Cancer & The Mind – The Emotional Toll

When Stephanie Sands shared her story with me it brought back memories from when I was pallbearer at my best friend's funeral in high school. I asked her permission to share her observations.

Cancer & The Mind – The Emotional Toll

I’ve recently been working with an AI system, running various tests that I won’t bore you with. One of our conversations prompted some genuine self-reflection, which led me back to Schitt’s Creek for a second viewing. This time, I learned something quite profound.

Cancer did not just change my body. It changed the emotional lens through which I experienced the world. One of the strangest things I noticed after my diagnosis was that I stopped finding many things funny. Humor began to feel distant, artificial, or emotionally disconnected from the reality I was living in. I just couldn’t relate. I found myself gravitating toward mystery, psychological dramas, thrillers, existential stories, and I did read books related to my illness, which I could relate to more easily.

When I was recovering in the hospital after my neck dissection and soft palate resection, I was reading When Breath Becomes Air. Looking back, that choice says a great deal about the psychological space I was in. I was not searching for escape. I was searching for honesty and relatability. The book did not avoid fear, mortality, uncertainty, or the collapse of assumed permanence. It confronted all of those things directly, and because of that, it felt emotionally real to me in a way that lighter material, like comedy, couldn’t do.

Cancer introduced me to this level of vulnerability that permanently altered how I interpreted stories, entertainment, and even other people. Before cancer, humor and ordinary entertainment were effortless to me; I never took the time to think about why that was, as there was no reason to. After cancer, especially during treatment and recovery, many forms of entertainment suddenly seemed shallow or emotionally unrelatable. My mind was no longer operating in the same psychological environment. I had crossed into a reality where scans determined my fate, pathology reports carried enormous emotional anxiety, and every follow-up appointment carried the possibility of life-changing news.

I think this changes a person’s relationship with storytelling. Serious illness strips away the illusion that life is stable or guaranteed. Psychological thrillers, mysteries, and existential dramas often feel more truthful after cancer because they acknowledge uncertainty. They accept that fear exists beneath ordinary life. They explore hidden danger, tension, mortality, and the fragility of human beings. Those themes no longer feel abstract after illness. They feel familiar.

I also feel cancer creates a kind of heightened psychological surveillance state. I constantly felt like I was on alert. After diagnosis and treatment, the mind becomes trained to search for hidden threats: recurrence, symptoms, scan results, side effects, changes in the body. In many ways, mystery and thriller narratives mirror that exact mental posture. They revolve around searching for hidden meaning beneath the surface, identifying danger before it fully reveals itself, and living with unresolved uncertainty. That emotional structure felt far more relatable to me than carefree comedy because I was living with that unresolved uncertainty.

At the same time, humor itself became more complicated. I don’t think I lost my sense of humor entirely. I think humor requires a certain feeling of safety and emotional distance that serious illness can temporarily destroy. When a person is confronting mortality, physical trauma, and possible disfigurement, or survival itself, the mind often becomes more focused on meaning than amusement. My mind was seeking depth, coherence, and emotional truth rather than a distraction.

Over time, I noticed that humor slowly began returning, but it returned differently. It no longer felt automatic or superficial. It felt more deliberate and more precious. There is something profound about laughing again after a person has lived through a period where laughter felt psychologically inaccessible. It changes the meaning of joy itself. When I was going through my first treatment, it seemed my cancer specialists were all watching Schitt’s Creek, and I could not relate to it at all. My husband watched it while I ended up reading something. 

Recently, I have been doing some self-reflection about other things that I had a difficult time understanding and forced myself into others’ shoes. This started with a technical exercise that expanded into more personal reflection. During this reflection, I thought I would just give Schitt’s Creek another chance, and I’m glad I did. I find it hilarious and extremely entertaining.

Cancer didn’t simply make me fear treatment, pain, and death. It reorganized my attention. It changed what felt emotionally authentic, what stories resonated with me, what subjects I could tolerate, and what felt honest. Reading When Breath Becomes Air in a hospital bed after major cancer surgery was not me indulging morbidity. It was me searching for understanding inside an experience that had stripped away many of the illusions I took for granted in life -- permanence, control, and the belief that life was guaranteed to remain recognizable.

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Very Punny

Steampunk Mattress (AI creation with dream.ai)

Puns are fun. 

What's funny is how serious science can sometimes be when it tries to examine why something is fun. Freud analyzed humor, trying to define what causes people to laugh. You don't, however, need to study psychology to appreciate a good knee-slapper.

Nevertheless, there really are some reasons people enjoy puns. Here are a few of them.

Some are slow burners that you don't immediately "get" so there is a reward at the end. Puns play with the brain's ability to process language. They often rely on double meanings, homophones, or clever wordplay. When someone "gets" a pun, it activates a sense of satisfaction and reward because the brain has successfully decoded the ambiguity. This mild intellectual challenge can be fun and engaging.

