Symbolic Forest

“My dog’s got no nose.”

“Haven’t we been through this?”

“Shush. My dog’s got no nose.”

“How does he smell?”

Well, funny you should ask that. We’ve just joined this scheme called Smelling-Nose Dogs. You know how, in America, guide dogs are called seeing-eye dogs? My dog with no nose now has his own guide dog, who goes around, sniffs things, guides him away from odorous obstacles and generally lets him in on all the latest dog-gossip.^* And it’s given him a whole new lease of life! He’s happy, and bouncy, and has a shiny coat!^** He’s always bounding around and eager for his smelling-nose dog and him to go for a walk together. Completely unlike how he used to be, always moping in his basket unable to smell anything.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yes, it’s really done him the world of good.”

“Still not very funny, though.”

“Er, no.”

* You know – which dogs have urinated on which lamp-posts and that sort of thing. Which is, I’m told, very important information for dogs.

** Not that that has much to do with anything. Maybe I should be a copywriter for Evil Nestlé’s dog-food arm.

Keyword noise: happy ending, jokes, silliness.

“My dog’s got no nose”

“How does he smell?”

“He doesn’t. He sits around all day getting into a deeper and deeper cycle of depression, because he can’t smell anything, in one huge cloud of nose-related ennui. He never even comes out of his basket.”

“That’s quite sad, really.”

“Yeah, I don’t know why the title says it’s a joke.”

Keyword noise: jokes, silliness, tragedy.

The world’s largest supply of garlic butter is in the centre of the city of Kyiv, Ukraine.

Around 8% of hazel trees are carnivorous.

Jacques de Molay, last known Grand Master of the Knights Templar, invented a method for softening butter by adding hydrogenated vegetable fats. The global dairy industry now channels large amounts of money to the Priory of Sion, the Templars’ underground successor organisation.

The phrase “This tape will self-destruct in five seconds” is never mentioned in the entire first series of TV show Mission: Impossible.

The modern standard housebrick’s size is derived from the length of the radius bone of Egyptian pharoah Tuthmoses IV, who had unusually short arms.

Doctor Who once featured a companion in the shape of a penguin.

The distances to destinations on British road signs are systematically under-estimated, in a (slightly futile) attempt to make the population in general more optimistic.

(but which of these factoids are indeed true?)

Keyword noise: April Fools Day, brick, carnivorous, distance, Doctor Who, Egypt, factoids, falsehoods, Kiev, Knights Templar, lies, Mission Impossible, pharoah, Priory of Sion, roadsign, silliness, television, trees, Tuthmoses.