Jokes that Don't Work

I set out on the arduous task at dinner today to explain several wordplay jokes that really, really translate badly. I started with one that I thought would be pretty obvious. It wasn't.

Why do the French never use two eggs for their omelettes? Because one egg is un oeuf.

Hee. That's one of my favorites. But it took Elsa about five minutes to get it, and then she said that it wasn't really funny. Then I pulled out this gem, which also happens to be one of my favorites:

So these two atoms are walking down the street, and the first one goes, "Crap! I think I lost an electron!" The second one says, "are you sure?" The first one says, "I'm positive!"

That one seemed to work a lot better. At least Christian found it really clever. The French also have their version of the squished tomato/ketchup joke, except theirs isn't funny at all. In full:

There are two tomatoes walking down the street named Katy and Julie. Katy crosses the road just fine but Julie gets hit by a car and completely flattened. Katy turns around and says, "hurry up Juju!"

I completely didn't get it for much longer than I should have, but 'Juju' is a nickname for Julie, as well as the word for 'juice' twice, since she was flattened to juice. Aha, hmmm.

I took out About a Boy from the office library forgetting that I had read it before, but luckily it's just as good as I had imagined. I actually guffawed on the tram this morning and had to hurriedly compose myself lest others think I'm one of the crazy ladies that talk to themselves and smell like cat pee.

Oh, happy 21st birthday to you, Horny Rob!