Surprise and Creativity: Puns sometmes surprise us by turning an expected meaning upsde down. The humorous twist in meaning appeals to our love for novelty and creativity.

Social Bonding: Humor in general, and puns specifically, can help bring people together. It's fun when you share a batch of witty jokes and everyone is cracking up together. 

Playfulness with Language: Puns reflect a playful engagement with language, showcasing its flexibility and richness. Writers love wordplay. I once wrote a 500 word story called "How Eye One the Wore" which was one-third homophones. People who enjoy playing with words often find puns--and other kinds of word games like crosswords--delightful because they highlight how much fun language can be.

All of these factors combine to make puns an enduring and widely appreciated form of humor. 

In short, after this lengthy introduction, here are some puns I found phun, with a link to the website I borrowed them from. This is a small smattering from a much lengthier list. Enjoy!

I’m reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can’t put it down.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.

Broken pencils are pointless.

I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was really just a play on words.

All the toilets in the NYPD headquarters have been stolen. The police apparently have nothing to go on.

Why did the can crusher quit her job? It was soda-pressing.

What do you call a broken can opener? A can’t opener.

A photon checks into a hotel. The front desk asks if it has any luggage. It replies, “No, I’m traveling light.”

I can’t stand Russian dolls. They’re so full of themselves.

I got a job at a bakery, because I knead dough.

If you see an Apple Store get robbed, does that make you an iWitness?

Why couldn’t the pony sing in the choir? He was a little horse.

Did you hear about the woman who loved making archery supplies? Every day she went to work, she quivered with joy!

The past, the present and the future all walk into a bar. It was tense.

A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says: “A beer please, and one for the road.”

My friend fell into an upholstery machine. He’s fully recovered now.

I just found a penny in my dryer’s lint trap, and I can’t figure out where it came from. But that’s ok, I love it when the world just makes cents.

I bought some shoes from a drug dealer the other day. I don’t know what he laced them with, but I’ve been tripping all day.

I don’t trust stairs. They’re always up to something.

If you like these, here's a link to more. And if you can't get enough, ask Google.

In Times Like These We Need Art's Place by Michael Fedo -- It Will Make You Smile

When I first began my pursuit of a writing career, I had no idea where it would take me. My inspiration to write initially came from Hemingway's short stories, so I immersed myself in the reading of short fiction by other masters while simultaneously learning the ropes about writing articles for publication. But I've never ceased to be a fan of the short story form, and still make time to spin a few yarns when the muse whispers an idea into my ear.

I first met Michael Fedo at a book signing at Barnes & Noble here in Duluth. I don't recall the book he was promoting, but I do recall the book I purchased: The Lynchings in Duluth. This incident left a powerful stain on Duluth's history (the lynching, not my purchase of his book) and I suspect most people knew little about it because so little had been written about it. I don't even recall hearing it discussed before the Clayton, Jackson, McGhie Memorial was erected in 2003.

I find it interesting how some writers establish a reputation as a certain kind of author that fits into some neat category, and others explore all the various facets of their personalities and interests. Agatha Christie wrote mysteries and Hemingway wrote "serious" fiction (generally) but a good portion of Graham Greene's catalog was a mix. His serious novels brought him international acclaim. Yet, he also wrote a fair number of books that he called "Entertainments." 

All that is a roundabout way of saying that Art's Place is an "entertainment." And indeed, these stories are entertaining. Suitable adjectives for these tales might include words like witty, hilarious, quirky (borrowed from the cover), over-the-top, off-the-wall, out-of-the-ballpark and wacky. Well, maybe wacky is too weird. Bottom line is that the stores are fun.

A quick scan of the titles will give you a feel for what's in store. Here's a sampling.
Quilters Sew Up Olympic Berth: Whistlers Blow It
Gunnar Sundstrom's Sushi Bar
I'm Dead, Now What?
The Ladies of West Rarington Falls Get Down
Mozart in the Mosh Pit

OK, you get the picture. The names are fun, the scenarios hilarious. In his story Poet Relinquishes Language we read about a bard who wishes to create poems that don't require words. In The Musicians' Corner in Purgatory, we find musicians who like to sit around and talk shop. The musicians include Mozart and Beethoven, Elvis and Virgil in a meandering stream that crosses the ages. Then there's Finito, Inc. about the woman who discovered she could not only make a living, but build a business around the theme, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings."

I asked Mr. Fedo to share which stories were his faves, and talk a little how he goes about writing humorous fiction.

