Common follies – Page 2 – HUMOR IS NO FUN UNLESS YOU LAUGH

The Bunny

We Americans are a most religious people. Some 90% of us believe in some god. I do not know how many gods there are, or if it is always the same and folks just think it is “theirs.” I do not know how many of us go to church. Some churches have thousands of members. At any rate, we are no slouches when it comes to religion. Or are we?

I conducted a study. I went to the drug store and surveyed the Easter greeting card section. There were about 150 different cards on display. All but six (6) of them dealt with pastel-colored rabbits, eggs, flowers, and little birds. Five of the six cards listed under the heading “Religion” actually dealt with religious topics. The last of the six reverted to rabbits again. Religious rabbits, I presume.

I do not quite know what to make of this. Maybe we are religious all year long except at Easter. Yet on our currency we proclaim “In God We Trust.” That does not ring true any longer. We don’t. We trust in the Rabbit.

Schadenfreude

Humor takes many shapes. If it bends, says Woody Allen, it’s funny; if it breaks, it’s not. We were students enrolled in English Literature. One day a farmer stopped by, soliciting orders for his fine clover honey. Our fellow student Ann ordered a gallon. The man delivered it the next day, in a plastic container. She paid the man and he left. Ann picked up the container. The container slipped out of her hands, fell to the floor, broke open, and soaked the carpet with grade A yellow honey.

You could have heard Ann wail from a block away. “Don’t fret too much about it,” we consoled her. “Let it go. Think Shakespeare: parting is such sweet sorrow.” We did not really laugh at Ann. But inside we all thought it hilariously funny. Now that is schadenfreude, joie mauvaise, there is no English word for the nasty joy of snickering at your neighbor’s more or less harmless mishaps.

It is always fun when such things happen to someone else. But the night I brought the giant pizza home, lifting it out of the car holding the carton with both hands, and the pizza-juice soaked bottom gave way, dropping the precious pie — sausage, anchovies, mushrooms, bacon, olives and all — on the garage floor, that was tragic, not funny. Yet my children found it necessary to roll on the floor laughing.

Just a week ago or so I had a little mishap that laid me open to schadenfreude. I was going to paint a shelf black. I decided to use a spray can, not my familiar brush technique. I shook the can thirty-one times as directed, then aimed at the shelf, I thought, and hit the trigger. A burst of black paint hit my chin and I instantly morphed into a vaudeville blackface. I was alone at the time and thus had to force myself to laugh at myself. Ridi pagliaccio came to mind. But I shouldn’t make light of Leonvavallo’s gripping opera. As Woody Allen would say, it breaks.

The Falcons

For a small town we have a splendid team, the Falcons. I myself am not much of a sports fan but my wife understands the game and has been known to assure players that “they can do it” from her couch.

But that is alright. We are solid fans, nevertheless. The Falcons are “our” team. When our team is playing we are tuned in. When the team is doing well we are exstatic, especially when Crawfit does his his famous two three pointers in a row. Pendergrast and Voykovitch on the attack, handing the ball to each other in such quick succession that just watching makes you dizzy. And then the groan when the ball hits the rim and the other team gets the rebound. Ah, the joys and the agonies of living with your team. Right or wrong, it is your team. Not just Crawfit and Pendergrast and Voykovitch but Jared Browne as well, and Ishmael N’Bakuba, this other great talent the commentators talk about a lot. Those men, and a few others not named here are our team, “a number of persons associated in some joint action”, as the dictionary defines the term. Those men as a group were the ones we rooted for.

But the season ended and Browne retired. He was the oldest. Crawfit was traded. Voykovitch went to Miami. Pendergrast ended up in Oklahoma. They were obviously no longer “associated in some joint action .” I forgot what happened to N’Bakuba. Does not matter, though. One man can hardly be called a team. In other words, our team had ceased to exist.

We had never considered that “our team” and “Falcons” were not identical, not one and the same thing. But actually the Falcons are a separate, a different “team,” an abstract corporate entity, a club called Falcons. The Club is a business entity, a corporation. It never shoots anything, let alone baskets. It may shoot itself in the foot by trading the wrong player. I cannot get myself to root for an abstraction. Some will now accuse me of lacking this imponderable thing, the team spirit. But then I never rooted for the abstract entity called Falcons. I rooted for the team of players I admired. And that team is gone, dissolved. And with it goes my team spirit.

