Blame Dru for this. In fact, no matter what, blame Dru. You'll be right 80-90% of the time, and the rest you can easily fudge.
The Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion Tonto are riding across the plain when they see dust clouds ahead, and hear thousands of hoofbeats getting closer. They are surrounded! A thousand Sioux to the north, a thousand Pawnee to the east, a thousand Shoshone to the south, and a thousand Ojibwa to the west.The Lone Ranger looks at his longtime trailmate and says, sadly, "After 30 years together, it looks like it all ends here. It looks like we're done for." Tonto looks back at him and replies, "What you mean 'we,' white man?"
The punch line has wormed its way into our culture to the point where people may not even know where it comes from. I could look for more examples of this, but that would be, like, research, and could take two, three minutes. The question is, why is this funny? What does it say about our culture? Or does the analysis of humor destroy it?
Um, yeah, I've been flipping through some of the old Delany books again. Why do you ask?
Chris Rock did a similar joke.
Set up is something to the effect of "I've got an uncle...hates white people married to a white woman. As he explains it, 'She's alright.'"
Punchline is something to the effect of: "But I'll tell ya this, if the revolution comes, I'll kill her first...just to show these crackas I ain't playin'"
There's some truth in the idea that we're friends until some shit goes down.
chris rock is keyser soze!
ummm...huh? did I do something wrong...again?
Jason, I'd forgotten that bit. Thanks.
Dru, honey, you know I'm just playing. Now get back to the novel.
Perhaps the humor lies not in the ungrammatical penultimate statement Tonto makes to the Lone Ranger but the line left out of the joke. "Suck on this," Tonto says as he empties his pistol into the body of the Ranger, a violent drifter who has been the misguided icon of American independence and manhood. Anyway, that makes the joke work for me.
*blink* *blink* that was funny? i kind of prefer Mr. F. John Wayne's version, but still, i ... over my head, i suppose.
Nothing wrong with reading old Delany books.