*snort*

Enough brooding. Enough self-analysis. Enough introspection. These things are all well and good, but I, dammit, am on vacation. My spirit is light, and I have been sleeping the sleep of the (relatively) unencumbered. Armed with this renewed vigor and zest for existence, I am resolved to be . . . funny.

Here goes.














I am encountering some difficulties.

I suppose it is unreasonable to expect myself to produce humor at the drop of a hat. (Where did that odd little phrase come from?) Most folks can't, I guess. Which is odd, if you think about it, seeing as how most of us do in fact have a sense of humor lurking, skulking, or perhaps milling about in there somewhere. Something makes us laugh on the inside--why is it that we can't bring it to the fore? It's been said that one can pretend to be serious, but one cannot pretend to be funny. A good sound bite. It is, alas, misleading. It is akin to comparing the proverbial apples and kumquats. (You have your proverbs, I'll have mine. And I'll take mine with oblong or oval-shaped fruits 2 to 4 centimeters in diameter, ranging in color from yellow to red and generally in season from November to late February. Look it up.)

Where was I? Oh yes, misleading comparisons.* You see, you cannot fairly compare being serious with being funny. Being funny requires an outside audience for verification ("If a tree falls in an empty forest, does it make a sound?"); being serious does not. That is, of course, unless you consider yourself to be your most important audience. Which I'm all for. Make yourself laugh ("If you shoot a mime, should you use a silencer?"), and the rest of the world can fend for its own damn self.

Sure, it's not easy. There are sacrifices to make, burdens to bear. People look at me funny at stoplights every morning when I chuckle to myself (okay, out loud) because the NPR announcer has just intoned, "The correct time is 7 o'clock," and I have just mentally responded, "The incorrect time is 3:14." Yes, every morning. Cut me some slack--at least I give an actual time and leave it at that. There are people--you know them, I know them, they're out there--who would say, "The incorrect time is half past a monkey's ass." (You're going to think it tomorrow morning. You know you are. Don't fight it.) No, none of that lowbrow humor for me. I'm the kind of guy who thinks that the following exchange is the funniest part of that cinematic masterpiece, "Beavis and Butt-head Do America."

Agent Bork: Chief! Ya know that guy whose camper they were whackin' off in?
Agent Fleming: Bork, you're a federal agent! You represent the United States Government! Never end a sentence with a preposition.
Agent Bork: Oh, uh... Ya know that guy in whose camper they... I... I mean, that guy off in whose camper they were whacking?

Hill-air-ee-uss. And you thought that grammatical masturbatory humor was out of fashion. Not so, my friend. Not on my watch.

* So I thought it would be funny to link the words "misleading comparison" to some sort of website dedicated to constructive criticism of our esteemed president.. And so I tried to find a few such sites just by brainstorming some possible names off the top of my head: bushsucks.net, bushlies.org, redefeatbush.com, and so on. One in particular leapt to mind, inspired by a bumper sticker I saw recently: bushit.org. So I typed it into my trusty broswer window to see what came up, and . . . well, see for yourself.

Now that's comedy.