otoh

I think you can tell a lot about a person by their sense of humor. Like a lot of shy, geeky, introverts, I use humor — especially self-deprecating humor — as a defense. But I also use it as a gage to measure other people. They don’t have to be able to tell a joke well, but I like them better if they GET the joke.

Rene’ Descarte walks into a bar. The bartender asks him if he wants a beer. “I think not,” he replies. And then he disappears.

Now, I’m not a humor snob, but I do appreciate an intelligent comic and humor that rises above elementary potty jokes. For a long time though, my favorite three jokes all had one word in common in the punchline.

A buddy of mine went up to Harvard. (Remember, I grew up in Kentucky. This did not happen often.) While walking around campus, he stopped and asked one of the students, “Can y’all tell where the library’s at?” The student looked down his nose and sneered, “At Harvard, we don’t end a sentence with a preposotion.” “Okay,” says my buddy, “can y’all tell me where the library’s at, asshole?”

Nurse: “Doctor, why do you have a thermometer behind your ear?”
Doctor: “Dammit, some asshole has my pen again.”

Q: What’s the last thing to go through a bug’s mind when he hits your windshield?
A: His asshole.

I tend to prefer short jokes and one-liners. But a good story has it’s merits.

A couple driving to Disney World saw signs for the nearby town of Kissimmee. Being unfamiliar with the area, they debated whether it is pronounced KISSimmee or kissIMMee or kissimmEE. The debate turned into an arguement and they decided that when they got to the town they would ask one of the locals. So they pulled into a fast food place on the main drag and went inside. Stepping up to the counter, the guy says, “I know this may sound like an unusual request, but could you please very slowly and distinctly tell us where we are?” The clerk looks at him and says, “Burger King.”

I told that to a girl I dated and she said, “Oh, so they never found out how to pronounce it.” In that instant, I knew our relationship was going nowhere. Maybe I am a humor snob. Somedays you’re the windshield. Somedays you’re the bug.

Silver beams climb through the trees
And dance atop the dew
Playing on the water
Reminding me of you

Bright and full but never warm
Remotely passing through
Taking on a human form
Moonlight becomes you

A dragon can spot you in a crowd. The sick, the lame, the young, the old, the slow, the wounded (most of all, the wounded) — all are easy prey and fair game. Backed against a wall, you face the dragon. The dragon casts a furtive glance and then a spell, of sorts. You stare, mesmerized, into the dragon’s eyes.

“I have only my two hands,” you plead, “and my heart.”

“Give me your hands.”

“Take them.”

The claws wrap around your throat. “I want your heart,” the dragon whispers. “I want your heart.”

“Take it.”

Another claw runs down your chest, laying you open. “You want the pain?”

“Yes. Give me the pain and take away my heart. The pain is mine. The heart is yours.”

“This heart.” The claws reach in and pull it, still beating, from your chest. “This heart is mine.”

“YES!”

“And when I no longer want it?”

“Still, it is yours. The pain is mine.”

“What use is your heart to me?”

“I don’t know. You said you wanted it.”

“To do with as I choose?”

“Yes.”

“The pain is yours?”

“Yes.”

“And what use is your pain to you?”

“When I feel pain, I know I am not dead yet.”

The dragon drops your heart to the ground and flies away. Your heart shudders and quivers. Inexplicably, it still beats. You can see it, but you cannot feel it. The dragon loosens its grip. You fall, handless, heartless. But not quite dead. Not painless.

George is in his early 40s, divorced for a little over a year, and has a 12 year old son, Danny. A few months ago George signed up on Yahoo Personals. He created his profile. He searched for women that lived near his home and sent messages to several of them.

Not one of the messages George sent was acknowledged. Not even a “Thanks, but no thanks.” Nothing. “How rude,” he thought. Meanwhile, he began getting messages from women that had read his profile. Notably, several of them were from countries from the former Soviet Union. (Let’s call them Russian women.) Initially, he replied to every query he got.

Before long he had developed a pretty regular exchange of email with two of the Russian women, Nadia and Olga, and was sending “Thanks, but no thanks” replies to any new queries he got. Eventually, he began ignoring any new queries. [The last time I talked to him, he still felt that was rather rude behavior, but he recognized how one might get overwhelmed by trying to reply to every message individually. An automated reply may be in order, but he didn't have that in place either.]