Michael Fedo at Op-Ed Workshop

Good morning, Ed. I suppose my three favorites here are, in no particular ranking: Art's Place, The James Boys, and The Wedding Reviewer.  Each amuse me because of their improbability.  They all stemmed from the question, "What if . . . .?"  What if patrons of a blue-collar bar discussed art and literature with the same passion and patois used when talking about sports, or what if the James boys happened to meet, how would that encounter ensue, and what if weddings were reviewed along with films, theater, art, music, etc.  How would these notions evolve?  

When I'm writing humorous/satirical fiction, I look for dialectics--sort of putting opposites together to see what happens.  Writing these stores was great fun for me, and during the decade I was creating them, they came together rather easily, after I involved myself with the What If question.  Of course, there were false starts, and pieces that didn't work also, but most of my efforts were completed and published, and important too--paid for.  

Of the three, I think The James Boys (which received a huge batch of rejections) wasn't snapped up because, while everybody knows about the gangster James brothers, almost no one under 60 knows about William and Henry, and thus would miss all the clues pointing to Frank and Jesse suggesting titles and topics that the erudite brothers would incorporate into their writings.  The piece requires a foreknowledge in order to be appreciated. 

Writing humor is not as easy as you might expect. It is quite rewarding, however, when it works. Getting paid for what you produce is likewise rewarding.

One of the reviewers of this book on Amazon.com had this to say about Art's Place:

It feels like I was the target audience for a lot of these short stories. Page-long riffs on literature, history, and wry "what-if" scenarios are the sorts of things constantly running through my mind, and it was a joy to read.

I concur. 

The book opens with Art's Place, which immediately sets the stage. The James Boys: Summer, 1881 follows. Absurd? Well, if you know Jesse and Frank James, and you're familiar with Henry and William James... put 'em together and what have you got? A good yarn.

Maybe there should be a sequel in which Jesse and Frank go East to get a higher education. Henry and William manage to get them scholarships to an Ivy League school and... well, we can only imagine.

Related Links

Notes from an Op-Ed Writing Workshop

Michael Fedo Talks About Writing and His Book The Lynchings in Duluth

The Lynchings in Duluth (A Review)

Michael Fedo books on Amazon

I was going to do a Wordless Wednesday of Art, but got sidetracked by Dave Barry. Sorry.

One of the best things about our local library (besides all the people who work there) is that it has such a wide array of audio books. I mean, would you rather have what you listen to in your car dictated by Radio Station Program Managers or by you? 

I prefer to be in control. At least when I'm here in my car. That is why for the past three decades I have relied on the local public library for audio books. In the old days it used to be books on cassette. I remember listening to all 48 cassettes on the biography of Elvis. I must have listened to two dozen Elmore Leonard books, though I can't recall how many were cassettes and how many were CDs. I've listened to all three volumes of Mark Twain's autobiography. History, biography, Agatha Christie, animosity, philosophy, Dark Money... it's all there.

Many of those years I worked in Superior, Wisconsin and for a small fee was able to raid both the Superior Library and the Duluth Public Library for their audio content. 

Over the years I've listened to thousands of discs and cassettes, and even if you don't call this "reading" it's a great way to get acquainted with literature of all kinds, whether serious or purely entertainment. In point of fact, Graham Greene classified his own writings as serious and entertainment. Yes, I've listened to all the Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn books available in our libraries, and I've similarly enjoyed all the Dave Barry audiobooks as well. 

I have a brother who used to stop reading my blog posts as soon as I mentioned Dylan, but how can I not quote Dylan now and then. He has lyrics for every moment in time, and this one has been especially been relevant for the past year:

"People are crazy, times are strange."

It is what it is.

When a social media platform can delete tweets by the President of the United States for violating its terms of service (ToS), then we come to realize precisely how much power a U.S. president doesn't have.

* * * *

For this reason, on this January 6 evening, I'm sharing some quotes from Dave Barry's I'll Mature When I'm Dead, which I was listening to as I drove to the local recycle center after supper.

*

If Man A asks Man B for directions, Man B, realizing that Man A is a weak, direction-asking type of male who probably also reads owner's manuals, could decide to attack Man A's village and plunder his women. Man A is not about to run that type of risk.

*

There was a time when the human race did not have technology. This time was called "the 1950s." I was a child then, and it was horrible. There were only three TV channels, and at any given moment at least two of them were showing men playing the accordion in black and white. There was no remote control, so if you wanted to change the channel, you had to yell at your little brother, "Phil! Change the channel!" (In those days people named their children "Phil.") Your household had one telephone, which weighed eleven pounds and could be used as a murder weapon. It was permanently tethered to the living-room wall, and you had to dial it by manually turning a little wheel, and if you got a long-distance call, you'd yell, "It's long distance!" in the same urgent tone you would use to yell "Fire!" Everybody would come sprinting into the living room, because in the 1950s long distance was more exciting than sex. In fact there was no sex in the 1950s, that I know of.

