paperboys.
• Throw stones at people walking past your house.
• Tie jingle bells to all your clothes.
• Touch strangers.
• Try playing the William Tell Overture by tapping on the bottom of your chin. When nearly done, announce “No, wait, I messed it up,” and repeat.
• Try to fit the word “cornucopia” into every sentence you say.
• Unbend all the paperclips you can find, then replace every eraser you can find with a rubber band.
• Use the last square of toilet paper and do not change the roll.
• Vacuum your lawn. (Or preferably somebody else’s)
• Wait until you get to work to shave.
• Walk around at the casino, looking at people’s hands and giving them advice loudly. “Wow, that’s a GOOD one!” or “Get rid of the nine; you’ve got a pair of kings!”
• Walk into people’s houses, go straight to the fridge without saying hello, and help yourself to their food.
• Walk up to random people and ask them, very seriously, “Do you know the muffin man?”
• Walk up to random strangers insisting you are family.
• Walk up to someone eating. Lean over and stare at them intently until they notice. Continue to do so until they ask what you’re doing. Reply, “I’ve been watching you eat for the last 30 seconds.
• You’re weird!” Leave the restaurant.
• Walk very slowly, and make sure nobody can get past you, move in front of them when the try.
• Wander around a restaurant, asking other diners for their parsley.
• Wash and scrub the trees in your front lawn.
• Wear a cape that says “Magnificent One.”
• Wear a lot of cologne.
• Wear a special hip holster for your remote control.
• Wear alarming combinations of pink and green and comment about everybody else’s fashion sense.
• Wear large hats during the movies.
• Wear nothing but white and go mud wrestling.
• Wear odd shoes.
• Wear your cap backwards and say “Yo, wazzup?” a lot.
• Wear your pants backwards.
• When a cop pulls you over, when they step up to your car, drive forward slowly and make them walk. Especially if it’s raining.
• When at an ATM, try to have a conversation with it, or pretend it stole your card. (This works best if there’s a line.)
• When at dinner at a fancy restaurant, keep blowing out the candle in the middle of the table, and blame it on your date.
• When Christmas caroling, sing “Jingle bells, Batman smells” until physically restrained.
• When giving directions, leave out a turn or two.
• When in a chat room, spell everything incorrectly.
• When in a conversation, look out the window, then say “Wait, start over. I wasn’t paying attention.”
• When in an elevator, in different voices, shout out random floors, and then watch as you get there, no one gets off.
• When in public, pretend you are selling something in an infomercial.
• When it says, “Reserved Parking”, this means you.
• When people ask you to do things, mutter under your breath, “This won’t be neccessary where you are going.”
• When riding up an elevator with a stranger, start singing a song that everyone knows, then expect them to start singing too. If they do not start singing, insist, “Everyone knows that song. Are you stupid?”
• When standing near a “high-class person,” ask them, “Excuse me, but do I have a booger hanging on my nose? I thought I picked it off.”
• When talking to someone, look at a spot about two inches to their right.
• When walking down a main road, act like a drunk.
• When walking push an invisible cart and make loud squeaky noises.
• When walking, talk to yourself constantly.
• When you’re in an argument, no matter what it’s about, keep yelling “I don’t see your name on it!”.
• Whenever anybody says anything to you. Respond by saying, “I know.”
• Whenever anyone says something, laugh loudly as if they have just told and extremely funny joke.
• Whenever somebody says something, ask what the simplest word they said means. When they explain, ask what the simplest word in their explanation means. Repeat this for the entire conversation.
• Whenever someone finishes a sentence say, “And then what happened?”
• Whenever someone lights a cigarette, tackle the person and yell “Stop, drop, and roll!”
• While driving if you see a “How am I driving” bumper sticker, call the number and inform the operator that the driver is doing a great job.
• While going down in an elevator scream, “AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!! WE’RE GONNA DIE!!!” for no apparent reason.
• While making presentations, occasionally bob your head like a parakeet.
• While sitting at your desk, soak your fingers in Palmolive and put mosquito netting around your cubicle.
• While walking make car noises loudly (Such as changing gears).
• Wire up people’s cars so the horn comes on as soon as their car is started.
• Write “X – BURIED TREASURE” in random spots on all of someone’s roadmaps.
• Write the surprise ending to a novel on its first page.