Anyway, both Nadia and Olga are in their mid 20s, working in jobs that let them support themselves, never married, and dissatisfied with the chauvinistic attitude they find in Russian men. They wrote frequently. They exchanged photos. And within a few weeks, both wanted to come visit George in the U.S. They were going to have time off from work within a few weeks. Of course, tickets are expensive. Visas are expensive. Local and national officials demanded amounts in excess of the “official” fees. They’d really like to come visit, but it was just going to cost so much….

Now, I readily admit that I am probably more cynical than the average person. George was trying hard to give these women the benefit of any doubts he had. My immediate suspicion is, if these emails are even really coming from Russia, there’s no way to tell whether they’re coming from an Ivan rather than a Tasha. There’s no practical way to verify the age or identity or location of the correspondent at all within the limits of email or Yahoo Personals. So, for the sake of the story, I’ll continue to refer to them as Nadia and Olga….

But George needed to trust what he was reading. He made it clear to both women that they were not the only person he was corresponding with. He stated his belief that, no matter how well they got along in email, he knew it would take more than that to develop any kind of deeper, long-term relationship. He felt a closer connection to Nadia and discouraged Olga from considering a visit at all.

Meanwhile Danny (remember Danny, the 12 year old son, and you know how 12 year old boys are…) expressed his curiosity about his dad’s dating prospects. I don’t remember if he told me exactly how it came up, but Danny is starting to be curious about everything related to females. So George told him about the email he had been exchanging. He showed Danny the photos. And he told Danny that Nadia wanted to come visit.

“So,” Danny asked,” why doesn’t she come visit?”

“That’s a long way to travel,” George explained, “and the trip is very expensive. Even if we let her stay here, there are international airline tickets, tourist visas, and lots of other little costs that add up.”

Danny dug in his pocket and came up with a dollar. He handed it to his dad. “I think you should tell her to come visit.”

So George started arranging a visit from Nadia. He sent her some money. She had a ticket, she said, but there was a delay on the visa. The consulate wanted more money. George asked her for the details on her ticket and the case number on her visa application. They went back and forth and he never got all the details he wanted. He contacted the embassy. They could check on her application if he had the case number. All he had was her name and city. They didn’t find a record of the application.

In all fairness, she may be telling him the truth and trying to protect her own privacy. I don’t think so. But George still says, “If it’s meant to be, something will work out.” I never asked him how much money he sent, but he did offer that it was less than he might have spent if they had been dating the last couple of months. I keep thinking about this exchange from The Big Chill:

Michael: I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

I started to add this as a comment to my previous crap post. But I decided the length warranted it’s own post. The content, however, may not.

For the record, I enjoyed Dawn’s Shitty Day post, especially the Elvis reference. I also enjoyed OCLB’s Iron Horse, Rusted Dreams post. I was just surprised — continue to be surprised — at the popularity of fecal references. There was a pile of them (pun intended) in the last couple weeks or so on several of the blogs I read. (And I don’t mean to imply that Dawn and Brandon wrote the only ones I enjoyed — they just are the first two that come to mind. Please don’t be offended if I don’t mention your crap post by name.)

I suffered from the delusion that bathroom humor is only popular with kids under 12 years old and guys of any age. And that didn’t mesh with my impression of the blog community. I have been re-educated.

Maybe I will write more about my kidney stone. Some of that experience is rather funny… now. Not so much at the time I was writhing in pain. But I’m well aware that pain is also a very popular blog topic. Oh man, can I come up with a bunch of posts on pain! Stay tuned….

There’s a lot of crap recently on some of the blogs I read. These are not crappy blogs. I mean that feces are a prominent part of the content of the posts. And, according to the comments, these are among the most popular post topics a blogger can choose: constipation, diarrhea, seeing crap, smelling crap, (and, of course, the crap we have to put up with at work or from our families, but that’s a little different). Before reading those, I never would have considered writing about my last night in Costa Rica or my kidney stone — two completely opposite ends of the regularity spectrum.

While now I can look back on spending most of the night curled up on a hotel room bathroom floor with detached humor, it’s not an image I really want to put in YOUR head. The search for a pharmacy open on a Sunday hours before an international flight was an unplanned scavenger hunt of sorts. What fun! And, since I’m basically a very private person, why would I want to disclose that five days into the kidney stone attack is the only time I have ever taken a laxative? Why would you want to read that?