Funnimetric

After a successful run in the mid-eighties only to be followed by its near-complete disappearance in the nineties, the mattress tag joke is back--with a vengeance. The resurgent joke has been recently eliciting guffaws from the Apollo to the Blue-collar tour and shows no sign of subsiding. "I would hear in Russia. Made me dream of America. I glad to see back this Mattress joke. It's better than the all the sexy jokes I hear everywhere," opined Kazak immigrant Nursultan Nazarbayev as he stood in line to see mattress-tag comedian extroirdinaire, Richard Lewis.

If you've been holed up in a cave for the past year, the joke takes three forms. The first form is meant to draw attention to the fact that somebody actually took the time to pass a law against the seemingly (I say seemingly because the act itself is undeniably quite harmless and potentially life-saving; only the truly naive feel the purpose of the regulation is to keep the tag on the mattress. In fact, the materials in a mattress can be very hazardous) harmless act of removing a mattress tag as in: Hmm: War, poverty, rape; I know, let's pass a law against ripping off a mattress tag.

All this for ripping off a mattress tag!

The second kind of mattress tag joke (MTJ) attempts to make fun of the overly-scrupulous as in: This guy was such a square, he turned himself in after accidentally ripping off his mattress tag.

Finally, the third MTJ isn't so much a joke as an insult: the self-reflective, "That's as funny as a mattress tag joke." If it's true that history repeats itself, then, as people tire of the MTJ in a couple of years, we'll see a return to form three. Until then, get used to it- it's coming to a comedy club near you.

Legislative mirth

tag chart

As you can see, MTJs are on the rise.