Yesterday brought another surreal ice-lolly joke. Someone is clearly trying to poison the minds of our children with this wanton surreality:
"When is a fin not a fin? When it's a dol-phin".
Admittedly, I can't think of a better punchline: "When it's a dorsal fin", or "When it's anterior" come to mind but don't quite work. But neither does this answer: I mean, dolphins do have fins. It's like someone has taken the classic joke "When is a door not a door? When it's ajar", and not really understood it. This does suggest a whole new unfunny type of joke: "When is a chair not a chair? When it's a chair-man" "When is a fish not a fish? When it's e-fish-ent" "When is a joke not a joke? When it makes no sense whatsoever", and so on.

Someone challenged my claim that punchlines taken in isolation can be just as amusing as the joke itself, if you've heard the joke before. So here are some punchlines; fill in the joke yourself:
i) "Yes, but Betty's got Parkinson's"
ii) "In Iraq"
iii) "When Tariq Aziz"
iv) "A stick"
v) "Oh, I thought you said "What about a water bottle, Waddle"
vi) "One of its legs is both the same"
vii) "With prices like this, I'm not surprised"

And so on. Much quicker than telling the whole joke.

Has anyone else played the same game that I've been playing today? You go to the website of a parcel delivery firm to track a package, and hit reload every five minutes as you see that the package has arrived at the depot... left the depot... out for delivery... until finally... delivery failed, recipient not in... because all this time you've been sat in an office watching your parcel on its way to your house where there's no one in? Does anyone know what the point of this game is, since you already know what the outcome is going to be?