"Skunkpost" by DarkTragedy, oil on canvas, United States
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Alas, Poor Yorick
Alas, Poor Yorick by Grace D. Palmer, Watercolor and ink on bristol plate, United States
Friday, February 12, 2010
Declaration Of Concept
Humor takes great and complex concepts, bringing them down to not only a manageable level, but presents sometimes difficult subjects so they not only retain their poignancy and brevity, but also makes it enjoyable as well as memorable. It is designed to make us laugh, but often makes us think, reflect, and sometimes heal us as well. My household is filled with sarcastic poking-fun at even the most somber of topics. Bad news is always presented with a unique dry wit I have come to know and love. My mother recently had to go to the hospital, because her doctor informed her there may be something wrong with the bone in her jaw. The doctor informed her there was a good chance she had Paget's disease. Not the most humorous time for most families, but whenever my mother had to go to the doctors, she would inform people she's going to take her Faggot's test instead of Pagets. My mother doesn't have a prejudice bone in her body, but using humor, no matter how immature or innapropriate, somehow made it easier to deal with, both for her and for everyone else. Thankfully, the tests came back negative, but she still enjoys the look on people's faces when she can tell them she failed her Faggot's test.
There have been numerous studies concerning the use of humor as a healing tool. Laughter has been found to lower blood pressure, increase the immune system, numb pain, and release endorphins in the body. Arnie Cann, at the University of North Carolina, found that laughing in the face of grim circumstances not only offered short term benefits, but lowered long term stress in the individual. Also, it worked as a coping mechanism for those who work in grim environments, such as funeral directors, police officers, and emergency responders.
There have been many satirists, comedians, authors, poets, and musicians who used humor in their work, even when it came across subjects some will claim are unlaughable. Comedians like George Carlin, Bill Hicks, and Louis CK all often talk or talked about incredibly taboo subjects, such as murder, war, death, abortion, rape, evil, and countless others. Yet even as they talked about the most controversial or inappropriate topics, they caused waves or laughed as they shocked and surprised. Humor exists everywhere, and if you seek it out in the most trying times, it can be the only thing that holds you above water.
There have been numerous studies concerning the use of humor as a healing tool. Laughter has been found to lower blood pressure, increase the immune system, numb pain, and release endorphins in the body. Arnie Cann, at the University of North Carolina, found that laughing in the face of grim circumstances not only offered short term benefits, but lowered long term stress in the individual. Also, it worked as a coping mechanism for those who work in grim environments, such as funeral directors, police officers, and emergency responders.
There have been many satirists, comedians, authors, poets, and musicians who used humor in their work, even when it came across subjects some will claim are unlaughable. Comedians like George Carlin, Bill Hicks, and Louis CK all often talk or talked about incredibly taboo subjects, such as murder, war, death, abortion, rape, evil, and countless others. Yet even as they talked about the most controversial or inappropriate topics, they caused waves or laughed as they shocked and surprised. Humor exists everywhere, and if you seek it out in the most trying times, it can be the only thing that holds you above water.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Humorous Epitaphs
"Reader --if cash thou art in want of any,
Dig four feet deep and find a Penny."
Epitaph of John Penny, Wimborne, England.
"Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake,
Stepped on the gas instead of the brake."
Gravestone near Uniontown, Pa.
"Here lies John Yeast,
Pardon me for not rising."
Cemetary in Ruidoso, N.M.
"I Told You I Was Sick"
Cemetary in Key West, Fla.
"Here lies Lester Moore,
Four slugs from a forty-four.
No Les,
No Moore."
Boothill Cemetery, Tombstone Ariz.
Dig four feet deep and find a Penny."
Epitaph of John Penny, Wimborne, England.
"Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake,
Stepped on the gas instead of the brake."
Gravestone near Uniontown, Pa.
"Here lies John Yeast,
Pardon me for not rising."
Cemetary in Ruidoso, N.M.
"I Told You I Was Sick"
Cemetary in Key West, Fla.
"Here lies Lester Moore,
Four slugs from a forty-four.
No Les,
No Moore."
Boothill Cemetery, Tombstone Ariz.
