The philosophy of snail jokes.

My BBC posting yesterday led to well-wishes from my father-in-law (he had forgotten about it, but reads this blog regularly... oh, oh, no father-in-law jokes then).

And from Nick, some banter on now that I have been a sexagenarian for a year, I must be getting "sexier"... at least until I hit 70.

For today, I'm staying with my newfound fascination with snails... there are a number of snail jokes out there. I like this one:

Man turns up at a fancy dress party with a woman clinging to his back.

"What are you?" the host asks.

A snail, he says.

"And what is your friend?"

Oh, that's MICHELLE.

But, really, there is a philosophical side to snail jokes. They may be used to illustrate perceptions of the relativity of time. Hence, the term "snail mail" has been coined to contrast with "email" (electronic mail). So, while the jokes below may seem corny, there's a cheem (serious) side to them...

* A snail turns up at a police station to report that he has just been mugged and robbed.
"It was two turtles! They beat me up and took my money!" the snail says.
The officer on duty asks, "Did you get a good look at them?"
The snail replies, "No! It all happened so fast!"

* A snail goes into a bar and orders a beer. The barman says "We don't serve snails here" and throws him out.

A couple of weeks later, the snail turns up again. "Why did you do that for?" he asks in a bewildered voice.

* A variation of the above is this one:
A man is watching his favourite TV show when he hears a knock at the door. But when he answers, there is no one there. Just as he's about to close the door, he hears a small voice say, "Excuse me sir, could I interest you in a set of encyclopaedias?" He looks down and sees a snail on his doorstep.

Angered at being dragged away from his TV programme by a snail selling encyclopaedias, he kicks the poor snail off his front steps and into the garden, before returning inside.

Several weeks later, there's a knock at the door. He answers the door to find the snail, who asks, "Why did you do that for?"

* Why did the snail cross the road?
I don't know but I'll let you know when it gets here (version 1).
To get to the Shell station (version 2).

* Escargot (pronounced ess-kar-go) is the French word for snail. Hence this joke (which I like since it differs from the typical "snail's pace" jokes):
Monsieur snail goes to a Peugeot showroom to purchase his first car. The snail tells the saleman that he wants an S painted on the sides of his car. The saleman asks why? The snail replies, "When I drive down the road, people will say look at that S Car go."