A couple of weeks ago, I posted my ill-fated Awesome $29.99 Nixie Tube Watch blog whose centerpiece turned out to be a scam (I hang my head in shame).

However, “every cloud has a silver lining,” as they say, because it prompted my old chum Nick Rowe to get in touch (we both worked at Intergraph in the final decade of the last millennium — and it’s not often that you get to say something like that).

Anyway, after a bit of back-and-forth email banter, I mentioned I had a good watch-related joke but that it was too long to share on LinkedIn. Nick said he’d love to hear it, so I dug it out of the archives and here it is for your delectation and delight:

#1 Our tale commences with an old man walking down a city street, laboriously struggling along dragging a big, heavy suitcase behind him.

#2 The old man attracts the attention of a gaggle of yuppies. As the old man approaches, the “head of the gang” — the oiliest, smarminess, most unctuous yuppie of them all — says to his companions: “Look at the old guy wrestling with that heavy suitcase; let’s have some fun with him.” So, as the old man staggers past, the chief yuppie calls out: “Hey, granddad, have you got the time?”

#3 The old man pauses and wearily lowers his suitcase. He slowly straightens up and pulls back his sleeve to reveal the most amazing watch any of the yuppies has ever seen. Then he gently touches a button on the side of the watch.

#4 A glittering, Technicolor, three-dimensional hologram immediately appears showing the Earth spinning round annotated with all sorts of interesting information. “This watch is accurate to a billionth of a second,” says the old man, “do you want local time, universal time, solar time, lunar time, or the current time on any of the planets in our solar system?”

At first the yuppies are shocked into silence, standing dumfounded with their eyes gaping wide and their mouths hanging open. Eventually, the smarmy yuppie says: “That’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. Where on earth did you get it?”

#5: The old man says: “I built it. I’m an inventor. It took me years and years. It’s the only one of its kind in the world.” The smarmy yuppie says: “I have to have that watch. How much do you want for it? Would you accept this $10,000 in cash that I happen to have in my pocket?”

#6 The old man says: “You must be joking. It’s not for sale. This is my life’s work!” The smarmy yuppie says: “I won’t take ‘No’ for an answer. I’ll tell you what, I’ll write you a check for $1,000,000 right here and now!” The old man ponders the situation for a while and then says thoughtfully: “Well, I could certainly do a lot more inventing with $1,000,000… alright, you’ve got yourself a deal!”

#7: So the smarmy yuppie hands over a check for $1,000,000, and the old man hands over the watch.

#8 The gang starts to walk away, with the Technicolor hologram gracefully spinning over the smarmy yuppie’s wrist, leaving the old man standing on the sidewalk looking a little despondent.

#9 Suddenly, the old man cries out: “Hang on a moment!” The yuppies turn round to face him and the smarmy yuppie arrogantly asks “What do you want now granddad?”

#10 Pointing down at the suitcase, the old man replies: “You’ve forgotten the main battery!”

What can I tell you? All I can say is that this has people “rolling in the aisles” when I tell it in an appropriate setting (like a battery conference). How about you? Do you have any good jokes of this ilk that you’d care to share?