Our current task, as Serious Bloggers, is to pass judgment upon whether the Muffin Joke is funny. Here is the joke itself:
So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, “Wow, it’s hot in here!”
And the other muffin replies: “Holy cow! A talking muffin!”
John Tierney (New York Times) thinks the Muffin Joke is not funny. Brad DeLong (Berkeley) disagrees, claiming that the Muffin Joke is, in fact, funny, although he offers no argument to support his conclusion. Jack Balkin (Yale) also finds the Muffin Joke funny, and does offer a rationale:
The muffin joke is funny because it is self-undermining. The punch line undermines the suspension of disbelief that the joke’s narrative presumes. It is kind of like breaching the fourth wall in drama. It’s like the line in Dr.Strangelove “You can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!” or the Atheist Hymn we came up with in high school: “There is no God, there is no God, He told me so himself.”
He admits, however, that by offering this explanation, he has thereby wrung all of the funniness out of the Muffin Joke. That’s as may be.
I come down on the pro-Muffin-Joke side of the debate. To me, it’s quite funny. Is this some sort of Ivory-Tower Academics vs. Hard-Nosed Journalists thing?
I felt vaguely insulted by the Times article, since I’ve always loved the muffin joke. I agree with Jack, that the key to the funniness is that the absurdity of what the second muffin says.
While it pains me to agree with Tierney, in this case, I have to say, the muffin joke left me cold. Balkin’s rationale in favor of the funny correctly identifies the kind of humor the joke is aiming for. I just think it falls short of that target. The quote from Dr. Strangelove? Now THAT’s funny…
wtf, this is my favorite joke. Now, with all the publicity I won’t be able to tell it any more =(.
Count me as funny.
I hadn’t heard it before. But I laughed. I think it’s very funny.
I find it quite similar to the Mad Cow joke: Two cows are sitting in a field. One cow says to the other “Have you heard about this Mad Cow’s diesease that has been going around?” and the second cow replies “Really? How awful! Thank goodness I’m a helicopter”.
But I think the muffin joke is more funny 🙂
It’s funny. The obvious conclusion is that Mr. Tierney just doesn’t have a good sense of humor.
I’ve heard it before, and yet I still laughed when I read it. And if I laughed, then it is funny. But then, I might just be tired, and things tend to be funnier when I’m tired.
There’s a funnier version, in which two talking sausages are in a frying pan. That’s the way I originally heard it, way back in the late nineties.
It’s funny, but I’ve heard better.
This is one of my favorite jokes. I find it funnier when the “cow” in “Holy Cow!” is replaced by the common English expletive for excrement, but I’ve found the joke to go over well in its current form when used in more polite circles or with children.
I find this quite funny. I do tend to respond very well to self-referential humor, and I’ve always assumed that was correlated with me being an academic.
Can’t say I dig the joke. My tastes run more offensive/absurd (think Conan O’Brien). There are some classic jokes about Abelian groups (link, scroll to bottom), but I feel compelled to change the jokes around just to anger my mathematician friends. For example:
It appeals to the genetically-inherited sense of humor in my family. Definitely funny.
“There is no God, there is no God, He told me so himself.”
and Dirac is his prophet.
This joke has been something of a litmus test with a group of friends from my undergrad years. We decided years ago (early ’00s, that is) that if someone thought this joke was funny, s/he must be good people. So clearly I’m in the funny camp.
Is “muffin” no longer used as a term of endearment in the cold cynical world, – you know, like “pumpkin” “petal” etc
Is it just quirky mums tell tales of what their little pumpkin got up to at play school, or conversations they overhead between “petal” and the girl next door.
PS – I take it they were english speaking muffins, or has the joke been translated.
Funny how jokes don’t travel well, they used to say that about wine too.
So Sean, is the Universe a muffin or a souffle?
Count me in the “funny” camp. It’s funny because it violates your expectations in a very absurd and angular way. Similar to my very favorite joke:
Q. What’s red and invisible?
A. No tomatoes.
A few years ago, a group in the UK tried to find the world’s funniest joke, and ended up discovering that humor preferences changed a lot by country- Americans and Australians prefer crude jokes, stuff like that. They also found that Europeans, particularly Germans, like jokes that are considered “surreal play on reality” and aren’t found particularly funny by many people who have culturally not been exposed to it, or something. (The muffin joke obviously fits in this category. By the way, I think it’s cute.)
For those who liked the muffin joke, here’s the joke that won in the “surreal play on reality” category. 😉
“A dog walks into a telegraph station and dictates his message to the operator. ‘Woof woof woof woof woof woof.’
‘It’s the same price for six or seven words,’ the operator says. ‘Would you like to add another “woof” for free?’
‘Of course not,’ says the dog, ‘that would make no sense at all!'”
#16 ‘So Sean, is the Universe a muffin or a souffle?’
Sorry for butting in, but I would say it is a souffle. Timing of the inflation is everything.
Is soooo funny.
I guess it’s all in the way you tell/read it though….
Hi kapakapa,
I hear a loud noise or Bang can make souffles go flat (like a pancake?)
Don’t know if a dog bark is loud enough
And I guess no muffin joke would be complete without a pic of a Muffin Top
definitely funny.
and to add another joke along these lines:
Two cows standing in a field.
A car drives past.
One cow says “mooooo!”
The second cow turns to the first and says,
“Bastard! I was going to say that!”
Stolen from a commenter on my own blog, whose name I forget:
Two fermions walk into a bar. The first one orders a gin and tonic. The second says “Dammit, that’s what I was going to have.”
Re: the muffin joke, I think it’s funny, but only once. And it’s not even that funny, if you’re familiar with the basic form.
(Another variant: Two seals are in a bathtub. One says to the other “Please pass the soap.” The other one says “I can’t type!”
(It’s not so much funny in its own right, is it is amusing to tell it to people and watch them try to figure it out.)
I used to watch the kids’ show “Zoboomafoo (with the Kratt Brothers)” with my son when he would wake up extra-early in the morning. At the end they always tell a silly joke, of the type
Q: What has 4 wheels and flies?
A: A garbage truck.
A great joke, but fairly ordinary. One morning they caught me off guard with a joke which made me laugh all day:
Q: How can you tell the difference between an ant and a hippopautimus?
A: The ant is easier to lift.
Sometimes, simply defying expectations can be wildly amusing. The muffin joke, while not quite the same, reminded me of the ant/hippo joke.