The Footprints in the Butter: Bulgarian Jokes

In Bulgaria, the concept of a виц (vitz, a joke/funny story/anecdote) is very highly developed. Vitzove may be directed at politicians, nationalities, occupations, family members, or famous characters. Typically longer than English jokes, vitzove begin with a set-up, and may involve telling a long and elaborate story. As with all culture-specific issues, I hope you don’t find the translations too cumbersome or dense. This is just a random smattering so you know a Bulgarian joke when it’s your turn to tell one.

The wolf was always terrorizing the rabbit, looking for reasons to beat him up. While waiting for him on a forest path, he was thinking:
“If he’s wearing a hat, I’ll ask him why. If he isn’t, I’ll ask why not. In either case, I’ll beat him up.”
The rabbit came down the path with no hat. The wolf stopped him and said:
“Rabbit, why aren’t you wearing a hat!?” and beat him senseless.
The next day, the wolf was waiting for the rabbit again, thinking:
“When he comes, I’ll ask him for a cigarette. If he gives me a filtered one, I’ll tell him I wanted unfiltered, and vice versa. In either case, I’ll beat him up.”
The rabbit came down the path again, the wolf stopped him and said:
“Rabbit, do you have a cigarette?”
“Filtered or unfiltered?”
The wolf paused, then said:
“Rabbit, why aren’t you wearing a hat again?”

Soviet news agency TASS:
“Yesterday, at four o’clock in the morning, in the valley of the Amur, four Chinese army divisions supported by tanks and artillery crossed the Soviet-Chinese border and attacked a peacefully tilling Soviet tractor. The tractor fired back, repelling the treacherous attack in a hail of rocket and machine gun fire, and flew away. The chairman of the collective farms warned that if the incident is repeated, he will be forced to deploy combine harvesters capable of vertical take-off.”

Dawn in Moscow, 1953. The head of KGB Lavrenti Beria is walking to the Kremlin when he sees a very drunk deputy-chairman Molotov stumble out of a pub swearing at the top of his lungs:
“Death to the moustachioed tyrant, may he burn in hell!”
Beria immediately arrests him and brings him to Stalin.
“Comrade chairman, I caught deputy-chairman Molotov slandering your name in the street. He said ‘Death to the moustachioed tyrant!'”
Stalin glances up from his desk and says to Molotov:
“Who did you mean by that, comrade?”
Molotov squares his shoulders and replies, “Why, Hitler, of course!”
Stalin raises an eyebrow, lights a pipe and reclines in his chair. Then he turns to Beria:
“And you, comrade, who did *you* mean?”

1993. First joint military exercise between post-USSR Russia and the US, on board a Russian nuclear submarine. A Russian general bursts in, red-faced with fury, and says,
“Which one of you motherless idiots threw his greatcoat on the control panel?”
All sailors, American and Russian, fall silent.
“I ask again, you hell-spawned numbskulls, which one of you threw his greatcoat on the control panel!?”
An American sailor says feebly,
“General, in our country we don’t speak to our men like that…”
“Look, it’s gone, your country, all right?! I ask again: which of you threw his greatcoat on the control panel?”

Lyndon Johnson was woken up late one night by an urgent knocking at his door. His space advisor was at the door:
“Sir, the Soviets have reached the moon and they’re painting it red!”
“No problem, let them finish, then we’ll go up and write ‘Marlboro’.”
Relieved, his advisor left. A few weeks later, an American probe went up and painted the Marlboro logo on the red moon.
Johnson was woken up a few days later by the same advisor, who frantically gestured at the moon. Exasperated, he looked up to see an inscription in Cyrillic under the Marlboro logo:
“The Ministry of Defence of the Soviet Union warns that smoking may seriously harm you and those around you.”

(Thugs (борци, sing. борец) are the Bulgarian mafia’s low-level operatives and bodyguards. Stereotyped to drive luxury cars, have no brains and to be extremely violent, they’re known for carrying baseball bats and cell phones.)

A thug walks into a pharmacy and says:
“Give me a loaf of bread.”
“But sir, this is a pharmacy, we don’t carry bread,” replies the pharmacist.
The thug takes out a baseball bat and beats the pharmacist to within an inch of his life.
The next day he comes in again and says:
“Give me a loaf of bread.”
“We don’t carry bread.”
Same thing happens. The pharmacist decides to get some bread to avoid a third beating.
On the third day, the thug walks into the pharmacy.
“Hello, sir, I have your bread right here,” says the pharmacist.
“Oh, that’s okay, I got bread at the hardware store. You get me a quart of milk.”

An ordinary citizen driving an East-German Trabant rear-ends a luxury black BMW carrying two thugs. The driver is paralyzed with fear, but decides that he’s a dead man either way. So, he gets out of the car, finds a crowbar in the trunk and starts wailing on the BMW. He breaks all the windows, dents the hood, destroys the headlights. Finally, he looks at the damage he’s caused, smiles incredulously, gets in the Trabant and speeds away.
The thugs look at each other with their mouths agape. Finally, one swallows and says:
“Holy crap, imagine what he’d have done to us if we’d hit him!”

A thug is zooming down the highway in his BMW when his cell phone rings.
“Hey man, where are you?”
“I’m driving down the highway, why?”
“Be very careful, they just said on the radio that some maniac is doing 300 km/h the wrong way on the highway!”
“It’s not just one, man, there are hundreds of them!”

How can you tell that an elephant has been in your fridge?
By the footprints in the butter.

The brave young knights went to fight the evil dragon. He chopped of its had, but two new heads grew in its place. He chopped those off, and four new heads appeared. He chopped those off – eight new ones appeared…The knight cut and slashed and chopped, and when he chopped off the dragon’s 65536-th head, the dragon died, because it was only 16-bit.

Jenkins greets his master Lord John at the door with a broad grin:
“Where have you been, you old bastard, off boozing and whoring again?”
“No, Jenkins, I went to the doctor and got a hearing aid…”

On a Bulgaria Air flight:
“Dear passengers, please look to your left. You’ll notice that the aircraft’s left engines are on fire. Dear passengers, look right. You’ll notice that the aircraft’s right engines are also on fire. Dear passengers, look down. Those small white dots you see below you are the crew’s open parachutes. The on-board tape deck wishes you a pleasant landing.”

At a final university exam, a clearly inebriated student walked into the lecture hall.
“Excuse me, proffffessor, can a student sit your exam if he’s drrrrunk?”
The professor thought about it and said, “Generally I’m against it, but okay.”
“Thhhank you,” said the student, then leaned into the hallway and shouted:
“Brrrrring him in, boys!”