I work in the IT Department of my company. Which means that my department is full of very intelligent, if not quirky, people. And most of them can be very funny at times. We try to avoid the “Nick the Computer Guy” in-your-face sarcasm, but even that is sometimes appropriate and fun (with the right people). My point is that it’s an interesting and fun group of people. The following conversations happened yesterday:

Person 1: “Hey, did you hear about that train bombing in Madrid this morning? Al-Qaeda just claimed responsibility!”

Person 2: “Madrid? Why would you bomb Madrid?”

Person 3: “The people there are so beautiful! I’m serious, have you ever been there?”

Person 1: “You’re right. I’ve seen Telemundo…”

Person 3: “Those women are flawless!”

Person 1: “Yeah, don’t kill those people. We need those people. Why can’t they bomb an ugly country?”

And before you picture a bunch of computer geeks drooling over Spanish women, Person 3 is our attractive (married) Puerto Rican female Administrative Assistant. Which I think makes it even funnier. (Person 1 is yours truly.)

In a conversation about coffee:

Person 1: “Next time, we’ll get some Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.”

Everyone: “Mmmm.”

Person 2: “That was my first job!”

Person 1: “What? You had a job as Dunkin’ Donuts coffee?”

Person 2: “No, at Dunkin’ Donuts. I was a Donut Finisher. I finished the donuts.”

Everyone: “HA-ha-ha-ha….”

Person 2: confusion

Person 1 (in authoritative voice): “Bad news, (Person 2). It was a slow day.”

Person 4 (in authoritative voice): “I hope you didn’t eat dinner.”

O.K., maybe those aren’t that funny the next day. But they’re funny at work.

While constructing that first joke, I scanned my head quickly to think of an “ugly country”. I couldn’t come up with one. Which country would you characterize as having a generally ugly population? Just about every nationality I could think of could boast at least one attractive representative specimen. I was going to pick on the old Soviet Block countries, but I remembered Paulina Porizkova.

I’m opening up today’s comment section to nominations of ugly countries. And I invite Al-Qaeda to act appropriately. In this way, they can start making up for previous atrocities.