catching up on old MONKEYS; recent favorite:

I have a stomachache — probably from eating all this stone.

...which reminded me of an all-time favorite real one:




which, like all my favorite funny things, I cannot leave alone but must analyze to discover why it's so funny:
1) the ironic intellectual reversal - the *doctor* is asking the *patient* for a diagnosis
2) the ironic emotional reversal - the *doctor* is asking the *patient* for a reassurance/explanation
3) what if the patient didn't? ie, how could doctor possibly respond/go further? "Well, then, your intestines have all disconnected and are slipping around independently, making eel-like sounds. You are unwell"?
4) people do not typically eat entire buckets of eels.
5) even if someone did so, one would more likely have chewed them, probably in pieces, the digestion and in-gut (in)action of which presumably would sound exactly the same as of any other ingested item. So the doctor must believe them to have been swallowed whole. This is even more unlikely than that one would eat eels in quantity at *all*.
6) it intensely engages one's aural imagination, and that sound is just funny in its own right; can't explain further
7) "eels" is incredibly specific... one would think that any of many different things could produce the sound the doctor is hearing, and yet he seems confident that he has accurately identified the sound of eels particularly. The "random" factor
8) The choice of "bucket"... people don't typically eat literal buckets of things. And yet if one were to eat a number of whole eels, it's hard to think of a receptacle in which they would more likely have been served. Perfect.