Joke thread (Don't read if you don't like funny)

I whole heartedly agree. thanks Mr. E, Steve and other moderators for working so hard to make this forum such a good place to go. Its a huge and thankless job. I couldn't imagine building our own LHBA place with out it or the support it offers.

thanks for all you do!

Note: I shortened this. It is actually about twice as long...
Another note about a previous cultural list. None of this list was referring to any particular race or ethnicity. There is a germ of truth in every joke - or its not funny.
How You Know People Are from Hawai‘i

They have separate circuit breakers for their rice cookers. ?
Only NOW they know that cilantro is the same as Chinese parsley. [Also, that they’ve been eating chorizo (Portuguese sausage, see ) all this time.] ?
No matter where they are on the island, they always know where to get the best shave ice [vaguely similar to a “snow cone” on the mainland except that the ice is shaved, not chopped, so finely that it melts softly in your mouth and is available with a large variety of flavored syrups, including unusual ones such as guava, lilikoi (passion fruit), lychee and the ubiquitous li hing mui (see ), and a variety of toppings, such as snow cap (condensed milk), or base layers, such as azuki beans, mochi balls or ice cream].
    [See Jung’s Shave Ice by going to Friends (http://fsakamoto.com/ff.html) > Family Friends.]
When they visit another island, they first find out where to get the best shave ice before they leave home.?
Everyone (including small keiki [kids] just out of diapers) understands “go shi-shi” [Japanese (and Korean) for “urinate”].
    Also called 5-4-4 (pronounced fi-fo-fo) by those who know how to count in Japanese [1-2-3-4-5 = ichi-ni-san-shi-go].
    [Even doctors will tell their patients to “go shi-shi in the cup” to request a urine sample.]?
The concepts of “stay going” [preparing to go or in the process of going somewhere] and “go staying” [either not planning on going anywhere, or, alternatively, the act of arriving or finding yourself situated somewhere physically or in a particular emotional state] are perfectly clear [see last paragraph of ].
    [The more advanced forms, such as (but not limited to) go stay going, go stay coming, stay go staying and stay go going staying are best left to the experts.
    Example of a local sentence: “Eh, go; I go stay come” (= “Why don’t you just go on ahead and I’ll follow you very soon”).]
?
If it’s not necessary to explain the intricacies of multiple people traveling to, from or remaining in multiple places, it’s much preferred to use the single local word “gongo.”
    [With the proper inflection and body-language, the question, “Eh, you gongo town?” (gongo = going to go) is fully equivalent to the much-less-efficient standard-English, “Are you, by any chance, planning on being anywhere even remotely close to the general vicinity of downtown Honolulu (the business district; i.e., will you be on the leeward half of the island sometime during normal daylight hours?), and, if so, where would you like to meet for lunch?”]
?
At the end of any question [as above in, “Eh, you gongo town?”], their inflection goes down [everywhere else in the English-speaking world, the inflection goes up].
?
Their whole day is planned around where they’re going to eat lunch and dinner, and with whom [cf. number 64].
?
If they go anywhere near Kahuku, they have to bring back fresh sweet corn.
?
They know where to go to get fresh laulau [a Hawaiian “burrito” of beef, pork and fish wrapped in taro leaves and steamed in ti-leaves] and kalua pig [see Dad’s authentic kalua pig recipe (http://fsakamoto.com/friends/kalua.html)].
?
Rice is the uncontested staple starch (see ) and the household supply is considered dangerously low when it’s allowed to drop below 10 pounds. [This will automatically trigger the purchase of another 50-pound (if you live alone) or 100-pound bag.]
    Potatoes are only available as Maui chips, French fries, or in macaroni-potato salad (macaroni salad or “pasta salad,” as it’s referred to on the mainland, always includes potatoes), unless you’re trying to impress your date at a fancy restaurant.
?
When parking their car they search for — in this order — the space:
for handicapped persons (if there’s someone along who qualifies, or can act like they qualify)
with the most shade
that’s the cheapest
that minimizes walking (either to the exit [especially if they plan on eating a large meal in a restaurant] or to the entrance, if there’s any difference)
where they can get out the quickest (if it’s a parking lot at an event and people will be leaving all at once)
where they can park the longest (no matter how little time they plan on being there)
that’s the widest so somebody won’t nick their paint
on the correct side of the street so when leaving they won’t have to cross too many lanes of traffic or make a left turn into on-coming traffic — ever.
If the space has all the above attributes, dey bettah grabbum [they had better take it], whether or not they have any real business to attend to in the immediate area [same as in San Francisco or New York City].
?
When they have to park in the sun they cover their steering wheel and driver’s seat with a towel so they won’t burn their hands or okole [bottom, rear end] when they get back in.
    [Technically it should be lemu (buttocks), since ‘okole refers to a specific “more central” part of a person’s bottom, but its meaning has become commonly accepted as “bottom.” See .]
?
Jun-ken-po [known as paper-scissors-stone on the mainland] is the preferred method of arbitrary decision-making between two parties, since it doesn’t require having to locate a coin and everyone agrees that it’s the most fair. (Dad and his classmates played it during their in Vegas.)
    [Regional variants exist, for example:
Junken a munken,
a sucka sucka po,
Wailuku, Wailuku,
big fat toe.]
?
Their salt shakers contain grains of uncooked rice [to keep the salt from caking due to the high humidity].
?
“Low-fat milk” sounds Chinese when they hear it at first.
?