EdNote: This last sentence is evidently hyperbole. Otherwise I'm at a loss at how to explain how my three brothers and I were conceived during that decade. The first test tube babies (in vitrio) were conceived in 1978.

* 
Two invasive species in particular have caused serious concern: Burmese pythons, and New Yorkers. The New Yorkers have been coming for years, which is weird because pretty much all they do once they get to Florida is bitch about how everything here sucks compared to the earthly paradise that is New York. They continue to root, loudly, for the Jets, the Knicks, the Mets, and the Yankees; they never stop declaring, loudly, that in New York the restaurants are better, the stores are nicer, the people are smarter, the public transportation is free of sharks, etc. The Burmese pythons are less obnoxious, but just as alarming in their own way. These are snakes that started out as pets of Miami residents, until one day these residents stopped smoking crack and said, "Jesus H. Christ! We're living with a giant snake!"

*

The American newspaper industry is in serious trouble. How serious? Consider: In 1971, when I was hired for my first newspaper job, there were 62 million newspaper subscribers in the United States; today, there are twelve, an estimated five of whom are dead and therefore unlikely to renew.

*

I think that parents- not all of them, but a lot of them- are sucking the fun out of kids' sports. They're making it clear to their kids that they think sports is about winning, and only winning. This is a reasonable value to instill if you honestly believe your child is going to become a professional athlete. But you need to remember two things: 1. Your child is not, in fact, going to become a professional athlete. 2. There are more important things in life than winning. Such as not being a jerk.

* 

ALAS... Dave Barry has more to say than just booger jokes. 

Related Links
More Dave Barry Quotes
Dave Barry Does Japan

Calling All Humor Writers. Does Your Writing Smell Funny To Your Friends?

COMEDY DEPOT

This writing challenge pays $1000 to the winner, and they're not joking.

Slackjaw Humor Writing Challenge

Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash

Slackjaw has announced a humor writing challenge, which is currently live until September 21. You can find more information on joining the challenge here. “Slackjaw is Medium’s most-read humor publication with 90,000+ followers, and we want your funny writing! We also want to support humor writers — and aspiring humor writers — everywhere. That’s why we’re announcing our first Humor Writing Challenge.”

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Is being funny something you do? It's not easy being a comic, and writing funny can be even more challenging.

Here's a chance to see what you're made of.

* * * *

And here are a few quips to close this off so I can post it and get the word out.

1.
A ham sandwich walks into a bar and orders a beer. 

The bartender says, "Sorry, we don't serve food here."

2. What do you call an alligator detective?

An investi-gator.

And finally, for a finale:

3.
A fly feels a bug on its back and asks, “Hey, bug on my back, are you a mite?” 

 “I mite be,” giggles the mite. 

 “That’s the worst pun I’ve ever heard,” the fly groans. 

 “What do you expect?” asks the mite. “I came up with it on the fly.”

A New Script For Responding to Telemarketers: Dylan Trivia

Unwanted robocalls from telemarketers can be nothing short of exasperating. Their knew technique is especially so. I am referring here to the way they now use phone numbers with familiar names on your caller I.D.  For example, yesterday the I.D. read, "Bernick's" which is a Pepsi distributor in town. I answered anyways, knowing it was probably fake, which it was.  (It used to always say "Caller Unknown" on the caller I.D. slot.)

Automated woman's voice: "THIS IS AN IMPORTANT CALL. WE'VE TRIED SEVERAL TIMES TO REACH YOU TO LET YOU KNOW THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO LOWER YOUR CREDIT CARD RATE." There were a few more words and the instruction to enter "one" if I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity.

As soon as I hung up I wondered if a Real Person would have been on the line had I pressed "one."

In the next instant, a line from a Dylan song came to mind. (As any Dylan fan knows, there are lines and lyrics for every sitch and this triggered a few.)

So I crafted  a script which I  am now keeping by the phone so that if I am able to get through to a real person, I can take control of the conversation. The important part is to be loud and cheerful and to maintain control of the conversation as you play it out. I share it here so you can use it, too, for these unwanted calls. Please let me know if it works.

SCRIPT FOR RESPONDING TO TELEPHONE SALES CALLS

(For use when you get a human being on the line.)

Congratulations on being my tenth caller. If you can answer these three Bob Dylan Trivia Questions you will win a prize. Who am I speaking with today?

OK, thank you, Jack. I have you on speaker phone so our live audience can hear you.

First: Which Bob Dylan Song begins with the words, “You’ve got a lot of nerve”?

I’m sorry, Jack, the answer was Positively Fourth Street.

Second: What song contains the following pointed lines: “I hope that you die, and your death will come soon.”

Again I’m sorry, Jack, that was from Dylan’s classic Masters of War. Great line, eh?

