• President Hinckley clearly enjoyed the laughter after he retold one of his father's favorite jokes to 20,049 people gathered to hear him speak at a devotional at the Marriott Center on Halloween. It was a story about a boy who came down to breakfast one morning and said to his father, "Dad, I was dreaming about you last night."

"You were?"

"Yes."

"What were you dreaming?"

"I was dreaming that I was climbing a ladder to heaven, and on each rung of the ladder as I went up, I had to write one of my sins."

His father said, "Yes, where do I come into your dream?"

The boy said, "As I was going up, I met you coming down for more chalk."

• The campus newspaper the Daily Universe regularly includes a Police Beat feature, which in the right journalism student's hands can, especially through brevity, provide a humorous look at what is considered crime or mischief at BYU.

Here's one from Nov. 21 that subtly refers some coeds' need for male attention — "A female student attempted to get the attention of two male students passing by Fox Hall in Heritage Halls by tapping on the glass window of the lobby. The female student shattered the window with her tapping."

Earlier, on Sept. 19, there was an entry about the male need for attention: "An individual reported male students singing to female students outside of Hinckley Hall in Helaman Halls. The males were advised to leave due to complaints."

On Sept. 23, Police Beat reported that a male student wouldn't sit down during the BYU-Utah State football game. A female student complained that she couldn't see. Then, "The male victim allegedly called the suspect a derogatory name and asked her, 'What are you going to do to get me to sit down? Slap me?' The female suspect then slapped the male victim. The victim did not press charges."

• BYU-related humor is not confined to campus, of course. A reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was looking for improbabilities to spice up a recent story about the unlikelihood that Seattle residents would elect a Republican:

"Yes," Neil Modie wrote, "Seattle might well have some Republicans lurking here somewhere. A few rabbis might be living quietly in Tehran, too, and maybe some beer-swilling atheists are enrolled at Brigham Young University."

• BYU's rep for sobriety got a pop culture seal of approval of sorts in November when a political science major at Southern Illinois University won $100,000 on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."