guff

People who know me best…

…(ignore those who know yet despise me; yes, there’s a lot of them) could tell you that I prefer comedy over most other forms of expression. I love to laugh, and to make others laugh. And, I love spicy food.

Admittedly, jokes are not my favorite mode of comedic transmission, but I do appreciate them. When a joke passes my way, my ears perk and my attention shifts to unwavering. If you’re lucky and it’s a good one, I’ll pass it along to you at some near future date; without first screwing it up royally, that is.

So the joke is a bit sacred to me, in as much as farts and duck anuses and Bill Gates can be considered sacred. And because of this sacred-ish-ness-icity, a joke should not be co-opted or its relative purity polluted by the teller’s environment. That’s not to say ones intent or aim must be wholesome and above board. It means the humor in a joke should not be allowed to easily fly back at its presenter. In the case of a pie in the face, you always want to purchase a one-way ticket.

When I come across a joke like:

How do you stop an Iraqi tank?

Shoot the guy pushing it.

The context in which it’s put to use is a large part of its effectiveness. If you told this one in 1991, the circumstances allowed for a “Ha ha! The Republican Guard turned out to be pretty lame, huh?”

But if you’re a pro-war, right-wing radio talk show host telling it on-air this morning, one might expect (amongst the chuckling from other pro-war folk listening in) a caller asking “Isn’t that the country we HAD to invade? Weren’t they an immanent threat?!” In other words, it appears the joke’s on you.

Well actually, the joke is sort of on all of us, and it’s the rare person indeed who’s able to laugh at it. Lucky bastard.