 
Does the title of today's story affect you in such a way that the person nearest you is now asking what you're sighing about?  Or maybe you rolled your eyes so far to the side that you now have a stress headache and need to refocus before reading the rest of this blurb?  (If so, please, take a moment.  The next few words aren't -that- important, and I won't be accountable for repeated stress injuries.  I just won't.)  Because it had that effect on me, typing it just now.  I mean, there's Kunder's The Joke, and the Monty Python bit about the world's funniest joke, and a recent study concerning the same.  There's the wildly not funny Freud essay, and from all this, we might think we're taking a right turn onto Hackneyed Street.
But I promise you, my dears, if this The Joke was a bag of prepackaged organic baby spinach, you'd all be sick, not from bacteria, but from overindulging on its goodness.  Enjoy.