Using Humor To Get Through Difficult Times, The Tough Wisecrack
My six-year-old son likes to skip. He skips everywhere. This habit makes him seem relentlessly cheerful, even though the skipping has more to do with the fact that he has Asperger's syndrome than with any genuine bonhomie on his part. I often think that when the 100-foot albino alligators emerge from New York City's sewers, intent on devouring the populace, Gus will be skipping toward them, greeting them with a wave and asking if they prefer to travel by train, bus, or cab. (Urban transport: his current obsession, along with giraffes, the Beatles, and ladies' feet.)
Having a son who is autistic and hyperactive is not, on the face of it, all that funny. Yet every single day, he cracks me up. Occasionally, I get into trouble for a certain lack of solemnity about his differences. For one thing, I don't call them differences; I say he's nuts. This hasn't always endeared me to other moms of kids with special needs. And it's not that I don't understand the heartache and worry of having a child who can't kick a soccer ball or carry on a complex conversation or, for that matter, zip his own pants. I understand. Believe me. But rather than look at, say, Gus's budding foot fetish and run screaming to the psychiatrist, I'd rather think, Hey, at best he'll be a podiatrist, and at worst he'll have plenty of company in the chat rooms.
Every day of my life, I thank God for dark humor. I subscribe wholeheartedly to this idea, first put forth by Woody Allen: "Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering--and it's all over much too soon."
What is it about humans that makes us want to laugh when logically we should cry? Well, for one thing, dark humor is a form of bravery. Katherine Russell Rich is the author of The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancer and Back, a laugh-out-loud chronicle of her battle against metastatic breast cancer. She's one of the 8 percent of people still here 20 years after the stage IV diagnosis. I guess laughing didn't hurt. For example, her first reaction to finding a lump in her breast was to stop having sex. WASP that she was, she didn't know how etiquette dictated she should respond if someone felt it. When she got over that fear, she embarked on what she called the Bataan Dating March, finally settling on a relationship with an alcoholic shrink. Why? Because he was usually so drunk that "he wouldn't have noticed if my head had fallen off," she says, let alone notice a lump. As the book progresses, one assumes it would be hard to get big yuks out of puking and bone-marrow transplants. But Rich somehow does.
"The worse things get, the funnier I think they are--that's just how I grew up, how I learned to handle things," she says. "But aside from that, I think you have to be funny so that other people don't freak out. I mean, it's fine to be going 'Oh my God, I have cancer' with your closest friends. But you can't do that with everyone; you can't ask the entire world to buoy you up."
Dark humor is also, for Rich, a thumb in the eye to pain. "With cancer, it's saying 'You can take my body, but you're not taking my mind,'" she says. "There's a form of macho defiance there I really like."
Humor also puts people at ease. Robert Reich is terrific at this. The former Clinton Labor secretary is four feet ten inches tall, born with a congenital disorder that stunted his growth. When he was running for governor of Massachusetts a few years ago, he'd start his speeches with "They told me to be short." Or, standing on a step stool, he'd announce, "I'm the only candidate with a real platform." His audience was comfortable with his height because he was comfortable. It's a sophisticated form of consideration.
A twisted sense of humor, I realized recently, is the common denominator among the most loving, considerate people I know. A few years ago, my friend Spencer's father died; this year, Spencer spent much of his time at the bedside of his mother, who was waging a long battle with heart disease. He loved her deeply, but he's not exactly a sensitive New Age guy. A theater fanatic, he said only this in the e-mail announcement when his mother died: "Well, I can finally join the chorus of Annie."
Arnie Cann is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, who studies the role of humor in stress-specifically, how humor helps us cope. He has demonstrated what we all know instinctively: that being able to laugh after a trauma limits the awful effects of the traumatic event. But the question is, What kind of humor helps? In a study soon to be published in the International Journal of Humor Research, Cann used a psychological measure of humor styles, developed by Canadian researcher Rod Martin, to see how different kinds of funniness helped people deal with stress.
A couple of the humor styles measured, so-called aggressive and affiliative humor, had no effect one way or the other on how people perceived stress. Aggressive humor is exactly what it sounds like: attacking or teasing others for laughs. Think Polish jokes, think Lisa Lampanelli. Affiliative humor is a more general joking-around about neutral subjects: the weather, the latest Top Ten list on Letterman, etc. But two styles-so-called self-enhancing and self-defeating-did matter.