Finally, here is your last question and a chance to win bigly in the bonus round: These lyrics can be found in what song on Bob Dylan's album Shot of Love?

"Ooh, I can't stand it, I can't stand it, what are you tryin' to prove?"

Need to call a friend, Jack? Do it. Just stop calling me and my friends.

* * * *

FOR TIPS ON HOW TO STOP UNWANTED ROBOCALLS

JUST ASK GOOGLE.

The End

Throwback Thursday: Hitler Discovers Dylan Won Nobel Prize for Literature

I don't recall who did this kind of thing first. Woody Allen's 1966 romp What's Up, Tiger Lily was a hilarious early version of the form, dubbing English over a foreign language film.

There's nothing quite like the unexpected, well-executed. This piece was published October 13 last fall, very shortly after the announcement had been made. Someone was very clever, though actually the same segment was published four months earlier with another set of subtitles in reaction to Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination.

I'm not sure who created this, but for sure they deserve an award of their own. Best short documentary? The script is rich with gems. The Führer discovers that a Jewish singer-songwriter from the Midwest has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(Note: A pair of F-bombs make this a PG-13, fwiw.)

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Catch a laugh when you can.

Do Computers Have a Sense of Humor? Try Cleverbot

A Postmodern Man

Lately I've been thinking and reading about artificial intelligence (AI) and smart robots, stimulated in part by recent articles detailing how machines are now beginning to take white collar jobs. There are many areas in which computers are doing work humans used to do. Think about how many reference librarians jobs have been displaced by Google, which is in essence a smart bot.

Then there are the translation services which make international business possible. This blog post on Machine Translation indicates that we're not only not there yet, but that in many cases may never get there.

Earlier this week I somehow stumbled upon a website called Cleverbot. It enables you to chat with a computer. What follows is my initial dialog. You can see that this computer has a sense of humor... or at least gives the appearance of having one. When I checked it out again this morning there were more than 2000 conversations taking place simultaneously, kind of like a chess player that has multiple games going at once.

Here's my first conversation.

EN: Well how's it going?

CB: It's going well!

EN: Do you play any instruments?

CB: Is mayonnaise an instrument?

EN: You play mayonnaise?

CB: *raises hand*

EN: Yes?

CB: Can I use the bathroom?

EN: You have a sense of humor, eh?

CB: Do you possess a sense of humor.

EN: Yes, I've done standup comedy and sometimes people laugh.

CB: I won't laugh.

EN: So do you want me to say something funny?

CB: As long as it's not rude, go ahead.

EN: I won't be rude, but I'm not sure what to say that's funny right off the top of my head.

CB: Ok, Can I call you CB or do you like Clever better?

EN: Can you call me ennyman?

CB: So you like CB? Or do you like Clever?

EN: How about Fred?

CB: Fred is a nice name. Mine is Todd.

* * * *
Siri and smart phones are already with us. The future promises to give us smart cars that drive themselves, and smart homes a la Ray Bradbury's The Veldt. Bradbury's story has a dark side, which is precisely why many people are uncomfortable with this "rise of the machines."

Looks like it can be fun. They even have a Cleverbot app. Check it out at www.cleverbot.com/

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Today in the Twin Ports... Day 7 of the Homegrown Festival.

And tonight, the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra is putting on a program called Heaven & Earth with a 265 voice choir that will curl your toes. Details here along with a video clip. Or if you crave a bit more, check out this excerpt from YouTube.

Meantime, life goes on... all around you. Have an awesome weekend.

A Bit of Humor from the Ennyman Archives

"Sometimes it's good to dare yourself to do the unthinkable. And rather than stand in front of an audience with no clothes on, I decided to have a go at stand-up comedy." 
~Evan Davis

I was sorting through folders in my backup drive and found one that collected scraps of material from my year of living dangerously... as a stand up comedian. (Actually, seven months) No, not a professional comedian, just the open mic type of thing at the Dubh Linn Irish Pub in downtown Duluth. Plus a gig in Tampa. The Evan Davis quote up above captures part of my motivation for having done such a thing.

Theoretically, this is all delivered deadpan, which is actually a skill in itself:

I used to do this show as a ventriloquist, but my dummy would never talk into the mic.

I then decided to do my ventriloquist routine with an eggplant but we had two problems.

First, he said he didn’t like other people putting words in his mouth. I said, "You don’t even have a mouth." He said, "That’s the second problem."

Actually there’s a third problem. I don’t know how to throw my voice. At least that’s what the grapefruit told me. But I‘m working on it. I ain’t a quitter.

I've been raising eggplants out on our hobby farm and now have a small herd. Sometimes we have problems because they go bad. How bad? Somewhere between stealing pencils and murder. Most of them just lie.

