This reminds me of a popular German graduation prank. Three goats are set loose in a school building. However, before the goats are released, the students paint the numbers 1, 2 and 3 on them to facilitate an orderly recapture procedure.
A good example that would appeal to some segments of the HN crowd, but leave everyone else baffled:
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use the Banach-Tarski theorem."
Joke writers face a trade-off between targeting a very specific audience to exploit this effect, or broadening the appeal of the joke to make it more accessible (i.e., make it less funny for more people). The really great commedians figure out how to have it both ways by finding new spins on universal themes, and taking the entire audience on that "leap" together (good "observational humor" often falls into this category). The less successful ones often fall back on broad humor (large audience, not very surprising) or reference humor (surprising "click" for a small audience, baffling for the rest).
Fuck. I wanted to ask for an explanation, describing what I thought before, but now I got it. :D Thanks for the joke!