Out-of-Culture Joke of the Day
I get some of the strangest mail, completely independent of the bizarre spam that advertises things like two headed, lesbian, drunken dwarfs who have put up scandalous photos of themselves on a web site and who want everyone to pay to see what they do with yaks on rollerskates. The strange mail I'm talking about seems to genuinely be targetted at me as an individual or a member of small but select group, but for reasons I can't directly understand. The message below was sent to me as well as 14 apparently Indian names, and one apparently Italian name.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Forwarded-by: "Senapathy, Dev"
Dr. Bhatia was teaching Intro to Reproduction at the Indian Institute of Medicine. He held up an unfurled latex condom and asked the class, "Does everyone know what this is?"
"It's a condom," said the class.
"Very good," he answered.
"Now, what is this?" he asked, holding up a surgical glove.
The class shrugged, "We don't know."
"It is Draupadi's condom."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ba-dum-DUM.
(Sounds of moths fluttering against the spotlights.)
Hello? Is anyone still in the audience?
My guess is this didn't play well in Peoria.
I had a hunch that it had to do with something like Vishnu, the eight armed Indian god, but a little more bizarrely sexual. Curiosity getting the better of me, I went to the web to research Draupadi and found http://cs.art.rmit.edu.au/projects/media/elephants/draupadi/story/legend.html which tells The Legend of Draupadi, a story that explains why saris are worn. It's short, so if you want to know, visit the site. The important part for this joke is that Draupadi wasn't a multi-talented god at all, but rather a king's daughter --- one who had the five Pandava brothers as her husbands.
So, now you know, and you can proudly tell this joke while fully understanding the reference, and dumbfounding your coworkers with your amazing knowledge of the legends of other cultures. All thanks to the power of the Internet.