"We asked people to think about stressful experiences in the past month," says Cann. "People high in self-enhancing humor simply don't perceive as much stress in their lives as people with a self-defeating humor style."
Self-defeating humor (think Rodney Dangerfield: "When I was a kid, my parents moved a lot, but I always found them") can help make you more popular. After all, most of us like people who are funny and modest. But, says Cann, self-defeating humor "led to higher levels of stress."
On the other hand, self-enhancing humor, the ability to crack wise and see the humor in a situation when your world is falling apart, protects us from stressful events. Jim McKay, the former coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is an example. Suffering through a woeful first season, McKay was asked about the execution of his team. He responded, "I'm in favor of it."
"The subjects who could look at the funny side of something grim really did seem to buffer themselves from anxiety," concludes Cann. Indeed, McKay is now a football icon. I couldn't help thinking about Cann the other day when a married friend came to me and confessed she'd been having an affair. By then, her marriage was in ruins, she felt humiliated, and she had no idea how she'd go on with her life. But I knew she would be okay when, after an hour of sobbing, she said, "Well, I lost the man I love. But on the bright side, I could start a whole new career as a hotel consultant."
Laughing in the face of disaster is a great tonic at the office too. People who work in high-stress fields agree: You gotta laugh, or you can't do the work. Indeed, in their off-hours, I've always found funeral directors to be an unusually jolly lot. "You have to have a sense of humor in this business, just to deal with all the emotion," says James Olson, owner of a funeral home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. "It's often the families who come in and start joking around."
My friend Spencer agrees. The day after his mother's death, he and his brother went to the crematorium to make arrangements. "We were sitting in the funeral director's office, and of course we were all very somber," he says. "That's when I noticed the sign on the wall: 'No Smoking.' Let's say it broke the ice."
Laughter, Olson adds, is often the flip side of crying. "That's why you see so many people at funerals get the giggles."
This brings to mind the famous Mary Tyler Moore Show episode. Mary goes to the funeral for Chuckles the Clown, who'd been dressed in a peanut costume for a parade when he was shelled by a hungry elephant. During the eulogy, Mary suffers from a bout of nervous giggles after Chuckles is remembered by a coworker for his many characters: "Peter Peanut, Mr. Fee Fi Fo, Billy Banana, and my particular favorite, Aunt Yoo Hoo. And what did Chuckles ask in return? Not much. In his own words-'a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.'" That's when Mary completely loses it.
Our need to laugh-or, indeed, howl-in the face of awfulness is exactly what makes us human. Comedian Eddie Brill knows that, which is why his act treads some sensitive territory. At one point in his routine, he talks about how hot it is in Iraq. "It's so hot there," he says, "that the suicide bombers are blowing themselves up just for the breeze." The line is dark, and it gets a laugh every time.
When a moment is freaky or sad or even tragic, laughter restores both normalcy and hope.
Last week, I got our son Gus's report card. Despite reading and doing math ahead of grade level, he essentially can't function in school. He is delayed in every social and behavioral marker. He won't do anything with a group of kids, speaks loudly and inappropriately in class, acts up to get attention, and has such poor motor skills that at six, he can barely write his own name.
My husband, John, and I looked at the card together in grim silence. Then we got to phys ed. The gym teacher reported that Gus was advanced for his age-in skipping. "Look!" said John. "Our son is gifted."
We snickered like idiots for a while. But you know what? Gus is our gift, for so many reasons, not the least of which is: He's just so funny. When we laugh about him, we feel better about the future. It works every time.
Having a son who is autistic and hyperactive is not, on the face of it, all that funny. Yet every single day, he cracks me up. Occasionally, I get into trouble for a certain lack of solemnity about his differences. For one thing, I don't call them differences; I say he's nuts. This hasn't always endeared me to other moms of kids with special needs. And it's not that I don't understand the heartache and worry of having a child who can't kick a soccer ball or carry on a complex conversation or, for that matter, zip his own pants. I understand. Believe me. But rather than look at, say, Gus's budding foot fetish and run screaming to the psychiatrist, I'd rather think, Hey, at best he'll be a podiatrist, and at worst he'll have plenty of company in the chat rooms.