It seems, though, that I was taking trivial things too seriously. Because the Falcons club is still alive. Like a damaged lizard that grows a new tail the Club is growing a new team. They are working on it. To give up on them now would be untimely. And I was just unteamely uprooted.

The Denier

This man we knew had a sharp mind. Unlike many other old men he had kept his youthful and optimistic outlook. Although he understood that the world was full of problems he was not going to let that bother him. There had been fears of worldwide tuberculosis outbreaks, for example. He maintained that a remedy would be found and he was right. Though not completely eradicated, the disease was eventually controlled. When it became obvious that our cities were going to be choked by exhaust fumes he predicted that within years cleaner engines would be developed and he was right on that, too. In time he convinced himself that most, if not all, our fears and problems were in our minds, not anchored in reality.

This attitude of seeing no evil, hearing no evil made life easy for him. If you brought up the subject of, say, water shortage he would say that it was nonsense, that there was plenty of water, that the problem was government overregulation. If you told him that sea levels were rising he would laugh and tell you that comparative data collected over the last hundred years show nothing of the sort. Forests dying on account of acid rain? Yeah, that’s a problem he might admit. All it takes to correct that, he would suggest, was tougher enforcement of existing regulations. The corals are dying? Well, that is nature’s effort to balance things out in the face of ocean water changes. The Pink Eyed Squirrel faces extinction? So what? As Darwin has told us their place will be taken up by the Grey Eyed Squirrel, which is a much stronger species. The Sahel is drying out? Not to worry. He had the figures back to the sixteen hundreds which prove that the Sahel was then and still is a dry region, hence not a problem. Hurricanes are getting more severe? Not so. We have always been getting four or five every year. We just hear more about them because of television. It is probably a conspiracy, he claimed, to cash in on increased viewership which translates into advertising revenue. People love to see catastrophes.

Invariably of course the topic of global warming would come up. Sure the glaciers are melting, he would say. They do that every summer. Then we have a cold winter again, and the balances is restored. The North Pole is melting? Rubbish. Polar ice is five meters thick, he happened to know. You can build a house on it.

By coincidence an old college friend of his was involved in a scientific project in the Arctic. This friend invited him to come and see the station. True enough, he found himself vindicated: there were not only houses on the ice, there even was a runway for aircraft. Triumphant, he set out for a long hike into that bleak majestic blinding white landscape. Two or three miles or so from the station, the sun still shining bright, the ice cracked and moved under his feet. He was just about to deny this event as well but it was too late.

As he arrived at the Pearly Gates the friendly Saint on duty handed him a towel: “Here, dry yourself first. I bet that water was cold.” “Oh, I did not get wet,” he replied. “I am just perspiring a little.”

Discount Winery

I am not a wine connoisseur. Obviously. Because I buy my pleasant, harmless dry red at three bottles for ten dollars. If I go shopping on one of my thrifty days I buy six bottles and pocket the 10% bulk discount. I buy my fruit and my oatmeal and most everything else I eat at the local supermarket where there is always something “special” and on sale and where people are invited to enjoy the savings on Five-Dollar-Fridays. In other words, it is a humble neighborhood where residents are thrifty, hold on to their wallets, and redeem coupons.

I know, however, that they also like a little whisky or a glass of wine. The evidence I have are the two long aisles in the store devoted to wine, beer, and spirits. This should not surprise anyone. The days of the Prohibition are long gone. What I do find surprising is that this same humble supermarket recently added a glass enclosed walk-in cabinet devoted to the storage and display of the finer wines. There also is a tasting corner, complete with bar stools, separated from the crowds by red velvet ropes suspended from brass rings. Who, I asked myself, would patronize such luxury next to potatoes, bananas, Chlorox spray, and baby food?

It seems that I have totally misjudged my neighbors. I stopped to look at some of the wines on display. The price tags were unbelievable. Nothing under $100 for the 750ml- bottle. There were dozens of wines that sold for more than that. The one that hit the jackpot was priced at $220.00. I found it pathetically humorous that the bourgeois save-on-your-groceries mentality carried over even at this price range. If you buy six bottles, the helpful sign said, the price per bottle is reduced to $200, if you can believe such a bargain.

William Hogarth, the great eighteenth century English master of satirical engravings, is known among others for the picture of a tavern displaying a sign that says Drunk for a Penny, Dead Drunk for Twopence. Were he to come back, would he ever have to recalibrate his burin!

