Random jokes 3

Q. Does subliminal advertising work?

A. That's an interesting question. (Send me money.)

The American public was first introduced to the idea of subliminal
advertising in 1957 by James M. Vicary. In a press conference
announcing the formation of the Subliminal Projection Company, Vicary
claimed that he was able to increase sales of popcorn and Coke
through the use of subliminal advertising. (Send me lots of money.)

According to Vicary, during a six-week test in a movie theater, he
was able to drive up sales of popcorn by 57.5% and sales of Coke by
18.1% simply by flashing the slogans "drink Coke" and "eat popcorn"
over the movie for 1/3,000th of a second every five seconds. (You
want to send me money.)

As plausible as his assertions might have been, there was little
evidence to support them. (Send me money.) For one thing, Vicary
refused to reveal where he conducted his experiment or document it in
any meaningful way. What's more, psychologists who performed similar
experiments concluded that a subliminal ad was no more compelling
than a billboard glimpsed from the corner of the eye.

In an effort to vindicate his claim, Vicary agreed to run the
subliminal message "telephone now" during a Canadian broadcast. Like
other documented cases, the experiment failed. Telephone usage
didn't increase noticeably, and not a single viewer guessed Vicary's
message. (Send me money.)

While neither this experiment nor previous experiments disproved
conclusively the effectiveness of subliminal ads, American
broadcasters were so convinced of the ineffectiveness of subliminal
messages that they simply volunteered not to run them. (You have an
urge to send me money.)

BTW, If you're still unconvinced and would like to see more research
on the subject, you'll be happy to know that I'm running my own
little subliminal experiment. I can't tell you about it now, but in
the coming weeks I'll reveal my findings.

By the way, if you ever need to reach me - for any reason - my mailing
address is: GCFL, Box 12021, Huntsville, AL 35815, USA.



In a certain suburban neighborhood, there were two brothers, 8 and 10
years old, who were exceedingly mischievous. Whatever went wrong in
the neighborhood, it turned out they had had a hand in it. Their
parents were at their wit's end trying to control them. Hearing
about a priest nearby who worked with delinquent boys, the mother
suggested to the father that they ask the priest to talk with the
boys. The father replied, "Sure, do that before I kill them!"
The mother went to the priest and made her request. He agreed, but
said he wanted to see the younger boy first and alone. So the mother
sent him to the priest.

The priest sat the boy down across a huge, impressive desk he sat
behind. For about five minutes they just sat and stared at each
other. Finally, the priest pointed his forefinger at the boy and
asked, "Where is God?"

The boy looked under the desk, in the corners of the room, all
around, but said nothing.

Again, louder, the priest pointed at the boy and asked, "Where is God?"

Again the boy looked all around but said nothing. A third time, in a
louder, firmer voice, the priest leaned far across the desk and put
his forefinger almost to the boy's nose, and asked, "Where is God?"

The boy panicked and ran all the way home. Finding his older
brother, he dragged him upstairs to their room and into the closet,
where they usually plotted their mischief. He finally said, "We are
in BIG trouble!"

The older boy asked, "What do you mean, BIG trouble?"

His brother replied, "God is missing and they think we did it."