Every day of my life, I thank God for dark humor. I subscribe wholeheartedly to this idea, first put forth by Woody Allen: "Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering--and it's all over much too soon."
What is it about humans that makes us want to laugh when logically we should cry? Well, for one thing, dark humor is a form of bravery. Katherine Russell Rich is the author of The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancer and Back, a laugh-out-loud chronicle of her battle against metastatic breast cancer. She's one of the 8 percent of people still here 20 years after the stage IV diagnosis. I guess laughing didn't hurt. For example, her first reaction to finding a lump in her breast was to stop having sex. WASP that she was, she didn't know how etiquette dictated she should respond if someone felt it. When she got over that fear, she embarked on what she called the Bataan Dating March, finally settling on a relationship with an alcoholic shrink. Why? Because he was usually so drunk that "he wouldn't have noticed if my head had fallen off," she says, let alone notice a lump. As the book progresses, one assumes it would be hard to get big yuks out of puking and bone-marrow transplants. But Rich somehow does.
"The worse things get, the funnier I think they are--that's just how I grew up, how I learned to handle things," she says. "But aside from that, I think you have to be funny so that other people don't freak out. I mean, it's fine to be going 'Oh my God, I have cancer' with your closest friends. But you can't do that with everyone; you can't ask the entire world to buoy you up."
Dark humor is also, for Rich, a thumb in the eye to pain. "With cancer, it's saying 'You can take my body, but you're not taking my mind,'" she says. "There's a form of macho defiance there I really like."
Humor also puts people at ease. Robert Reich is terrific at this. The former Clinton Labor secretary is four feet ten inches tall, born with a congenital disorder that stunted his growth. When he was running for governor of Massachusetts a few years ago, he'd start his speeches with "They told me to be short." Or, standing on a step stool, he'd announce, "I'm the only candidate with a real platform." His audience was comfortable with his height because he was comfortable. It's a sophisticated form of consideration.
A twisted sense of humor, I realized recently, is the common denominator among the most loving, considerate people I know. A few years ago, my friend Spencer's father died; this year, Spencer spent much of his time at the bedside of his mother, who was waging a long battle with heart disease. He loved her deeply, but he's not exactly a sensitive New Age guy. A theater fanatic, he said only this in the e-mail announcement when his mother died: "Well, I can finally join the chorus of Annie."
Arnie Cann is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, who studies the role of humor in stress-specifically, how humor helps us cope. He has demonstrated what we all know instinctively: that being able to laugh after a trauma limits the awful effects of the traumatic event. But the question is, What kind of humor helps? In a study soon to be published in the International Journal of Humor Research, Cann used a psychological measure of humor styles, developed by Canadian researcher Rod Martin, to see how different kinds of funniness helped people deal with stress.
A couple of the humor styles measured, so-called aggressive and affiliative humor, had no effect one way or the other on how people perceived stress. Aggressive humor is exactly what it sounds like: attacking or teasing others for laughs. Think Polish jokes, think Lisa Lampanelli. Affiliative humor is a more general joking-around about neutral subjects: the weather, the latest Top Ten list on Letterman, etc. But two styles-so-called self-enhancing and self-defeating-did matter.
"We asked people to think about stressful experiences in the past month," says Cann. "People high in self-enhancing humor simply don't perceive as much stress in their lives as people with a self-defeating humor style."
Self-defeating humor (think Rodney Dangerfield: "When I was a kid, my parents moved a lot, but I always found them") can help make you more popular. After all, most of us like people who are funny and modest. But, says Cann, self-defeating humor "led to higher levels of stress."
On the other hand, self-enhancing humor, the ability to crack wise and see the humor in a situation when your world is falling apart, protects us from stressful events. Jim McKay, the former coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is an example. Suffering through a woeful first season, McKay was asked about the execution of his team. He responded, "I'm in favor of it."
