Q: How did we know communism was doomed from the beginning?

A: All the red flags.

Q: Why do Communists drink herbal tea?

A: Because proper tea is theft.

What’s the difference between a  poorly dressed man on a unicycle and a well-dressed man on a bicycle?
Attire.

On a Facebook page for beginning artists, one asked, “Any suggestions for painting dogs?” Another responded,  “Wait till they’re asleep.”

Living in rural Minnesota, I find driving through crowded Minneapolis difficult. “I have trouble figuring out when to turn and what lane to be in,” I complained to my grandson.
His wife could commiserate. “I know what you mean,” she said. “I never know at which cornfield to turn when we come to visit you.”

Our doctor’s office called to let my husband know that the results from his blood tests came back and he was just fine. That didn’t suit my husband.

“What’s my cholesterol level?” he asked.

“Mr. Crocker, you are just fine,” insisted the nurse.

“Still, I’d like you to mail me the results.”

A few days later, he received a postcard from the doctor’s office. It read, “Mr. Crocker, you are just fine!”

My great-aunt looked confused when I told her that my daughter was 18 months old. “Oh,” she said. “I thought she was a year and a half.”

“But Aunt Marie,” I said, “18 months and a year and a half are the same.”

She shrugged. “What do I know? I never had kids.”

An Uber is cruising down a boulevard when it runs a red light. “Hey!” the passenger shouts. “Be careful!”

“Don’t worry,” says the driver. “My brother does it all the time.”

He barrels through the next red light, and the passenger screams, “Stop doing that!”

“I’m telling you, my brother does this all the time.”

They approach the next light. Just when it turns green, the driver slams on the brakes. The confused passenger asks, “You just ran two red lights; why’d you stop at a green?”

“I had to,” says the driver. “My brother might have been coming.”

My father was serving in a port city in post–World War II Germany when a ship laden with GIs docked. As the soldiers disembarked, they started to jeer and boo. The reason? The local band hired to greet them was playing a popular hit of the time, “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now.”

My daughter was anxious to do some landscaping at her new home, but then she called up sounding discouraged.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get these flowers planted,” she moaned. “It says to plant in full sun, but it’s been cloudy for four days.”

Although I’d been dating a woman for several months, I guess I didn’t know her as well as I thought. One day I called, and her ten-year-old son answered.

“Hi,” I said. “It’s Tom. Can I speak with your mom?”

He responded, “Are you Tom One or Tom Two?”

Needless to say, his mother is now down to one Tom.

I’m lucky that my wife and mother are very close. I realized just how close the time I drove my mother to her doctor, which my wife usually does. When the doctor came into the room, my own dear mother introduced me as her “daughter-in-law’s husband.”

My six-year-old loved his pet fish. He watched and fed it faithfully, morning and night. But one day while he was in school, his fish died, so I flushed it down the toilet. I told him when he got home, and he was inconsolable. Nothing I said helped. After a while, I asked, “Why are you crying so much?”Arching his back, he shouted, “I wanted to flush!”

Q: How did the dead brother and his dead brother resemble each other?
A: They were dead ringers.

Q: What kind of a shot was the dead man?
A: He had dead aim.

Q: What kind of personality did the dead man have?
A: He gave you the cold shoulder.

Q: How did the two dead brothers do in school?
A: They were dead even.

Q: Why were the people trying to get the dead man to change his mind?
A: Because they knew he was dead wrong.

Q: Why was the dead man not living well?
A: Because he was dead broke.

Q: Why was the dead man not courageous?
A: Because he had cold feet.

Q: Why was the dead man insensitive?
A: Because he had a cold heart.

Q: Why did the dead man divorce his dead wife?
A: Because she was frigid.

Q: Why did the town chase out the dead drifter?
A: Because he was a deadbeat.

Q: If you’re an American in the kitchen, what are you when you’re in the bathroom?

A: European!

I ate a clock yesterday, it was very time-consuming.

Q: How come nobody liked the dead lawyer?
A: Because he was rotten to the core.

Q: What is a dead man’s favorite magazine?
A: Life

Q: Why was the dead man happy to be sentenced during his trial?
A: Because they gave him life.

In the foyer of a church, a young boy was looking at a plaque with the names of men and women who had died in various wars.  He asked the pastor, “Who are these people?”  The pastor said, “Those are members from our church who died in the service.”  The boy asked, “The early service or the second service?”

Q: What do you call an animal you keep in your car?