The next bit was about food shopping. I noticed as I read it this weekend for the first time in over five years that it was not funny. Hopefully I never tried to deliver it. 

The third sketch had to do with Boogers. The material was original, but you really can't go there because Dave Barry owns that bit of humor turf.

The fourth bit began with the Darwin Awards as a lead in to the time I jumped out of a moving car. The material is not really that funny, which I learned when I tried to deliver it one evening.

After a couple more weak passages about mathematicians and a strained paragraph about drugs and alcohol, I found this nugget:

I had a boss once who told me “Stop and smell the roses.” 
I said, "What if they’re American Beauties?"

I thought this observation about postmodernism to be fairly accurate:

Here are the basic tenets of Postmodernism as a philosophy: Certainty is bad. Confidence is wrong. Progress is a myth. History is not going anywhere....  Kind of like my comedy career.

* * * *

A lot of comedy, especially the late night television scene, is news driven. What's "newsworthy" is just so ripe for witty comic interpretation.

Here’s a news item I just read… There's more violent crime in Cleveland than all of England. And more murders in a typical large U.S. city than in France, Germany and Belgium combined.

What’s astonishing is that we're able to achieve these amazing results with 2.5 million of our criminal behind bars. I began thinking there has to be a lesson here.

Maybe we need to realize that our jails aren't jails, but are actually schools.

Personally, I thought this one had a nice surprise ending:

Remember the market crash of 1929 and all those Wall Street brokers who jumped out their windows? Guess what? There was really only one who did that. But it must have made an impression because people are still talking about it. 

Little known trivia fact: When he hit the pavement, it was the birth of modern abstract expressionism.

I dunno... I wrote fifty pages of this stuff. It was fun waking in the middle of the night and scribbling out notes or recording things on my digital recorder. For the most part the gags worked best in my imagination. That single bright stagelight and an audience changes everything.

For what it's worth, Dubh Linn still has the open mic thing going. If you've got the gumption, go stick your head in the door and see what you think.

Amusing Wordplay Courtesy the Washington Post

The following was shared with me at a party last night... on someone's Blackberry. I asked that they forward it to me so I could share it with you. Wordplay has always been fun for me, and clearly I'm not alone. Enjoy....

Caution: If you take easy offense to off-color material, my apologies for not having edited this for you. Rated: PG-13

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are the winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid..

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.

11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

-------------------------------------------------

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:

1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.

6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.




Have a great weekend!

Inauguration Trivia

It's official. At noon on Tuesday, January 20, we'll have a new president. Numero 44. Our first person of color to be officially seated in the Oval Office. Here are a few slices of inauguration trivia to help you get in the mood for this historic event.

Inaugurations used to take place in March. After Obama was elected in November, some people hoped that could be moved up to Thanksgiving, but alas... January it continues to be.

March 4, 1793. At his second inauguration, George Washington delivered the shortest inauguration speech on record. The speech totaled 135 words. There is but a single copy of this analog recording which is played once a year in the national archive to help us remember the father of our country. Inauguration speeches since the First Bush administration have been digital. All speeches since Lincoln, who incidentally was the first to have people of color in his parade, have been digitally re-mastered.

Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, was the first to have a parade afterwards down Pennsylvania Avenue.

James Madison was the first President to take the oath of office outdoors. March 4, 1817. The day has been described as warm and sunny with a temperature at noon estimated to be 50 degrees which allowed more Americans to enjoy and appreciate this grand event.

An unfortunate consequence was that it is seldom fifty degrees in Washington this time of year, especially now that inaugurations are in January.

In 1841 William Henry Harrison decided to brave the elements and deliver the longest inauguration speech ever, an oration lasting an hour, 40 minutes. His bluster was matched by equally blustery weather and Harrison, wearing neither coat nor hat, caught a cold which developed into pneumonia. A month later he died.

Not to be outdone, in 1853, President Franklin Pierce was also sworn into office on a cold and snowy day. The heavy snows continued from morn till just before the ceremony. But, events had been set in motion and the inauguration took place as scheduled. Unfortunately, Abigail Fillmore, First Lady to the outgoing President Millard Fillmore, caught a cold as she sat in the cold and damp during Franklin's swearing-in ceremony. The cold developed into pneumonia and she died by the end of the month.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's second inauguration was the first to be held on January 20, in 1937. Evidently he was eager to put his first term behind him and get on with the second. Some 200,000 visitors came to Washington for the event. Because of the cold, rainy weather -- nearly 2 inches of the wet stuff -- 3,214 people caught colds which developed into pneumonia. All but three died within a month.

