"Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." - E. B. White.
"Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." - E. B. White.
Unexplained humour dies over time. Think of the classic 'a dog walks into an inn and says "I think I'll open the other one"'.
Some observational humor is timeless. Consider this entry from the same collection of Sumerian proverbs: "The dog understands 'Take it!', but it does not understand 'Put it down!'"[0] later repopularized as "No Take, Only Throw"[1].
[0] https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/proverbs/t.6.1.05.html#t6105.p... [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw
Contemporary rephrasing: "<InsertSubject> can be dissected, like a frog. It turns out that nobody is very interested and the frog dies of it."