A: A Carpet

Q: Why shouldn’t you visit an expensive wig shop?

A: It’s too high a price ‘toupee.’

Q: Why did the pig have ink all over its face?

A: Because it came out of the pen.

Whoever said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results has obviously never had to reboot a computer.

—William Petersen

I was on a business call when I realized I was late for a class at the gym. I must have sounded rushed, because the woman on the phone said, “Am I keeping you from something?”

I replied, “I have to leave for tai chi.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding intrigued. “What country is that in?”

—Linda Platt

My paramedic team was called to an emergency. Before we took the patient to the hospital, I had a question for his wife. “Does your husband have any cardiac problems?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said with a note of concern. “His cardiologist just died.”

—Aaron Webster

A musician friend is always upbeat. But when she developed ringing in one ear, I was concerned it might overwhelm even her. When I asked whether her condition was especially annoying to a musician, she shook her head.

“Not really,” she said cheerfully. “The ringing sound is in the key of B flat, so I use it to tune my cello half a tone lower.”

—Kathleen Cahill, in Reader’s Digest Asia

A young lawyer is working late one night when his door opens and in walks Satan himself. “I have an offer,” says Satan. “If you give me your soul and the soul of everyone in your family, I’ll make you a full partner in your firm.”

The lawyer stares icily at the devil for a full minute before demanding, “So what’s the catch?”

—kinsleylaw.com

The graveside service had just ended when there was a frightening clap of thunder, followed by a tremendous bolt of lightning accompanied by even louder thunder. The little old man looked at the pastor and said calmly, “Well, she’s there.”

—Submitted by G.C. via mail

Why is it a penny for your thoughts but you have to put your two cents in? Somebody’s making a penny.

—Steven Wright, comedian

A broke guy walks past a pub. He looks at the door longingly, but since he has no money, he walks on. Just then, he spots a lamp lying in the gutter. He picks it up and rubs it, and a genie emerges.

“I will grant you three wishes,” intones the genie.

“Give me a bottomless mug of beer,” the guy says.

A mug of beer appears in his hand. He takes a sip, then another. With each chug, the mug magically refills.

“And for your other two wishes?”

Between swallows, the lucky guy shouts, “Give me two more just like this one!”

—friarsclub.com

Q. What did Neil Armstrong say when no one laughed at his moon jokes?
A. “I guess you had to be there.”

Q. How do you know when the moon is broke?
A. When it’s down to its last quarter.

Q. Which is closer, Florida or the moon?
A. The moon. You can’t see Florida from here.

Q. Why is a moon rock tastier than an Earth rock?
A. It’s a little meteor.

My neighbor texted me, “I just made synonym buns!”

I texted back, “You mean like grammar use to make?”
I haven’t heard from her since.

A friend took her son to the doctor’s office after he sprained his finger. The nurse applied a splint, only to be told she’d put it on the wrong finger.

“I’m sorry,” she said.
“That’s OK,” my friend’s son said. “You were only off by one digit.”

My husband talks in his sleep. Unfortunately, he also snores, so I sometimes give him the wifely elbow.
“What?!” he demanded one night, still mostly asleep.
“Turn over—you’re snoring,” I said.
He did as instructed and while doing so muttered, “That’s nothing; you should hear my wife snore.”

Because my wife and I are flea market dealers, we usually carry stacks of $1 bills. Not long ago, we had lunch at a restaurant and paid the check with singles. As our waitress collected the ones, she sized up my 70-year-old wife and said, “You had a good night dancing last night, huh?”

I stopped off at the super­market to buy my son-in-law his favorite pie, sour cream raisin. The box had the $15 price stamped on the top, which I thought would be tacky on a gift, so I asked the man behind the counter for a marker to black out the price. Didn’t work—you could still see the price through the ink.

“I know what to do,” the man said. “I’ll cover it up.”And with that, he slapped a sticker over the price that read “$2.98 Day Old.”

Q: Why don’t pirates take a shower before they walk the plank?

A: They just wash up on shore.

Q: How much did the pirate pay for his peg and hook?
A: An arm and a leg.

A patient came to the hospital with a burned right hand. As the
doctor took down his medical history, he asked the injured man, “Do you smoke?”

“Yeah, a pack and a half a day,” said the patient.
Concerned, the doctor told him, “You should consider quitting.”
“No, it’s OK,” said the patient. “I smoke with my left hand.”

Q: Do you know what stinks about a pirate ship?
A: The poop deck.

