1. The Holy Spirit does not descend from heaven in the form of a dove and miraculously transform bad jokes into good ones just because you decide to type them up and e-mail them to everybody and his dog.
2. You are the only person on the planet who has never seen 'The Hampster Dance' till today. Yes, we all know it's out there, and most of us wish it weren't. There's no need to remind us.
3 You don't really reckon that I have the time or inclination to sift through 300 of your emails every day, do you?
4. I outgrew little-Johnny jokes shortly before I turned 10 years old. I guess I just sort of took it for granted that everyone else did too.
5. Even the great David Letterman's own 'Top Ten Lists' have become pretty lame, of late. What, precisely, makes you think that yours aren't?
6. In all the years I've been alive, I've only ever heard one joke about Bill Clinton's penis that was even remotely amusing. Now, if I were a betting man, I'd bet that the one you're just about to send me isn't it.
7. 'Sniglets' died out in late 1980's, just about the same time that 'SCTV' went off the air. This was not actually a bad development.
8. Surely I can't be the only one who's noticed that the recipients of the 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999 'Darwin Awards' were all the same people?
9. It's not that I give a damn about political correctness. I just don't find racist jokes funny. Welcome to the 21st century, Bubba.
10. It's not 'funny because it's true'. It just happens to be true. There's a difference.
11. You're over the age of 18. You know how to operate a computer. You have a good job and car in the driveway. And you still don't know the difference between men and women?! Well, then, God help you, 'cos I won't.
12. The willing suspension of disbelief will carry your audience only so far and no further. Don't cross that line:
13. At an absolute minimum, political humour requires a razor-sharp satirical wit and a keen appreciation of the absurd. Thus, generally speaking, political humour spawned on the internet is never funny. The only real exceptions to this rule are jokes in which something crass and vile happens to Margaret Thatcher.
14. English people don't actually like American humour very much. This has never been a closely-guarded secret.
15. If I see that 'Internet Snowball Fight' message just one more fucking time, I shall attach a mind-bogglingly nasty virus to it, ship it out to everyone I know, and blame it on you. And then, dear friend, you'll really have a fight on your hands.
16. A personal invective for whomever is ultimately responsible for that '20 Different Varieties of Shit' email: Good lord, man. What's wrong with you?!
17. A personal invective for whomever transformed '20 Different Varieties of Shit' into '20 Different Varieties of Poopie': Listen, mate -- you lost the piety contest the minute you decided to discuss your anal secretions on the internet. So get off your high horse. No one likes a Holy Joe.
18. A brief parable: Once upon a time, there was an alternative comedy circuit that consisted of no more than two cockroach-laden bars down in London's Soho district, maybe one in Edinburgh, and a small coffee house in Seattle. Their best comedians were virtually unknown, had a rapacious appetite for defining the cutting edge, and produced the finest humour in the world, bar none. Then they all got cable-television contracts, killed the roaches, started pandering to the basest tastes of the common masses, and thereby ceased to be even vaguely entertaining. There are myriad lessons for Cyberspace to draw from this wee tale. 'Go, thou, and do likewise' does not happen to be one of them.
Write to the Old Curmudgeon. He cares.