news://rec.humor. explanations

Have you ever been bugged by an editorial cartoon that you stared at endlessly, but simply couldn’t understand? Or an office/cocktail/bar joke whose punch line simply didn’t make any sense? So you just laughed with everybody else so not to look like a complete idiot.

Maybe it was an “in” joke, maybe you are thinking too hard and maybe you really are an idiot. If you’re anything like me, this could sit in the back of you brain for days on end, as you get increasingly agitated about a stupid joke.

For this purpose, I suggest creating a newsgroup exclusively for jokes and cartoons that people don’t “get”. You would (anonymously) post the bothersome joke, and others will hopefully reply with threads of comments trying to decrypt it. Perhaps the New York Times editorial illustrators or G.B. Trudeau (Doonesbury) will check by once in a while to help out the less gifted portion of their readership.