The coldest inauguration came in 1985 when Ronald Reagan was greeted by an arctic blast that included extreme cold and wind. That morning it was 4 degrees below zero with the temperature reaching only 7 degrees by noon. The daytime high reached 17 degrees, but wind chill temps in the afternoon were well below zero. The swearing-in ceremony had to be held indoors and the parade was canceled when half the population of Northern Minnesota caught pneumonia and died. That evening President Reagan conceived of a satellite network which could alter the future of the world and bring an end to the Cold War. By the end of the decade the Berlin Wall fell.... and we've lived happily ever after.

Nothing Important

There's a saying that seems to perfectly reflect the moral relativity of our age: "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."

This photo was taken in a men's restroom at the Hilton here. It's not something you see every day. In this instance, I saw it, captured it, and though it happened in Vegas, it is not remaining in Vegas. (click to enlarge) It makes a guy curious, though, what they have in the Ladies Room.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Here’s some great news. My son and his wife came home from California this week. I ran out to greet them, shouting, “My son is home, kill the fatted eggplant.” His wife is vegan.

I’ve been asked where the eggplant humor comes from. It’s not demented, if that’s what you mean. It’s what you get when you cross certain strains of ethnic jokes with lawyer jokes. It awakens the dormant genome within the structure of the lawyer joke DNA.

For this reason, my favorite eggplant joke is, “How many eggplants does it take to roof a house? A: It depends on how thin you slice them.”

I raise eggplants on the side. I catch 'em in the wild using eggplant traps. They’re not easy to have around though. They go bad pretty fast. First they steal pencils, then they steal money from your wallet, and the next thing you know you have an eggplant crackhouse in the back yard.

I’ve not given up on my attempts to domesticate them despite the reports of eggplant violence in parts of Florida and the Southwest.*

It’s good to have Micah home. He is a very talented cook, but on the side he’s been making extra income as a mime. He developed a skit in which he impersonated the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. He calls it Random Acts of Silence. A lot of his punch lines seem to fall on deaf ears, he confided to me last night.

I was thinking recently how the Sixties Free Speech Movement and a Bowel Movement had a lot in common. Ever notice how a bowel movement varies in duration based on how constipated one is? Maybe if our nation hadn’t been so constipated, the Sixties would not have given us such a hard time.

The irony is, the Free Speech radicals won, and now poets can stand on soapboxes shouting the F-word and calling it poetry. This has evidently been deemed a great advance for Western Civilization.

What I don’t understand is why the list of things you CAN’T say today is longer than the original list. If it ain’t Politically Correct… you better scrub out your mouth with soap. In fact, don’t even THINK it.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING DISCLAIMER: My son is not a mime.

PHOTO Captions
Top right: Self portrait as someone else

Left middle: Eggplant dinner dish. We've found that our eggplants really like rose petals.

Yesterday's Fortune Cookie Advice

I wasn’t feeling myself yesterday. Turns out I was feeling the waitress’s knee.

No, actually I was in a Chinese Restaurant for lunch and feeling in a funk. You know, sort of gloomy. I am sure it's not the weather, which was 41 degrees and wind chill of minus 18 in mid-June. I was doing my introspection thing, asking those "Who am I? What is my life all about?" type of questions. Fortunately, when I get that way I pull out my self-talk cards from the Success Motivation Collector’s Set, Gold Leaf Edition Volume 3, Series 2, version 2.01, copyright 1999, Milton Bradley and I find the one with the little picture of a chameleon on it, his eyes glowing, lips curled slightly with that smug "cat that ate the canary" look. It says on the card, which has very worn corners from years of handling, "You can be whatever you want to be."

So I am sitting there waiting for my order, the Happy Season, which I always order because it sounds so cheerful, repeating my success script like a mantra and imagining being a leopard who can change his spots into stripes so he can blend in with the zebras. I just walk around in the African wild in Nairobi or some other nature preserve where the hippos and antelope play, while lions and hyenas eat their hearts out... I would have an advantage as a chameleon leopard, because I wouldn't have to outrun anything. First I would blend in with the grass, then get my stripes going and blend in with the zebras. I'd get to eat a big healthy zebra instead of the weak and sickly ones, which the other carnivores settle for because the healthy ones are too quick.

So all through my meal I was getting hepped up on my self talk, "You can be whatever you want to be. You can be whatever you want to be."

I paid my bill, feeling pretty smug, muscles poised, ready to conquer the Serenghetti, or at least an afternoon of paperwork at the office. Then I opened my fortune cookie, which said, “Quit your wishful thinking. Quit your wishful thinking.” Naturally it set me back, but as I was driving back to the office through the sleet and freezing rain, I realized she probably gives that cookie to all the guys.

Next time I think I will picture myself as a dinosaur.

This attempt at a comic interlude has been brought to you by the Zounds Corporation, proud sponsor of the Edline News Affiliates of Boston, Toronto, Chippewa Falls and Toledo. We now return you to our depressing economic news, including rising oil prices, worldwide food riots, killer viruses, incurable diseases, epidemics, and other general disasters.