On Shipping Out

Meadowbrook Valley Park is a misnomer. It is not in a valley. It is on a hillside. But as cemeteries go the Park has one overriding advantage: it is close to my home. Within walking distance actually, yet all the fellows that have come to rest there were brought in by car and a few were carried up on the shoulders of six to eight sturdy sons and grandsons. So far none, I have been assured, availed themselves of the pedestrian access.

It is a nice, well-kept place. “Henry will have a beautiful view of the ocean,” I once overheard the widow exclaim during her husband’s funeral. To which the officiating Bishop replied: “Good luck!” But it is a nice place, don’t get me wrong. They recently had an advertisement in the local newspaper announcing their 2018 summer specials at zero interest for twelve months. If you could be sure of renaissance this might be a good deal, on a trial basis. Me, I would rather pass on this offer and stay where I am..

I was intrigued by their Personal Planning Guide. Not that I was planning to depart as yet. Only a desperate pseudo-existentialist would do such a thing. But it drove home to me that your death does indeed require some planning if you want to save your survivors a lot of trouble.

With the offer of the guide, and as a neat come-on symbolizing, I assume, your last supper, the Park also threw in a voucher for a local restaurant, valid while supplies last. I am the last person to refuse a free meal but in this case I fervently hope that they will run out. It would be a little too morbid for me.

I must admit, though, that all these musings made me pay attention to other reminders of the unavoidable. I saw a huge sign in a strip mall announcing a sale on coffins, for example. On first reading I thought it was coffee, but no, I had read it correctly. It is just that I had never heard of such an offer. Until I found out that you can buy your coffin even at Costco, except that they call them caskets. And being Costco they probably package them in twos. I could not help noticing that they have two kinds. One is called the Gardener casket at $900 each, the other is the President casket, priced a little lower than the gardener at $800, thus politicizing even my funeral. Shame on them. I also found out that it is legal to sell coffins, or caskets, made out of cardboard. The FTC is not worried about that except, neutral as any government organization should be, they have standardized the terminology and call all such vessels Containers. And if your brain is wired the same as mine you must now have visions of huge container ships. Are we ready to be shipped out in a container?

On Driving While Young

When you are young, say fifteen or so, there is little that you don’t already know. You also can do just about anything. I was already seventeen when I thought I could ride a horse, for example. I just needed some practice. There was a riding school a block away. The instructor must have known I could not tell a horse from a mule, let alone tell either of them what to do. He assigned me to a slow old mare. Then we started off, all around the arena. All but my horse. Smart horse: I was still fishing for the stirrups and would have slid off the saddle, had she moved. The instructor came over, cursed the horse and smacked her. The horse reacted by starting off in a gallop, me holding on to saddle and mane. I do not remember how we eventually came to a stop. All I can say with assurance is that riding a horse came off my can-already-do list that afternoon. I forfeited the rest of the lessons.

But then, who needs to ride a horse, anyway. The way one got around in the twentieth century was by automobile. That, certainly, was within my capabilities. After all, I had once ridden a small two-cycle moped for about 200 yards on an empty stretch of rural highway. So when the American army officer parked his souvenir German army VW in the patch of woods next to where we were then billeted temptation bit me. The keys were in, nobody was home. Let’s see if we can move that thing! Ah, the adrenalin. I knew nothing about gears and how to shift. Which turned out to be embarrassing because the moment I turned the key “the thing” jerked forward. There was nothing in the way to stop it except a small tree. The tree performed flawlessly and the engine died. Amazingly enough there was no serious damage. I pushed the car back to where it had been and slid away.

Yet the dream never left me. One day, I just knew, I would have a car and I would of course know how to drive. I was in my early twenties when I bought my first car, a used British Triumph two-door. I had no driver’s license but I was smart, so who needs lessons? I thought it best to practice after dark when our residential neighborhood was quiet. I remember one night in particular. It was snowing. I did my best to steer in a straight line. As I came around the block on my second lap I could still see the impressions of my previous turn in the snow. It looked more like zig zag than straight line and my knees were shaking. I turned left, which was a mistake because it led me into a cul-de-sac. I had no idea how to back out of the situation and there were people, watching.

Eventually, however, I had to take the driver’s test. To do this I had to arrive at the motor vehicle office in the company of a licensed adult. I did not know anybody in Toronto. Someone advised me to hire an instructor for an hour who would accompany me there. I did that and he taught me a few important last minute details, such as parallel parking on a hillside, using clutch control. How glad I was because that is exactly what I had never thought of and what the examiner had me do. I passed with flying colors. Too bad cars do not have clutch pedals any more. I would be glad to demonstrate.