SOURCE: Getannoyed.com

Yes, it’s come to this. The same people you raked on in high school now run the world and control every gizmo you own or want to own. And, as you hold your “normal” identity throughout your life, there are times when it may be advantageous to pose as a geek. Maybe to convince your first date that you have job prospects beyond “Walmart clerk”. Maybe to slip in the door at Comdex. Perhaps even to escape being hacked to death by the evil-looking punks at the Internet cafe, the ones with the Tux penguin tattoos and the Mohawks who are eying your laptop. Hint: They don’t like you because of the suit and tie; they HATE that!

Well, fear not, hopeless lamer, I, a certified geek, will give you a rundown of how to pass as a geek for brief moments. Understand, these tactics will in no way work over the long term, like, say, a marriage. But in quick social exchanges, or to bamboozle your cow-orker, these tricks should work sufficiently to help you fool the rest of us into thinking that you’re one of us:

One of the chief attributes of geeks, and intellectuals in general, is attitude. No, attitude doesn’t MAKE you a geek, but that’s not the point of this article. The point here is to FAKE it. And to fake it, you have to feign interests and opinions, and then be smugly confident that your “choices” are superior to the mainstream’s.

Scott Adams, creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip, has a chapter in one of his books about enhancing your aura at work by posing as a “prima-donna”, which is very similar in tactics to this article. Here again, it’s all about the pretended-to attitude.

What defines geeks the most is the range of interests. Use these tricks to speak in the tribal tongue of geeks:

Math: Of course, if you have a calculator, use it. Geeks do that, too. It isn’t about being able to do complex calculations in your head; it’s about using the techie tools to free up your brain for less mundane functions. And by all means, top the other person in arcanity of equipment. If they have a Radio Shack, whip out a Texas Instruments. If they have a Texas Instruments, unclip your slide-rule. Facing a slide-rule? They make portable abacuses! Slide your beads around on your abacus and comment how you saw these things in a whole new light after you read Feynman about computing cube roots on them.

Primes: All prime numbers end in 1, 3, 7, and 9. Just remember those numbers, and look at the last digit of prices, bus numbers, etc. When you encounter one, remark to your companion, “Hey, I think that’s prime”. Odds are good, provided the number is short enough, that you’ll be right. When you work it out on the calculator, even if you were wrong, you will at least get points for the informed hunch.

Counting bases: Learn these words: Binary, Octal, Hexadecimal. Binary is ones and zeros. Octal uses zero thru seven. Hexadecimal uses all the standard numbers, plus the letters A through F. Upon encountering, say, a phone number 455-6102, ask, “Is that in decimal or octal?” Point at the license plate AD3 61F and comment that that’s a number in “hex”. Motel rooms on the first floor, such as 101, 110, etc. are prompts to point and chuckle: “Look, they even number in binary!” It doesn’t matter that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Don’t go out on a limb and try to convert to normal numbers.

Computer Systems: That elite snobbery comes out the hardest in this subject. It’s easy, all you have to do is pretend to hate the mainstream choices: Windows, AOL, Intel. Assert Windows is inferior to (pick one or more) Linux, Unix, BeOS, or Macintosh. Act sympathetic upon hearing an email addy ending in “@AOL.com” and say, “Any idea when they’re gonna put cable modem in your area?” Snort at Intel commercials and chortle “Give me an AMD Duron any day!” It doesn’t matter, again, that you have no idea what you’re talking about. When challenged for an explanation, pick any random nonsense and string it together. Insist that your choice is faster, more secure, less expensive, conductive to open source, more efficient, or whatnot. This is exactly how real live conversations between geeks defending their favorite software/hardware go all the time. The point is that you’re faking an opinion. Like any random geek, you could still be full of hooey.

Now, when it comes to operating systems, the Geekosphere (I coined it! It’s mine! You heard it here first!) has jelled around Linux and BSD. When it comes to Linux distros, you win points the older and more obscure your distro is. Simply look up the history of computing and pick machines and systems going back in 5-year increments; or just learn this phrase: “I run Yggdrasil on a PDP-11. Boy, it was a bitch installing all that from tape!” You’ll need a snorkel to breathe underneath the pile of groupies that will sack you. *Any* BSD distro is obscure. The mere name “BSD 386″ instantly repels suits like garlic repels vampires.

Software: Games: Any popular computer game will do just fine here, but tend to shy away from the “Sim” genre. Some geeks like Sims, some don’t. But almost any geek has at least taken a crack at any game ending in “quest” or “craft”, and first-person-shooters. Bonus for enthusing about Myst, Schizm, etc. Claim to have solved Riven in a single day. RPGs stand for Role Playing Games, and there’s about 999 flavors of them, and they all copy the original Dungeons and Dragons game. The upshot is that if you mumble something about your level 97 (human | troll | elf | hobbit | orc | halfling) (rogue | ranger | warrior | wizard | mage | necromancer | priest | dunadin | paladin), you will easily pass for a devotee of (Rogue | Nethack | Angband | Diablo | DandD-Classic) without too much trouble.