They don’t become dumbfounded and tonguetied when pronouncing a name with what appears to mainland folks to be too few consonants and way more vowels clumped together than necessary, such as Kaaawa [Ka‘a‘awa, pronounced Ka-ah-ah-vah] or Kalanianaole, although Moiliili [Mo‘ili‘ili, pronounced Mo-ili-ili] is often mispronounced Moi-li-li.
    [Oddly enough, visitors who speak Japanese or Spanish have less trouble with pronunciation because the vowels are always pronounced the same way and, once they get used to the idea that each vowel is pronounced separately, they can do quite well. The one difficulty is that Japanese doesn’t have an L. See for a discussion about Japanese pronunciation.]
    [Pronunciation of Hawaiian is simpler than Japanese or Spanish because it has the shortest alphabet in the world, only 12 letters: a, e, i, o, u, h, k, l, m, n, p, w (sometimes pronounced as a v).]
?
“Making pupu for watching UH Wahines on top the TV” (see ) sounds appetizing and displays good planning rather than sounding gross and disgusting, as it does to someone from the mainland. [Pupu = appetizer.]
    [Kukae is the local word corresponding to what mainlanders think of when they hear the word pupu; in Hawai‘i, pupu and kukae are associated with opposite ends of the digestive system.]
    [Also, dey open da light (turn on the light) for make the pupu and close da light (turn it off) for watch TV.]
?
They’re always on “Daylight Savings Time”: they begin their jogging at 4:30 in the morning so it won’t get too hot.
    [Hawaii doesn’t go on Daylight Savings Time because they’re at the same latitude (15°) as Mexico City (much farther south than most people on the mainland realize), so there’s not much difference between summer and winter.]
    [Arizona also doesn’t go on Daylight Savings Time but the Navajo Reservation, located there, does, leading to some confusion if you’re traveling back and forth over some invisible border (e.g., in and out of Canyon de Chelly National Monument). Fortunately Hawaii doesn’t have this confusion so the local concept of time remains extremely consistent throughout the year (see ).]
    [The only significant seasons are the rainy season (wintertime, when you don’t have to watah plants every day) and mango season (beginning of summer, around on the Fort of Joo-lai).
    Everyone with a mango tree in their yard has a mango picker (http://fsakamoto.com/sakamoto/s3.html), consisting of a long bamboo pole (or two poles lashed together), a wire loop made from a clothes hanger (with a narrower rounded-V shape at the far end so that it will hook the mango stem and not let the fruit slip back out), and a cloth bag to catch the fruit.]
?
After an meal, the men adjourn to the nearest bench with toothpicks in their teeth and their T-shirts pulled up above their opu [stomachs] to give them air.
?
They get late-night cravings for saimin [Hawaii-style Japanese noodle soup, ramen].
?
They keep track of all the fundraisers around town so they can plan their supply of ono ono huli huli chicken [huli = turn around, huli huli = keep turning around = rotate = turned manually or using a rotisserie over a barbeque, see ].
?
Everyone agrees that hapa [half or part, meaning mixed-ancestry] kids [like me, Naomi] are the best looking. [See store in Kobe, Japan.]
?
Everybody avoids a kid with hanabata [hana = Japanese for flower (flower of your face = nose), bata = butter; therefore, nose butter = … you figure it out] and everybody knows what it’s like to go through the “hanabata days (http://www.alohaworld.com/hanabuddah/)” when they were kids.
    [Here’s a good fun list (http://fsakamoto.com/sakamoto/callmecrazy.html) of memories from the ole days by Clinton Lee that’s posted on the AlohaWorld.com (http://www.alohaworld.com/hanabuddah/) website, reformatted with links to related parts of our website and with additional explanations or comments.]
?
If somebody calls them lolo [Hawaiian for stupid], baka [Japanese for stupid] or bakatare [local Japanese for fool or idiot (the R is prounounced more like a D here … but not quite, see and a discussion of )], babooze [Portuguese for dummy], mento [a mental case], or puka head [hole in your head], they get really huhu [angry] and habuts [upset] — unless it happens to be their nickname; see .
    If, on the other hand, they’re caught acting lolo (wot, again?) they just use one of the many good excuses they’ve already used lots of times before when they were caught behaving stupidly.
“Low, low prices” have a different connotation than on the mainland.
?
If they can’t remember a good excuse quickly enough to avoid looking even more lolo, they just say, “Wot, boddah you?” [What’s the matter, did whatever I was doing bother you?], or, mo’ bettah [even better], “Wot?”
?
When someone tells them something unexpected they ask, “Hahkum?” [How come (that’s so)? or Why is that?].
    [We only recently discovered that this isn’t a standard English response and people don’t understand what you mean if you say this on the mainland.]
    [This use of the word “come” can be very effectively combined with the variants involving traveling: “Hahkum you go stay go when I stay go coming already? Now I come stay habuts fo real!” (Why did you leave when I was already on my way over to meet you? Now I’m really upset!) See and .]
?
When someone informs them that something needs to be done they ask, “Fo wat?” [For what reason? Why? Note: the multipurpose “Hahkum?” also works nicely in this case. Also note that, to be most effective and authentic, the inflection always goes down at the end of a question (see ).]
?
If it’s Kona weather [warm wind coming from the direction of Kona (south) or no cooling tradewinds at all], they say, “Atsui! Atsui!,” or “Ho da hot!”
?
When they get into a fix they say things are “aw jam up” [messed up].
?
If things don’t go their way they say, “Gunfunit!” [Confound it!]
?
If makeup doesn’t improve your appearance, they say, “Poho” or “Wase time” [a waste of time].
?
Their philosophy on getting something done is, “If can, can. If no can, no can.” [If it’s at all possible to accomplish it, I’ll surely get it done. If it turns out to be an impossible task then I won’t be able to do it for you.]
?
If they mess up, somebody is bound to ask, “Wassamattayou?” [What’s the matter with you? or What’s wrong with you? Compare to .]

