Well, we were out for a walk around Terry Trueblood Trail yesterday and a woman stopped us and excitedly asked, “Do you want to hear a joke about Covid?”
Believe it or not, we didn’t know anybody made jokes about Covid—but we said “Yeah, go ahead.” And then she said it was about dogs, and added that dogs don’t get Covid, as if to reassure us. In fact, it turns out that the CDC says you can’t catch Covid from pets, including dogs. It went like this:
The World Health Organization, or WHO, had feared the dogs could spread Coronavirus and ordered all dogs that were exposed to the virus be held in quarantine. After review, the WHO announced that dogs cannot contract Coronavirus. Dogs previously held in quarantine can now be released.
To be clear: WHO let the dogs out.
Sena and I immediately thought of the Men in Black II scene with Frank the talking Pug, who is actually an alien—and if you don’t like it you can kiss his furry little butt! I exclaimed, sort of singing (God help everyone within earshot) “Who let the dogs out!” I forgot the barking part, but we all had fun.
Incidentally, my mondegreen for the song “Who Let the Dogs Out” used to be “Who left the dog pound?” For the record, the word “mondegreen” means: a misunderstood or misinterpreted word or phrase resulting from a mishearing of the lyrics of a song. It often totally changes the meaning of a lyric, resulting in something ludicrously comical.
I think Dave Barry wrote about mondegreens in his book, “Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs,” a book I used to own but somehow lost in one of our many moves. I’m hoping he’ll find this blog post somehow and send me a free, autographed copy of the book.
If we’d had our new Polk Signa S2 sound bar when I first heard the line, I could have used the remote control Voice Adjust dialogue level to reproduce clearer, crisper dialogue.
For the record, I’ve never heard the full song “Who Let the Dogs Out,” which was performed by a “Bahamian junkanoo” band formed in 1977 and released in 2000. I had to look up “junkanoo” and it’s a Bahamian cultural celebration, a festival of music, dance, and dog pounds.
There are conflicting opinions about what the song means. Some say that it was about men calling women filthy names and women fighting back by shouting “Who let the dogs out?” On the other hand, I also read that the song won a Grammy.
When we got home, I googled Covid jokes and found a lot of them. One of the better hits was RJ Julia Booksellers, advertising a book entitled Coronavirus Humor. The author was just called “Mad Comedy,” which means several “top comics” contributed. It was published in April 2020 by Indy Pub.
The best part? There was a statement saying “A portion of the proceeds of this book benefit the hard-working ‘essential workers’ who are sacrificing so much to help us all during the 2020 epidemic.”
Who let the wags out?
Featured Image picture credit: pixydotorg
Go Retire Psychiatrist 