After we finally got on our plane from Rome to Madrid yesterday after volcano related delays — anyone ever been pulled off the shuttle bus from the gate to the airplane before? — my wife and I came up with following volcano relate jokes:
bq. Q: What do you call someone who gets insufferable when his flight is delayed because of the volcano?
A: An ash-hole.
bq. Q: Did you hear that planes in Europe are only going to be flying six days a week for the rest of the year?
A: That’s right – no more flights on Ash-Wednesdays.
bq. Q: What do you call it when someone is trying to decide whom to blame for her volcano related flight delay?
A: Trying to figure out where to lay some ash-fault.
bq. Q: Why should you never assume your flight is going to take off in Europe? A: Because when you assume, you make an ash of you or me.
Anyone got any more to add to this list?
More seriously, I’d advise anyone who is flying either to Europe or within Europe as long as this volcano thing is still going on to consider their plans tentative. I think the best analogy is to assume that there is a big snow storm forecast for when you are scheduled to travel. Your flight will probably be fine because in many cases these storms don’t actually materialize, and even if it does your flight might be one of the ones that gets out fine. But you should be aware that there could be delays and your flight could be the one that gets canceled.
*****
Update: Some more additions from my graduate student “Andrew Therriault”:http://andrewtherriault.com/:
bq. Q: Did you hear Iceland finally apologized about the whole volcano thing?
A.They’re very ash-amed of all the trouble they’ve caused.
bq. My flight today got canceled, but the airline ash-ured me I’d get out tomorrow.
bq. After sitting on the runway waiting to leave for six hours, people often develop a condition wherein they lose most social skills but are repositories of random knowledge of things like trans-European wind currents. It’s called Ash-perger’s Syndrome.
Also: A special Monkey Cage bonus prize for anyone who can come up with a pun using “Eyjafjallajokull”