The original is back. TRULY TASTELESS JOKES took America by storm and made it laugh at itself. It's all in here, disgusting, repulsive, cruel, and just plain tasteless jokes and stories that will make you smile, laugh, or groan--and love every minute of it.
This is such a, what my Gram would call, a 'toilet book' (even though, surprisingly enough, there is no toilet humor).
Ladies and gents, this book is quite possibly the most offensive, harsh, black comedic and, well, tasteless book in the history of time. With dated terminology that I won't list here for fear of my review being flagged by a word tyrant, and plenty of not-even-snort-worthy jokes, Truly Tasteless Jokes is a no-holds-barred power trip in a lesson of humor and letting sh*t go.
People, a couple of these jokes were offensive to me, really. And you know what I did? Laughed. Like a banshee.
Because I thought they were funny. Is it cool to walk up to someone and tell them something like the things in this book? No, it's what's professionally referred to as a 'dick move'. But if you're just chillin' in your room jammin' some tunes, laugh it up. And if anyone gives you smack about being 'tasteless'...
That ought to do the trick.
Also, since I've now officially turned sixteen, I've joined the ranks of the 'bigger kids', and to commemorate it, I read the book they literally held over my head.
You moved from Garbage Pail Kids to this series of joke books...it was just what you did. It's where you spent your lunch money. It was its own reward.
ultimately this book screams who hurt you and feels more like a diary of personal angst that’s been hastily turned into a book, with a few extra bits thrown in— like the ever so lovely cruelty to animals section just to pad it out
the book repeatedly targets polish people to an uncomfortable degree. polish jokes appear not only in their own section but are scattered throughout other categories, such as ethnic jokes-variegated, homosexual, male&female anatomy—to name a few. this disproportionate focus feels less like comedy or dark humor and more like a thinly veiled expression of bigotry. the author's choice to include numerous sections on other groups feels like an afterthought, added to obscure the book's blatant bias. given the author’s own admission in the dedication that many have distanced themselves from the work, it’s clear that the book is more about exploiting stereotypes for profit than providing meaningful humor. this book is outdated, but even for its time in the 80s, it still feels subpar.
the real joke wasn’t that the "jokes for the blind" section was empty—it was that it didn’t contain another jab at polaks
Poorly written jokes and tremendously offensive. While the title prepares the reader for that, this goes beyond expectations.
Many of the jokes are old. One joke appeared twice, having been repeated in a slightly altered form in two separate sections. I’m pretty sure one or two jokes were plagiarized from standup comedians.
It’s not worth the time or money. They’re simply bad.
Looking at the other reviews I’d say the author is pretty busy setting up fake accounts to promote his own work, which appears to be self published.
The definition of tasteless jokes is important here, well, to use a word, one has to know its significance, albeit we understand different things when using the same mot juste, as Thomas Mann has explained https://realini.blogspot.com/2021/09/... in one of his short stories, looking at love
There are people who declare with pomposity that ‘their love is beyond words, nothing can explain, describe their glorious feeling’, nevertheless, in that short story, one personage is of the opinion that you can find love only in art, literature, for when you test the feeling in real life, you find that it was just some attraction or temporary infatuation Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis https://realini.blogspot.com/2023/07/... has also looked at the way the significance of words has changed, and gives the example of infamous, which could not be used any more, since it had started losing the original meaning, based on infamy
I would say that what is tasteless for one, can be amusing for another, and it also depends on the context, we have a ‘dry joke here’, which is something like: Stephen the Great to his soldiers, on one of the battlefields, Vaslui, ‘my men, get on the horses’, and then they reply ‘your majesty, we have none’, so the prince says ‘goodbye then’ But that is pure nonsense for a foreigner, only in the local tongue, you have the essential ‘pe’, used both in on horses and for goodbye, see you soon, ‘on another day then’, if you will, still, it is not the most hilarious, vivacious piece of humor, that is why I put it here with tasteless, along with another, here you are
A question goes ‘how much?’ and the answer is five, and then there is another query, ‘what five’, and so the retort now is ‘what how much’, something like that, pure tasteless humor, but overall, we lived here in a communist society, and even worse, the tyrant was one Ceausescu, the absolute tasteless joke, a cynical one indeed The man was funny, in an absurd way, and if anybody would be predisposed, in the mood to laugh, for you had the nomenclature, apparatchiks, who benefited and were afraid to lose the privileges, and the privileges normal folks or what you find in Animal Farm https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/01/... Just like in George Orwell ‘some animals were more equal than others’ – incidentally, Orwell, Kingsley Amis have been communists in their youth, there was a saying or joke with ‘who is not a commie when young, has no heart, who is still a communist when older, has no brain’ - and those in power were ludicrous