"The subjects who could look at the funny side of something grim really did seem to buffer themselves from anxiety," concludes Cann. Indeed, McKay is now a football icon. I couldn't help thinking about Cann the other day when a married friend came to me and confessed she'd been having an affair. By then, her marriage was in ruins, she felt humiliated, and she had no idea how she'd go on with her life. But I knew she would be okay when, after an hour of sobbing, she said, "Well, I lost the man I love. But on the bright side, I could start a whole new career as a hotel consultant."
Laughing in the face of disaster is a great tonic at the office too. People who work in high-stress fields agree: You gotta laugh, or you can't do the work. Indeed, in their off-hours, I've always found funeral directors to be an unusually jolly lot. "You have to have a sense of humor in this business, just to deal with all the emotion," says James Olson, owner of a funeral home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. "It's often the families who come in and start joking around."
My friend Spencer agrees. The day after his mother's death, he and his brother went to the crematorium to make arrangements. "We were sitting in the funeral director's office, and of course we were all very somber," he says. "That's when I noticed the sign on the wall: 'No Smoking.' Let's say it broke the ice."
Laughter, Olson adds, is often the flip side of crying. "That's why you see so many people at funerals get the giggles."
This brings to mind the famous Mary Tyler Moore Show episode. Mary goes to the funeral for Chuckles the Clown, who'd been dressed in a peanut costume for a parade when he was shelled by a hungry elephant. During the eulogy, Mary suffers from a bout of nervous giggles after Chuckles is remembered by a coworker for his many characters: "Peter Peanut, Mr. Fee Fi Fo, Billy Banana, and my particular favorite, Aunt Yoo Hoo. And what did Chuckles ask in return? Not much. In his own words-'a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.'" That's when Mary completely loses it.
Our need to laugh-or, indeed, howl-in the face of awfulness is exactly what makes us human. Comedian Eddie Brill knows that, which is why his act treads some sensitive territory. At one point in his routine, he talks about how hot it is in Iraq. "It's so hot there," he says, "that the suicide bombers are blowing themselves up just for the breeze." The line is dark, and it gets a laugh every time.
When a moment is freaky or sad or even tragic, laughter restores both normalcy and hope.
Last week, I got our son Gus's report card. Despite reading and doing math ahead of grade level, he essentially can't function in school. He is delayed in every social and behavioral marker. He won't do anything with a group of kids, speaks loudly and inappropriately in class, acts up to get attention, and has such poor motor skills that at six, he can barely write his own name.
My husband, John, and I looked at the card together in grim silence. Then we got to phys ed. The gym teacher reported that Gus was advanced for his age-in skipping. "Look!" said John. "Our son is gifted."
We snickered like idiots for a while. But you know what? Gus is our gift, for so many reasons, not the least of which is: He's just so funny. When we laugh about him, we feel better about the future. It works every time.
Vietnam Song
Well, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Come on Wall Street, don't be slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade,
But just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on generals, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Now you can go out and get those reds
'Cause the only good commie is the one that's dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, and don't hesitate
To send your sons off before it's too late.
And you can be the first ones in your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
- Country Joe and The Fish
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Come on Wall Street, don't be slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade,
But just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on generals, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Now you can go out and get those reds
'Cause the only good commie is the one that's dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, and don't hesitate
To send your sons off before it's too late.
And you can be the first ones in your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
- Country Joe and The Fish
Talkin' World War III Blues
Some time ago a crazy dream came to me,
I dreamt I was walkin' into World War Three,
I went to the doctor the very next day
To see what kinda words he could say.
He said it was a bad dream.
I wouldn't worry 'bout it none, though,
They were my own dreams and they're only in my head.
I said, "Hold it, Doc, a World War passed through my brain."
He said, "Nurse, get your pad, this boy's insane,"
He grabbed my arm, I said "Ouch!"
As I landed on the psychiatric couch,
He said, "Tell me about it."
Well, the whole thing started at 3 o'clock fast,
It was all over by quarter past.
I was down in the sewer with some little lover
When I peeked out from a manhole cover
Wondering who turned the lights on.
Well, I got up and walked around
And up and down the lonesome town.
I stood a-wondering which way to go,
I lit a cigarette on a parking meter
And walked on down the road.
It was a normal day.
Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell
And I leaned my head and I gave a yell,
"Give me a string bean, I'm a hungry man."
