Punctuation: It’s The Difference Between “Helping Your Uncle Jack, Off A Horse” and….
27 Jul, 2010 in Doodles, fnord, humor
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You Can Prick Your Finger,
But Don’t Finger Your Prick
It’s the more vile, 21st Century version of the old George Carlin bit, “You can prick your finger, but don’t finger your prick.” from Class Clown. This doodle made me laugh, so I share my humor (well, Very Demotivational’s humor) with you… dopia. 
Ooh! Ooh! I just thought of another one, “There’s horseplay, and there’s horse play.”
NB: I know this joke doesn’t really work, and the comma doesn’t matter. It’s a joke about jerking off a horse. Grammar Nazis verboten. Your point isn’t contested, now laugh at the horse. I have less offensive humor for you, as well. This is just about rock bottom, so it’s all uphill from here!
It’s funny, but really the comma after “Jack” doesn’t make sense unless there’s one after “Uncle” as well. “Helping your uncle, Jack, off his horse,” works. “Helping your Uncle Jack, off his horse,” doesn’t seem to.
You’re right, and I saw that, but I posted it anyway. One should allow a little leeway when making jokes about equine masturbation.
Oh, I fully agree. Equine masturbation humor is far too serious a topic to let ourselves be derailed by grammar.
The phrase I’ve always known is Capital Letters: The difference between “I helped my Uncle Jack off a horse” and “I helped my Uncle jack off a horse.” Makes more snese than the comma i’d say.
You’re right. The joke doesn’t stand up to examination.
I don’t have an Uncle Jack
If you don’t have an Uncle Jack, then maybe you are Uncle Jack. Shame on you.
True the joke doesn’t bare scrutiny. Nothing to add, apart from the comments made me laugh!
Thanks, Jo! This post has proven to be one of my top ten, consistently, since I wrote it. I hope you take a look around, and see if there’s enough to keep you coming back. Thank you for commenting.
The joke doesn’t necessarily fail due to the extra / missing comma. I would need to write “my uncle, Jack” only if I had but one uncle. If I have more than one uncle the name is a necessarily descriptor, not a parenthetical.
“I was speaking of my uncle Jack [not my uncle Bob].”
“I was speaking of my uncle, Jack [where Jack is my only uncle and you could remove the 'Jack' without losing the meaning].”
Not to be confused with “I was speaking of my uncle, Jack [and Jack is the name of the person to whom I'm speaking].”
Take it for what it’s worth, though, because I don’t know Jack, Jack.
Thanks for the erudition.
“Uncle” (capitalized) can also be regarded as an honorific, in which case “Uncle Jack” (both capitalized) holds for the first sentence. “uncle” (lower case) is just a descriptive personal noun. ‘My uncle’ could differentiate from ‘my aunt, sister, etc.’. Although, by convention, ‘Jack’ establishes that gender difference all by itself.