Fun_People Archive
8 May
Draupadi and the Out-of-Culture Joke of the Day

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri,  8 May 98 11:09:56 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: Draupadi and the Out-of-Culture Joke of the Day

X-Lib-of-Cong-ISSN: 1098-7649
Forwarded-by: Nev Dull <nev@bostic.com>
From: tale@vix.com (David C Lawrence)

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" <Dev.Senapathy@usmail.mpct.com>
From: Prashant Rao

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.

© 1998 Peter Langston