The CEO of a large corporation was giving advice to a junior executive. “I was young, married, and out of work,” he lectured.
“I took the last nickel I had and bought an apple. I polished it and sold it for a dime. The next day I bought two apples, polished them, and sold them for ten cents each.”

“I see,” said the junior executive. “You kept reinvesting your money and grew a big business.”
“No,” said the CEO. “Then my wife’s father died and left me a fortune.”

Two regulars are sitting at a bar when one of them casually points to a couple of drunks across from them. “That’s us in ten years,” he says.
His friend takes a sip from his beer, sets it down on the bar, turns to his friend, and slurs, “That’s a mirror.”

A college girl was visiting my farm and noticed the ring in our bull’s nose. Intrigued, she asked, “Did you put that ring in his nose or was he born that way?”

After I paid for my items in an adorable Italian shop, the salesperson smiled and said “Grazie,” Italian for “thank you.” My Italian isn’t very good, but I knew that the Italian word for “you’re welcome” was the same as the name of a spaghetti sauce. So I confidently replied “Ragú!” and walked out of the store. A few blocks later, it hit me: I had the wrong spaghetti sauce. “You’re welcome” is prego.

During a high school visit to France, I stayed with a French family.
One night, I was unsure what the meat on my dinner plate was, so I pointed to it and asked in my best 11th-grade French: “Qui est-ce?” The family’s expressions told me I needed some tutoring. Instead of asking “What is it?” as I had intended, I’d asked “Who is it?”

My boss arrived at work in a brand-new Lamborghini. “Wow,” I said. “That’s an amazing car.”
He replied, “If you work hard, put all your hours in, and strive for excellence, I’ll get another one next year.”

On a fishing trip to a remote lake in Northern Quebec, I asked the outfitter, “Do you stay here during the winter?”
“No,” he said. “The snow gets too deep. We can’t get supplies in. Like many Canadians, I go south for the winter.”
“Oh,” I said. “Where do you go?”
“Vermont.”

When the new activities director for the rec center walked in, all us retirees quickly took notice. She was 20-something, statuesque, and gorgeous. My buddy whispered, “She makes me wish I was 30 years older.”
“Don’t you mean 30 years younger?” I asked.
“No. If I were 30 years younger, I’d still never have a chance with a woman like that. If I were 30 years older, it wouldn’t bother me so much.”

During a lesson about adjectives, my friend, an elementary school teacher, asked her
class to describe their mothers. One boy described his mother’s hair as auburn.

Impressed by his sophisticated word choice, my friend asked, “How do you know her hair color is auburn?”
Her student replied, “Because that’s what it says on the box.”

After my kids bragged about what levels they’d attained in a video game, I decided to give it a try. Soon, it was my turn to boast that, in spite of being a newbie, I’d already managed to get to level 11. That’s when my youngest son pointed out that the “11” I was seeing on the screen was actually the game’s pause button.

My mother and I  suffered through an overlong, confusing movie at an art theater. Apparently we were not the only dissatisfied patrons. Walking back to our car afterward, we overheard a man complain to his wife, “We left the dog home alone for that?”

On our commute to work, my husband stopped at a convenience store for coffee. As he got back into the car, I noticed something odd.

“Turn your head and look at me,” I said. “You have a Q-tip sticking out of your ear.”

As he pulled it out, he replied, “No wonder the guy in there asked me if I was getting good reception.”

Have you heard about the new pirate movie?
It’s rated AARRRRGH because of all the booty!

How do you make a pirate furious?
Take away the p.

A trooper pulls over a priest and immediately smells alcohol on his breath. The next thing he notices is an empty wine bottle lying on the passenger seat.

“Have you been drinking?” the officer asks.

“Just water,” says the priest.

“Then why do I smell wine?”

The priest looks at the bottle and shouts, “Good Lord! He’s done it again!”

“Visit me for three days a week at $300 a visit, and you’ll be cured,” the psychiatrist assures him.

The price tag is a little rich for the patient, so he says he’ll think about it.Six months later, the two meet on the street.

“Why didn’t you come to see me about those fears you were having?” asks the psychiatrist.

“Because a bartender cured me for only $10.”“How?”“He told me to cut the legs off the bed.”

A woman and her husband stop at a dentist’s office.
“I need a tooth pulled right away,” she says. “Don’t bother with the Novocain; we’re in a hurry.”

“Which tooth do you want pulled?” asks the dentist.

The woman shoves her husband toward the dentist. “Go ahead, dear. Show him your tooth.”