While we were walking from Yeouido to the Gayang Bridge, JW told me this riddle, which only speakers of Korean are likely to get:
Q: The coronavirus vaccine is still a year away, so why haven't any Korean Buddhist monks gotten sick?
A: Because they already have their 백신 (baekshin).
Sigh... riddles are no fun when you have to explain them, and JW had to explain this one to me, although after I heard the explanation, I realized I should have gotten the humor the first time around. The riddle plays on the phonetic resemblance between the English "vaccine"—pronounced "baek-shin" with a Korean accent—and the Korean word baekshin, literally "white shoe." A baekshin is a white gomushin, i.e., a simple, traditional shoe made of gomu, or rubber (cf. the French word gomme, used for erasers, chewing gum, rubber, etc.). Here are some pics of traditional gomushin and baekshin.
So the monks aren't sick with COVID-19 because, well, they've already got their baekshin (white-rubber shoes/vaccines).
Go ahead and groan.
JW is a dad twice over, and I feel as if we're in dad-joke territory.
Saturday, April 04, 2020
JW's joke
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3 comments:
That one's old news--I already heard that last week!
Yep, it's hard work keeping on top of all the latest groaners.
Despite baekshin's being old news, I'm amazed at how quick people are to formulate jokes and riddles in the face of a crisis.
I remember the first morbid jokes about the Challenger crash coming out about a week or so after the disaster. The last thing Christa McAuliffe told her family before heading out the door was that she had to go feed the fish. Wasn't it Alan Alda's character in "Crimes and Misdemeanors" who says that "comedy equals tragedy plus time"?
Ah—just saw that Reddit has an archive of Challenger riddles. Here are a few:
Q) Where did Christa McAuliffe spend her vacation?
A) All over Florida.
Q) What color were Christa McAuliffe's eyes?
A) Blue: one blew this way, one blew that way.
Q) What was the last thing Christa McAuliffe told her husband?
A) "You take care of the dog and cat; I'll feed the fish."
Q) What were Christa McAuliffe's last words?
A) "What does this button do?"
Q) Did Christa McAuliffe have dandruff?
A) Yes. They found her Head and Shoulders washed up on shore.
I hate to say it, but I probably told all of those Christa McAuliffe jokes at one point or another.
As for "comedy equals tragedy plus time," I always heard it being attributed to Carol Burnett, but apparently the earliest example in print is from Steve Allen.
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