Oh, Reader's Digest...

Even when I was little I was amazed by how unfunny these supposedly "hilarious" jokes in Reader's Digest always were, but this one takes the cake.

NPR was reading and reviewing "Reader's Digest's 10 Funniest Jokes in America" and out came this jewel:

#1A man is walking in a graveyard when he hears the Third Symphony played backward. When it’s over, the Second Symphony starts playing, also backward, and then the First. “What’s going on?” he asks a cemetery worker.

“It’s Beethoven,” says the worker. “He’s decomposing.”

After the joke was told, the panel on NPR crashed the drums in that hokey, old timey way after a punchline; they agreed that "if you say a line and any one of the people at the table says barump-bump, that is the ultimate dis to do that because you just did a bad one-liner."

Other jokes followed that weren't as horrible, though, such as:

#2 A priest, a minister, and a rabbi want to see who’s best at his job. So they each go into the woods, find a bear, and attempt to convert it. Later they get together. The priest begins: “When I found the bear, I read to him from the Catechism and sprinkled him with holy water. Next week is his First Communion.”

“I found a bear by the stream,” says the minister, “and preached God’s holy word. The bear was so mesmerized that he let me baptize him.”

They both look down at the rabbi, who is lying on a gurney in a body cast. “Looking back,” he says, “maybe I shouldn’t have started with the circumcision.”

#3 Every ten years, the monks in the monastery are allowed to break their vow of silence to speak two words. Ten years go by and it’s one monk’s first chance. He thinks for a second before saying, “Food bad.”

Ten years later, he says, “Bed hard.”

It’s the big day, a decade later. He gives the head monk a long stare and says, “I quit.” “I’m not surprised,” the head monk says. “You’ve been complaining ever since you got here.”