Then came the days of love and roses. We were newlyweds and we were young and foolish, or at least I was. Consequently I behaved flashily like, for example, driving along with a cigarette nonchalantly dangling from my lips. I found out, however, that this blasé gesture was not worth the cost. You have no idea how hot a burning cigarette is when you accidentally drop it between your legs while you are navigating your car during rush hour at the intersection of Bloor and Yonge in downtown Toronto!

(More below)

The Difficulty of Change

Modern Hawaiians, I am told, are not particularly religious. They will tell you, however, that there is a goddess of fire and volcanos, Pele by name. She lives on Kilauea and from time to time makes the mountain blow its top. That explains a lot as we are finding out. There was a time when it explained everything because, after all, she was a goddess. Things have changed. Pele is no longer a goddess. She has been demoted to a mythological figure, a creation of man’s mind.

The ancient people of Iceland also believed in a god of fire and volcanos. They named him Surtr and he was in charge of making the mountains spew lava. He is no longer a god either, only a mythological fiction of the mind. To be safe, though, maybe the people of Iceland should thank him for supplying them with free hot water.

We must not forget Hephaistos, the ancient Greeks’ mythological god of fire whom the Romans called Vulcan. No need to say more about him. He, too, has been demoted. The last time he was still a god was two thousand years ago when he made Mount Vesuvius erupt.

But things have changed, we think. Mythology makes for a humorous story perhaps, but you cannot take it seriously. At least not when it comes to volcanos. For that we need the truth. I can’t help the feeling, though, that myths are more comforting than truth and so we hang on to Yahweh, a god “at whose touch the mountains smoke” (Psalm 104:32), something we love to recite in churches. Plus ça change, the French say: the more things change, the more everything remains the same.

Maybe not all that much has changed since Pele, Surtr, and Vulcan were at the helm.

Picture credit: Gunnar Gestur, www.demilked.com

Figurines

JUST A STORY, BUT ADMITTEDLY CLOSE TO REALITY

Dear aunt Ella died, in her sleep. She was always good to us and she knew that we had an eye for art and sculpture. That is how we came to inherit her splendid collection of porcelain figurines. It so happened that we had an old cabinet with glass doors we had been thinking of selling or giving away. It was made of depressingly somber dark oak. But potentially it was perfect to display our new collection of figurines. It was not an expensive piece and the thinking was that it would not be a crime, esthetically speaking, to redo the cabinet in a lighter color. In other words, I was volunteered to paint it. It is a well- known fact that in homes where married people live “volunteer” is a transitive verb.

What color, though, would be right? A creamy white was one suggestion. I objected since the walls of the room are already creamy white. There would be no contrast. The cabinet would blend into the wall and visually disappear. My argument was accepted.

Red was mentioned. We already have a small red library or sofa table. But that red is so bland and diffused that it was impossible to find a matching chip in the paint store. And a bright red cabinet in the dining room? A little bit too much contrast, I thought. So that suggestion was discarded.

The original idea had been to paint the cabinet in a lighter color, to get away from dark colors. Blue was suggested. Some of us, me for example, thought that blue was a dark color unless you are thinking of powder blue. We were not thinking of powder blue, however. Defying logic, we were going to lighten up the room by painting the cabinet dark blue. Not dark dark blue, but not powder blue either. Lots of contrast with the wall, however.

It was almost fun to paint the plain wooden outside, two coats with a drying day between. But there were glass doors with ribs that were meant to simulate smaller panels. To paint 3/16 inches wide ribs without spilling any paint on the glass was a challenge, and it also had to be done twice of course. I did not let this bother me. I already had grey hair.

On to painting the inside then. To keep it light we selected, yes, a creamy off-white. The inside had no ribs to worry about and was finished in record time. The off-white inside of the cabinet contrasted beautifully with the blue outside. We should have measured the pieces first, but when we began to install our little collection we discovered that one of the precious figurines was just a little too tall to get her head under the shelves. The only thing to do, short of the guillotine, was to move one of the shelves. The shelves rested on cleats that had been installed by the manufacturer about ninety years ago. They did things solidly in those days. To move those cleats in such a way that the re-installed shelf would not wiggle or slope was a procedure I will not further describe lest my language offend any one.