Applications: While there is the obvious prejudice for emacs, vi, Gimp, Adobe, Mozilla, Firefox, and etc., you’re just as well off here letting the other person name a software tool that they use, then caw, “Get a REAL program!”

Programming: Learn not only the names of these programming languages, but the order in which I present them: Basic, Cobol, Pascal, Ada, C, Java, Lisp, Perl, Python, Ruby, Assembler. These are listed in order of “least cool” to “most cool”. Now you know what to do. Whenever the person you’re talking to name-drops any language on this list, simply pick the next one and assert that this is what YOU prefer. What to do if you meet an assembler programmer? Act like any other geek: impressed! Bug them to teach you how to write a tic-tac-toe game that uses artificial intelligence in assembler. Stand and pretend to absorb their explanation in one shot. Shake your head in marvel and mutter, “And all that time, I was trying to do it the hard way!”

Here’s another thing if you’re out-trumped by somebody who knows multiple programming languages, including the coolest: make one up! Yes, it’s true, there are more languages and variants out there than any human being could possibly keep track of, and new ones get invented all the time. Just call it something like “B/arg3″ or “Modico” and claim that it combines the best features of (insert random language #1) and (insert random language #2). The geek you’re talking to will simply assume that they’ve missed the relevant Slashdot articles. Cover up line: “It just reached ‘break-even’ point last month.”

Pretend you like these: TV shows: Babylon V, Star Trek, Carnivale. When you meet a B5 fan, claim ST. Claim B5 to ST fans. Meet a fan of both, ask if they’ve seen Carnivale. No, Carnivale isn’t true geek fare, but it’s high-brow enough that you’ll pass as one who has “burnt out” on the science fiction genre temporarily. Gain extra points by dropping “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or “X-Files” into the conversation. Avoid “Sliders” and “Quantum Leap”, they died on cancellation. Don’t even claim affection for “Firefly”, because Firefly is so supercool, even it’s fans disown it for fear of being flamed by the other fans. It’s like the name of a diety: never say it out loud.

Movies: Original Star Trek movies, Lord of the Rings movies (but be sure to mention that they came CLOSE to re-creating the books), Highlander, the Fifth Element, Minority Report, Blade Runner, Alien (deny ever having seen the sequels), Sneakers, marginal reference to the Star Wars series (all geeks have seen Star Wars movies, but seldom RAVE about them), any Monty Python movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and anime. Beware of wanna-be fodder that’s marketed to geeks (and which some geeks, sadly, fall for), such as Hackers, Trekies, Wargames, Short Circuit, and The Matrix series. And whatever you do, don’t use the Rocky Horror one unless you’re sure that the other person _isn’t_ a Rocky Horror fan, because the last thing you want to do is be caught not having every single line, song, and nuance from this movie memorized.

Hobbies: The more obscure, the better. You can always start out with the standard model-building, model railroads, chess, Medievalism. But since geeks love being narrow, beleaguered minorities, don’t let that stop you from picking increasingly more esoteric interests, until you’re assured that the person you’re talking to will never be able to trip you up on cross examination. Instead of crossword, say cryptic. Instead of chess, say go. Instead of tennis, say fencing. Best is to find something that NOBODY ELSE IN THE ROOM HAS HEARD OF. Including interests of your own sole invention. Tell me “I collect cephalopod footprint fossils.” doesn’t hush the room.

Books to leave out on the coffee table: Comics: Dilbert, Bloom County, The 5th Wave, The Far Side, and ANY super-hero comic, Marvel being preferably cooler to DC. What matters in comic books isn’t which one, but that you, a grown adult with a job, like ANY of them enough to own one.

Other: Any book with pictures of the following on the cover: robots, vampires, barbarians, castles, aliens, UFOs, other planets, mythical beings (i.e. elves, unicorns, dragons), galaxies, spaceships, and equations. Bonus points acquire for each of these items on the cover of the same book. It doesn’t matter what the title is, or whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

Science names to drop: Buckminster Fuller, Richard Feynman, Stephen W. Hawking, Isaac Asimov, Benjamin Franklin, Blaise Pascal. Einstein is too mainstream.

Good luck, and remember to think of me when you get to third base with that Silicon Valley groupie!

Source: How to Totally Fake Being a Geek