a is for awesome, b is for badass - j

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Interrupting starfish.

Interrupting star-

Woah, I think you might have just been hit in the face. And, yes – my hand did look exactly like a starfish at that moment.

This is just the best joke ever. And I have been around jokes, I can tell you. Some people may regard me as a bit of a joke, but frankly, that’s just rude and I don’t have to put up with that sort of thing. Back to happier subjects – the interrupting starfish being the happiest of them all. I’m serious, especially about jokes.

The unparalleled joy I feel at smashing an unsuspecting loved-one, acquaintance or stranger full in the face with a starfish-shaped hand, is something to witness. You might not want to be on the receiving end, but that is the awesomest seat in the house, the only way to fly, and just downright fit.

The starfish joke just never gets old… for me. As the poor fellow interrupted by my hand’s exuberant portrayal of a five-armed echinoderm, you may find it a little wearing by the sixth or seventh time. But stick with it, jokes are only really funny after you’ve got really tired of them.  You may disagree – you might be one of those naysayers who think that jokes stop being funny after several hundred retellings. You are simply uninitiated into the secret that jokes actually get funnier after they get really, really lame.

The life cycle of a joke is much like that of a butterfly:

• The joke itself is the caterpillar – it moseys around being a funny little thing, and being jolly good at it. Everyone’s having fun, being humourous and eating their weight in leaves, until suddently it all gets weird.
• Then comes the awkward pupal stage where the joke has lost its pizzazz, it’s just not funny anymore, it’s just sitting there like a strange metamorphosising insect in some kind of disgusting cocoon, getting in the way and not making anyone laugh. At this point you can either give up, or push on through.
• If you have the courage and determination to stay in the game, you shall be richly rewarded when the joke awakes from suspended animation, as a beautiful butterfly from a chrysalis. It has somehow morphed into a classic – a joke we tell, because it is a joke we tell. It’s funny because it’s hilarious, and on and on in a twirling dance of cyclical reasoning.

I think most people who have met me, ever, have experienced the interrupting starfish joke at least once. If we want to achieve the butterfly stage then you all need to get more pro-active about getting hit in the face. Some of you may have already graduated to stage two – the stage of the disgusting pupae. You can be pretty proud of yourselves, but we mustn’t rest on our laurels, decadently delicious as that would be. We must move forward into the final stage, and in order to do so, we all need to get better.

I need to improve the frequency of the starfishing, and you need to get better at being hit in the face. Only then with the interrupting starfish joke reach its rightful place in the great hierarchy of jokes.

That’s not too much to ask, is it?