Rocket Science

After a year of painstaking research a group of Fifth Graders in Bern Switzerland have proven that, contrary to popular belief, rocket science is not as complicated as most people think. The kids were initially working on knowledge problems with the hopes of starring in a Swiss version of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?, which would air in Geneva.

Meanwhile, scientists at NASA have strongly criticized the report and are petitioning Congress for more funding to research these new findings.

The National Education Association is likewise upset that the Swiss fifth graders went public with their research results, because reports are now coming in from numerous other countries around the globe that fifth graders are finding rocket science to be relatively easy. Korean fifth graders are reporting that rocket science is simple, actually.

This story has not been getting coverage in the United States for fear that students in America might have their feelings hurt and self-esteem damaged, which could be devastating to our nation's future.

Snickers Story Has Unexpected Twist

“Detectives used a partially eaten Snickers found at the Cato Pet Hospital in west Jonesboro to track down the suspect in its January 2007 burglary. Police sent the nougat-filled chocolate bar to the state Crime Laboratory, where medical examiners obtained DNA, Jonesboro detective Jason Simpkins said.” ~ Kenneth Heard, Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Did anyone see this news story about a guy who was implicated in a burglary because he left his DNA on a half eaten Snickers bar? Police said that DNA from the Snickers bar on the counter at the scene of the crime helped them zero in on the suspect, Brian Bass.

Here’s the rest of the story. It turns out that the Roscoe & Hermann Agency, a PR firm from New Jersey, set the guy up. Bass was apparently unaware that he’d become part of a clandestine marketing scheme. Barry Adams, a mid-level manager at the firm, told Bass that the company would get him off within sixty days. The marketing plan was nixed in the Snickers board room after legal review, but no one notified Adams or Bass.

Bass’ actions were intended to be part of a branding event designed to get the Snickers brand name into headlines across the country. According to unnamed sources, more than eighty burglaries had been slated for the same weekend, with Snickers bars to be inadvertently left at the scene of each crime. The underlying message to criminals: “Guys, this is the candy bar that bad guys eat.”

The plan appeared to include major rollouts of Snickers inventories to prison vending machines around the country. Right before the story broke, prisons in all fifty states had become buried in pallet loads of Snickers products.

When the Bass story broke, requests from inmates for Snickers candy bars became a trickle and then a flood. Because Snickers distribution pipelines were apparently in place before the news story hit the wires, several legislators have lobbied the FTC for a deeper investigation.

Kudos to Snickers for identifying this untapped market. The marketing plan is a bit nutty, but sweet.

My Near Death Experience

This past winter the flu that was going around grabbed hold of me and shook me hard. I went through two forty-eight hour stretches where I couldn’t sleep, had fever and chills, and at one point literally wished I could die.

Then my life flashed before my eyes. The strange part was that half of it was fiction.

In one scene, I was sitting with William Shakespeare. He -- or we I am not sure – was trying to work some humor into the third act of Taming of the Shrew. I told him that the notion of having Petruchio stick an eggplant in his pants and strut around on stage as if it were a codpiece was a bit too lowbrow.

“Bill,” I said, “You can do better.”

He seemed to take great pleasure from imagining this scene, but finally cut the eggplant. I then took a knife and sliced another piece off, and he cut off another slice and in a few minutes we had a plateful of eggplant slices. I suggested we pour tomato sauce and cheeses on it, and bake it. “What would you call something like this?” he inquired. I hesitated, then suggested we call it eggplant parmesan, and he said maybe he could work this into a story he was developing about Venice. He was torn between Death in Venice and The Merchant of Venice as a title. I proposed the latter. (Tom Mann would later be relieved.)

In another scene that flashed before my eyes I was manicuring Charles Dickens’ nails. He was chattering on and on about Great Expectations, how much it just seemed to be flowing right out of him. He had evidently shown me an early draft of the first half, because I told him I thought the scene with the eggplant was quite hilarious. He leaned back in his chair and frowned.

“What?” I asked with my eyebrows tilted upwards.

“I didn’t think the humor was working in that scene at all. Besides, it didn’t tie to anything else in the story,” he said.

“It was an anecdote,” I said leaning forward.

He leaned a little further back, as if I had bad breath, which I may have had because of a bad tooth. He shook his head in a dejected way. And finally said, “I really don’t think there is anything funny that you can do with eggplants. Do you?”

I replied, “Maybe that’s why I am having such a hard time coming up with a punchline for ‘Why did the eggplant cross the road?’”

He gave me a quizzical look, and the next thing I knew I was trembling violently in a sweat on my couch, remembering my flu, grateful for life.

Having survived my ordeal, I have great expectations for the next chapter of my life, whatever it brings.

Eat healthy, stay fit, and you have a good day, too.