LAUGH LINES : Jokes

In the news: Jay Leno wonders about the special kind of fish that must be on the space shuttle: “They launch them into outer space. How many G-forces is that? They have to deal with no gravity and all the experiments done on them. Then they have re-entry. When I was a kid, I would buy fish and they would die in the car on the way home.”

Speaking of creature tests: 170,000 laboratory rats, mice and guinea pigs recently died of smoke inhalation in a fire near San Jose. Reports comedy writer Bob Mills: “Tobacco-company executives immediately issued a statement claiming that most died because of poor eating habits.”

Comedy writer Tony Peyser says the sign in front of the Hard Rock Cafe at the Beverly Center--which shows how many people are being born on one side and how much of the Amazon rain forest is being destroyed on the other--is being changed: “The left side will show how much money O.J. Simpson originally had, and the right will tally how much he’s spent on defense lawyers.”

Heard around the water cooler:

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

O.J.

O.J. who?

Good, you’re on the jury. Comedian Argus Hamilton, on rumors that Michael Jackson has married Lisa Marie Presley: “At least this puts another rumor to rest once and for all. If Elvis really were alive, this would have killed him.”

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Funny in clubs: Comedian Fred Charles says two men were talking after the Jan. 17 earthquake:

The first guy asked, “If there was another earthquake, and you knew the world was going to end, what would you do?”

The other guy said, “I’d have sex with the first thing that moves. What would you do?”

The first guy replied, “I’d stand very still.”

Comic Pam Matteson says she is engaged to a car salesman, but she’s not exactly anticipating the wedding: “It’ll be horrible. I’ll be in a gown, he’ll be in a checkered jacket. The minister will say, ‘Do you take this woman till death do you part, or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first?’ ”

If God were a woman, comedian Diana Jordan says, “She’d have made Moses stop and ask directions rather than wandering around in the wilderness.”

Comic Etta May says that for a lot of women, marriage is a signal that they can quit watching their weight: “Putting a ring on a woman’s finger is like pulling a rip cord on an inflatable raft.”

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Reader Bea Forbes of Palos Verdes Estates says a friend, who has three children, decided it was time to tell her 10-year-old daughter the facts of life. The friend went into far more detail than she had planned, but when she finished she asked her daughter if she had any questions.

Said the girl: “You mean you did that three times?”