A shotgun fired and away I ran.
I don't blame them too much though,
I know I look funny.
Down at the corner by a hot-dog stand
I seen a man, I said, "Howdy friend,
I guess there's just us two."
He screamed a bit and away he flew.
Thought I was a Communist.
Well, I spied a girl and before she could leave,
"Let's go and play Adam and Eve."
I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin'
When she said, "Hey man, you crazy or sumpin',
You see what happened last time they started."
Well, I seen a Cadillac window uptown
And there was nobody aroun',
I got into the driver's seat
And I drove 42nd Street
In my Cadillac.
Good car to drive after a war.
Well, I remember seein' some ad,
So I turned on my Conelrad.
But I didn't pay my Con Ed bill,
So the radio didn't work so well.
Turned on my player-
It was Rock-A-Day, Johnny singin',
"Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa,
Our Loves Are Gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah."
I was feelin' kinda lonesome and blue,
I needed somebody to talk to.
So I called up the operator of time
Just to hear a voice of some kind.
"When you hear the beep
It will be three o'clock,"
She said that for over an hour
And I hung it up.
Well, the doctor interrupted me just about then,
Sayin, "Hey I've been havin' the same old dreams,
But mine was a little different you see.
I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me.
I didn't see you around."
Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody's having them dreams.
Everybody sees themselves walkin' around with no one else.
Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time.
But all the people can't be all right all the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,"
I said that.
- Bob Dylan
I dreamt I was walkin' into World War Three,
I went to the doctor the very next day
To see what kinda words he could say.
He said it was a bad dream.
I wouldn't worry 'bout it none, though,
They were my own dreams and they're only in my head.
I said, "Hold it, Doc, a World War passed through my brain."
He said, "Nurse, get your pad, this boy's insane,"
He grabbed my arm, I said "Ouch!"
As I landed on the psychiatric couch,
He said, "Tell me about it."
Well, the whole thing started at 3 o'clock fast,
It was all over by quarter past.
I was down in the sewer with some little lover
When I peeked out from a manhole cover
Wondering who turned the lights on.
Well, I got up and walked around
And up and down the lonesome town.
I stood a-wondering which way to go,
I lit a cigarette on a parking meter
And walked on down the road.
It was a normal day.
Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell
And I leaned my head and I gave a yell,
"Give me a string bean, I'm a hungry man."
A shotgun fired and away I ran.
I don't blame them too much though,
I know I look funny.
Down at the corner by a hot-dog stand
I seen a man, I said, "Howdy friend,
I guess there's just us two."
He screamed a bit and away he flew.
Thought I was a Communist.
Well, I spied a girl and before she could leave,
"Let's go and play Adam and Eve."
I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin'
When she said, "Hey man, you crazy or sumpin',
You see what happened last time they started."
Well, I seen a Cadillac window uptown
And there was nobody aroun',
I got into the driver's seat
And I drove 42nd Street
In my Cadillac.
Good car to drive after a war.
Well, I remember seein' some ad,
So I turned on my Conelrad.
But I didn't pay my Con Ed bill,
So the radio didn't work so well.
Turned on my player-
It was Rock-A-Day, Johnny singin',
"Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa,
Our Loves Are Gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah."
I was feelin' kinda lonesome and blue,
I needed somebody to talk to.
So I called up the operator of time
Just to hear a voice of some kind.
"When you hear the beep
It will be three o'clock,"
She said that for over an hour
And I hung it up.
Well, the doctor interrupted me just about then,
Sayin, "Hey I've been havin' the same old dreams,
But mine was a little different you see.
I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me.
I didn't see you around."
Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody's having them dreams.
Everybody sees themselves walkin' around with no one else.
Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time.
But all the people can't be all right all the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,"
I said that.
- Bob Dylan
Monday, February 8, 2010
Gallows Humor
Oscar Wilde, on his death bed, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death; one or the other of us has got to go.”
Murderer James French, “How’s this for a headline? ‘French Fries!’”
Voltair, when asked by a priest to renounce Satan, "Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
James Rodgers, when asked his final request before facing the firing squard, "Why, yes -- a bulletproof vest."
Murderer James French, “How’s this for a headline? ