I’ve just arrived here after traveling for many hundreds of your Earth days and nights across what you call the cosmos, and boy, are my arms tired! (Beat) All eighteen of ‘em! Hach Hach Hachhhh! But, seriously…

We have been studying Earth humor for some time. My reason for coming here is to experience it first hands as part of my educational process. On Schticko, my home planet, we are all professional full-time students of galactic humor. I have been “in school” to put it in a way which will be familiar to Earth inhabitants, for 368 of your years. I have spent most of that time traveling among the planets studying humor and I’ve encountered many differing forms of it in the universe.

For instance, on a planet called “EEEEEEp”, the inhabitants, who are all highly-evolved plants, make jokes about anything that moves sideways, but consider jokes about vertical movement in bad taste.

On “Xllllrrtmlll 2”, humor is outlawed completely. The inhabitants consider levity of any kind criminal, and punish those who attempt it harshly, placing them into orbit around the planet for long periods of time.

The inhabitants of “Kponk!”, a planet in the Bigass Galaxy, have a humor-system based entirely on sex. Their idea of sex, however, is a far cry from that of Earth’s inhabitants. On Kponk!, there are from 42 to 87 different sexes, depending on the season. The number is highest during their Spring period, which alternates with the planet’s only other season, similar to Winter on your planet. Spring is devoted to copulation and Winter is generally for writing jokes about copulation. It is a very happy planet, but extremely crowded.

On Whaaat?, a tiny planet at the extreme edge of one of the many galaxies I visited, I found only two inhabitants. They have always been there, they told me, and always will be. Their humor is based entirely on private jokes between the two of them, and were incomprehensible to an outsider. For instance, whenever one of them said the word “Nuubpt”, which describes what an Earthling might translate as “belly-button”, they would both fall down laughing hysterically for several Whaaat? days and nights (Which, incidentally, equal about a month in Earth time).

As for Earth humor, I have to admit it mystifies me most of the time. I know that if something embarrassing happens to someone else, Earthlings laugh, but if it happens to them, they cry. Why are there so many jokes about the male reproduction organ but so few about the female reproduction organ? Also, doesn’t the word “comic” imply humor? So, why aren’t comic strips funny? And those New Yorker cartoons? Am I missing something? They would be over my head, I guess, if I had one.

Well, I must be off! There are many more planets to explore. I hope to come back some day to yours. I’d like to be the first extra-terrestrial standup comic on Earth, though I’ll have to find a way to stand up, first. (We Schtickos have a lot of arms but no legs. We get around by rolling wherever we want to go, like beach-balls.) Hopefully, I’ll see you again in a few eons. By that time I’ll be able to say, with a straight face, “Jokes? I’ve got a million of ‘em!” (Of course I have no face, either, which could be a problem.)

Meanwhile, Keep Haching!