But we got it done. Our beautiful figurines had a palatial new home. The figurines were mostly off-white and blended perfectly into the off-white interior of the cabinet. Absent contrast, they became virtually invisible.
What does one do in such situations, other than letting go a few nasty words? Get rid of Ella’s white figurines and buy our selves a bunch of blue ones was one idea, and it nearly landed me in divorce court. Or perhaps re-paint the inside of the cabinet blue, sacrificing the idea of lighting up the room in favor of more contrast for the figurines. That made sense. Off came the doors again, out went the figurines — careful, you (me?) broke a finger off one of them already! Take out the shelves. Paint the inside back panel of the cabinet blue, two coats, drying day between them. I was developing a routine. As I finished it was late and I was tired, and tired of painting.

I must have gone to bed but I do not remember that. I should have loved to hear what Professor Freud might have said to my dream that night: I was in my underwear, and in front of me I had a collection of little white figurines, lots of nasty little people with impertinent beady eyes, which I was angrily splashing with red glossy enamel. There, take this! Take that! And I was splashing a lot of red paint on myself in the process when my wife walked in and, thinking I was bleeding to death, let out the mother of all screams. Except it was actually me who was screaming in my sleep. Which woke my real wife up, wondering if I had lost my mind. I was too tired to explain.

Just as well, because another problem had arisen. It was all much too blue. So why don’t we take out the shelves again and repaint them cream color. Just the shelves, not the background. Well, maybe the side panels too. It would help lightening the room and would not diminish the contrast.
It was then that it occurred to me that a bunch of those nasty little red people with cream colored feet that I dreamed about would make a perfect display. Cram them in, a hundred of them, fifty to a shelf if need be. That should be enough contrast for anybody! I suppressed the urge to scream, however, and kept that idea to myself.

CTE

Due to our unfortunate involvement in the Middle Eastern wars we have become familiar with CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Soldiers exposed to heavy blasts and explosions often suffer serious concussions. They may survive the hit but the trauma may leave them with a damaged brain involving changes in some biochemical processes that will slowly but surely lead to deterioration of brain functions. As the adjective “chronic” suggests the condition is irreversible and, so far, incurable. The symptoms are devastating but may not appear until years after the incident.

Needless to say, our soldiers did not deliberately expose themselves to the danger of slowly losing their minds. They are heros whom we sent out to fight in defense of our national interests. Most of us, of course, stay home. There is a bumper sticker that says “We support our troops.” It is probably too lukewarm a tribute when you consider what could happen to our troops years later as a result of brain damage incurred in the line of duty.

There is another part to the CTE story. The victims in this story are also afflicted with CTE but they are not heros fighting for anybody’s country. They are merely athletes, mostly football players, strong, skillful, admired, and often well paid men. But while the soldier in the field is wounded in the service of his country many, if not most football players suffer equally serious concussions with the same symptoms and consequences while, and this sounds absurd to me, while playing with a ball! It is called a game, but it looks more like the fight-to-the-death gladiatorial games the ancient Romans were fond of.

To the fans, of course, football is not trivial at all. Football games are watched and cheered by thousands, sometimes millions. And so, although it is more like a business, it is also still a game and a spectators’ pastime which has taken on the aura of a national, even patriotic, ritual. There is a Greek word, eisegesis (as opposed to exegesis), used by textual scholars to characterise interpretations that introduce the interpreter’s own ideas beyond what the text says. Applied to the issue of football, we have on the one side, simply stated, a ball game, albeit a dangerous one. On the other side we have the fans who interpret the same set of circumstances as a patriotic ritual, something that merits flags and national anthems.

My prediction is that the game will go on, football forever, ignoring the threat of encephalopathy. We will manage to convince ourselves that it cannot by as serious as all that. We spectators do not risk anything. The players do. Just as we do not go to war, soldiers do. Football is a well established tradition and we will continue to rely on our own interpretations of what it means and what it is good for. We may be dealing with a third kind of CTE which I would call Continuing Traditional Eisegesis.

The sad part is that even school boys and college students are often encouraged to play this macho “sport” of football. Is it worth the risk? Or is it time for “Friday Night Lights Out” as someone suggested in a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times (2/8/18). My guess, though, is that this will go on, encephalopathy or no encephalopathy. Unless, perhaps, mothers of sons start a protest movement.

PS. Women are known to do such things.