Ch 2: The Cow Joke (excerpt from my joke writer's book, "The 50 Best Jokes I Ever Wrote")

Joke #2

The world is cool. But it could be more interesting. With a few tweaks here and there.

Like, what if cows floated? 

Weird, sure, but also, kinda cool. The whole sky could be filled with cattle. 

Look, a cold front of prized Angus lumbering in from Canada. Hey, check it out, the Longhorns are returning to Texas after wintering in Mexico!

If cows floated, things would be different. You know what could happen, if cows floated? It could rain milk. 

Do you know what the chances are that it will rain milk?

2%.

* * *

2%. 

Maybe that’s the percentage of people who will love that joke. But man, I do. It’s so fun to tell. It just… waits. It hovers. 

Like a floating cow.

And then… wham! 

2%.

The delay is much of the fun. The fact that the teller knows something sticky and punchy is coming, but the audience doesn’t. They’re a bit lulled. Everyone thinking, “Okay, floating cows, I get it. Why does he keep talking about it for so -- oh, there, 2%. Okay, worth it, that was worth it, y’all! It paid off.”

I’ve told that joke with many different results. I’ve gotten full-on, all-audience applause breaks, even cheers of appreciation. And I’ve gotten grimaces and groans.

The groans, I say, are misplaced. The unspoken rule is that you groan at a pun or joke that’s too obvious. Puns are often groan-worthy, because there’s not enough mystery in them, not enough actual pay off, anyone could have thought of the punchline. 

But a great pun? A great pun is an achievement. A great pun you just do not see coming, and it leaps into existence with such precision that you have to admire it.

Do you know how many puns do that?

(Go ahead. Say it.)

I wrote the floating cow joke as an “exercise.” Meaning, when I’m bored, I run through joke writing structures, and see how many punchlines I can write, to amuse myself, and to see if maybe something really funny just pops to life.

One of those exercises is “What if’s.” Just start a sentence with what if, and see where your brain takes you.

What if people were all the colors? Like there are green people, blue people. Or, what if people changed colors during the Fall, like leaves? What if you could change someone else’s color for a month just by touching the top of their heads? That would drive racists crazy. “Quit it! I told you, I don’t want to be an Asian man! No, I was Pakistani all of October, now stop it!” 

What if porcupines were dinosaur-sized? They would rule the world. “Good god, everybody run, it’s a herd of porcupines! They just took out Houston, we’re doomed!”

What if the world were more horrifying? What if gophers just popped up everywhere, and pulled toddlers into holes? They would be the most horrifying animal ever. “Stay away from the playground, Timmy. We lost half the daycare there last week.”

For the cow joke, I asked what if the rules of physics were different? What if more things floated? Like on the moon? Like… cows.

And off I went, into a new joke. (The gopher joke would probably work, too. I may have to go back in and rescue that one. Although it’s dark. Maybe the gopher jumps up and steals Amazon deliveries.)

If you still think there’s too thin of a payoff on the cow joke, here’s the rest of the bit. (This is for when I continue past the 2% punch, which, often I don’t. I stop right there and revel in that joke with everyone. I take bows. I compliment the audience for their taste.)

“I’m not saying there wouldn’t be downsides to floating cows. Falling cow shit would be the leading cause of death on the planet. Or, as it would be called, The Brown Death from Above. 

“Oh my God, Philip! Somebody call an ambulance! We were just walking along, I was holding his hand, and suddenly I heard a loud “Plop!” And there he was, lying on the ground. I would have given him CPR, but, you know, he was covered in cowshit.”

We’d literally have to have concrete umbrellas. “Can you see any up there? Okay, run for your life!”

Also, if there was a big storm of cows, the moos could get deafening. There might be cow-nadoes full of cows, spinning cows coming back around and around, “Moo!” “Moo!” “Moo!” “Moo!”

Air travel would get more complicated. We’d have to constantly look for cows on radar. 

Your pilot would come on, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to ask that you keep your seatbelts fastened. There’s a large herd of Herefords up ahead, possibly even some Brahmas. We’re going up above the bovine layer, but things might get a tad rough on our way up there, sometimes a stray will wander into the flight path. “Ope, there’s one, get along little doggie, hiyaa, rawhide!” Okay, all clear, we’ll leave him for the sky rustlers. Should be all clear now, and, as always, thanks for flying -- say it with me, people -- Moonited Airlines.”

Okay. Now you can groan. If you must. 

GPT Explainer

This joke is a great example of absurdist escalation combined with pattern subversion and a pun-based punchline. Here's a breakdown of the mechanics at play:

1. Premise Setup: "The world is cool. But it could be more interesting."

• This is a classic mild dissatisfaction setup. The speaker introduces a relatable but open-ended opinion: the world is fine... but what if it were weirder?
  
• It primes the audience for imaginative exploration—this is important because it gives permission to suspend disbelief.
  

2. Absurd Premise: "What if cows floated?"

• This is the central absurdity. It’s a classic “what if” construction that introduces surreal imagery with low-stakes consequences—a hallmark of whimsical or absurd humor.
  
• The surprise here is key. No one expects cows to float, and that dissonance creates comedic tension.
  

3. Commitment to the Bit: "The sky was full of cattle..."

• The joke doesn’t just throw out the absurdity; it commits and escalates it:
  
  • "Cold front of Angus lumbering in" anthropomorphizes weather patterns with bovine terminology.
    
  • "Longhorns returning to Texas" adds a faux-migratory logic, parodying real-world meteorology and animal behavior.
    
• This is world-building for humor—treating nonsense as if it’s logical.
  

4. Logical Consequence: "It could rain milk."

• This is a natural extension of the absurd logic.
  
• The joke takes childlike logic seriously, asking: “If cows floated, wouldn’t milk come from the sky?”
  
• This functions as escalation through consequence: absurd premise → absurd world → absurd effect.
  

5. Punchline via Pun: "What are the chances it could rain milk? 2%."

• The entire joke now hinges on this line.
  
• “2%” is the unexpected answer to a seemingly scientific question—subverting expectations with a double meaning:
  
  • It sounds like a weather forecast probability.
    
  • But it’s actually referring to 2% milk—a pun that retroactively reframes the question.
    
• This is a classic reveal punchline, where the final word recasts the logic of the setup.
  

Summary of Mechanics: