Read the jokes and answer following questions:
- Which of them do you find the best? Why?
- Is there some joke you do not understand? Why?
- Are jokes about weather popular? Why? Do you know some similar jokes? Tell it to
your friends.
- Do you experience some strange and funny situation connected with weather
conditions? Can you turn it into joke?
- What is the logic behind these jokes? What are they mostly based upon?
- What are typical stereotypes connected with weather and its forecasting? Can you find
them in these jokes? Are English/American stereotypes same as Czech ones?
- Do Czech and English/American jokes about weather differ? How?
Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get!
***
It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a new Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?"
"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded.
So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter?"
"Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter."
The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"
"Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever."
"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked.
***
Although he was a qualified meteorologist, Hopkins ran up a terrible record of forecasting for the TV news program. He became something of a local joke when a newspaper began keeping a record of his predictions and showed that he'd been wrong almost three hundred times in a single year. That kind of notoriety was enough to get him fired. He moved to another part of the country and applied for a similar job. One blank on the job application called for the reason for leaving his previous position. Hopkins wrote, "The climate didn't agree with me."
*** Canadian Summers...
- Hi, did you have a good Summer?
***
A husband and his wife were sound asleep when suddenly the phone rang.
The husband picked up the phone and said, "Hello? How the heck do I know? What do I look like, a weatherman?" He then slammed the phone down and settled into bed.
"Who was that?" asked his wife.
"I don't know. It was some guy who wanted to know if the coast was clear." ***
If you are standing in the main street of Amsterdam, and can't see the clock tower of the Central Railway Station that means it is raining. If you can see the clock tower that means it is about to rain.
***
A newcomer to Seattle arrives on a rainy day. He gets up the next day and it's raining. It also rains the day after that, and the day after that. He goes out to lunch and sees a young kid and asks out of despair, "Hey kid, does it ever stop raining around here?" The kid says, "How do I know? I'm only 6."
***
You re hiking around on Hampsted Heath (a park near London) at the end of a long sunny day. You run across (separately) the ghosts of Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Baden Powell, and Sir Edmund Hillary, who all give you directions to the nearest tube stop. Whom don’t you believe? Your story teller, for there is no such thing as a completely sunny day in England.
***
Why do mother kangaroos hate rainy days? Because then the children have to play inside. ***
Two Viking invaders are trudging up the beach in the pouring rain. One looks skywards and says, “So this is England. What’s it like?” The other snarls, “Well, if you like the weather, you ll love the food.”
***
There’s a technical term for a sunny, warm day which follows two rainy days. It’s called Monday.
Why is the sky not happy on clear days? It has the blues ***
According to a news story, if global warming continues, in 20 years the only chance we'll have to see a polar bear is in a zoo. So, for most of us, nothing is going to change.
***
Farmer Brown: "Did you lose much in that last tornado?"
three new cows and a pick-up truck."