Nicolae Ceausescu was cunning, although I would not call him ‘intelligent’, in spite of the rise to power, with so few skills, practically no education, which would make some say ‘oh, native intelligence’, it is mostly explained through the perversion of the system, doctrine, it comes down to the Soviets imposing that shit on us The dictator would address the crowds – made to stand there for hours, not because they loved the leader, as the slogans went, they called him the Beloved Conducator – but he would have these horrible distortions, could not say friends properly, he would say ‘preteni’, like missing the d in friends maybe, he was a jackass
So, you could see that for a detached observer, it could be amusing, Orange Jesus comes to mind, and the manner in which he spoke to another ghoul, Musk, on X recently, when the ‘very stable genius’, sounded as if he had just placed his fake teeth in the mouth, and what he said was preposterous, as always, this is the paradigm of the stupid We had to survive with jokes, again, just like the way to find out the newest monstrosity – not the miracles his hoi polloi, the deplorables - Hilary was absolutely correct in saying it, however counterproductive it might have been - expect – committed by Orange Jesus would be by watching late night shows, Seth Meyers is my favorite
The jokes, tasteless sometimes, had a way of explain what happens, when I was in the hospitality business, I would welcome my guests to the country – bruhim abaim le Romania, if they were from Israel, and most of them were – with some blagues, to show them the way things were, and to make it more palatable I would play Chili Palmer from Get Shorty https://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/... with his line ‘I am the one telling you the way it is’ and then say some truth about the commie ways, to attenuate the shock, because these visitors would be travelling in time, they returned to the past
So, I would quickly say let me explain – like Chili Palmer – and here is the joke – Ceausescu, Brezhnev and Reagan – whoever was then in power, more likely Gorbachev – come on television, the American says ‘it is the end of the world, we take space ships and leave, the Russian says much the same thing, while Ceausescu has a different line ‘Do not worry, we are anyway one hundred years behind’, you see, it is tasteless, one has to be looking at that grim picture, which showed that it was a genuine time machine they were in, for the streets, buildings, people, everything was grey and form another age…
Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know
Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works
‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’
‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’
“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”
This book is vile, twisted, and offensive, and the author needs intense psychiatric and character remediation. Therefore, it was the perfect book to sneak off my parents’ bookshelves and read aloud at slumber parties as a 90s preteen.
Applewhite/Knott is an equal opportunity offender, crossing way far into politically incorrect territory to bash EVERYONE.
That said, it loses a star or two because this book (in its 30s) hasn’t aged well, as fortunately books like this do not.
After watching the documentary Tasteless, I realized I've never actually read this book, having been out of high school and even college for a couple of years before it came out in 1982. I remember a lot of these jokes circulating in the 1970s, which apparently was the heyday of tasteless jokes. It seems as though it was just a matter of time before someone collected them all.
The title is quite accurate. I had this book as a teenager and it has all the jokes that would probably not be said today. I think I made a point of reading aloud many of the jokes to my parents. I don't remember them laughing at any of them - groaning mostly.
This spawned a series of Truly Tasteless books, which mostly contained jokes that didn't make the cut for this first one. For what this is, a long list of vulgar jokes, it's as good as it gets. If anything in this genre would deserve 5 stars, this would be it.
I was expecting more than this... I was expecting sick dark humor what I saw... in the book the beginning was great... but when time passed like... 20 pages... it just went down aka expectations.
Though I have read this many times, the first was probably 1984. None of these jokes could get published today, but for its time, this is one of the best bad joke books ever written!
One of the funniest books I've ever read. I usually bust this book out every time I have a party and me and my guests roll on the floor laughing. There are some jokes that are pretty offensive, but as the title suggests, they are truly tasteless.
Clever. I'm sure a lot of others would enjoy it more than I did. I'm a hard sell for humor, but the twisted black humor that makes up this book was kind of catchy.