A local conversation can go something like this:
“Wassamattayou?”
“Wassamattame? Wassamattayou wassamattame?”
[“What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? What is your problem, asking me what’s wrong with me?”]
 
Their sentence structure is “somewhat loose” and is closer to many foreign languages than to proper English: the subject often follows the verb (which, to make matters worse, is sometimes omitted).
    E.g., “Ho, so small the place!” [“Wow, this is such a small world!”] See Friends (http://fsakamoto.com/ff.html) > Stanford > More Pictures > Lois and John (near the bottom of the page), or Dobis (http://fsakamoto.com/df.html), for appropriate applications of this sentence.
    [Another example, “Oh wow li’dat, wen go awready da guys.” (How rude of them! You missed your ride because your friends didn’t wait for you to get here.)]
?
When it’s done they say “pau!” [finished].
?

I wish to express my sincere gratitude for the effort that is expended on our behalf by Ellsworth, Steve and the rest to keep this forum open and working. I thank you for the honesty and integrity with which you monitor this forum and keep us all in line. It truly must be like herding cats!!
This forum is an invaluable tool for all of us who use it!
Dean
LHBA Class of Feb. 2006
Best investment of my life.
http://s522.photobucket.com/albums/w343/deanbrossman/

Two carpenters, Joe and Bill, were working on a house. Joe, up on a scaffold, accidently cut off his ear with the saw.

He yelled down to Bill..."Hey Bill! Look out for my ear!! I just cut it off and it fell down there to the ground!"

In a little bit Bill calls up to Joe, "Is this bloody thing your ear?" and he holds up a messy little thing for Joe to see.

Joe looks down and says "Naw! That can't be it. Mine had a pencil tucked behind it!"

Frances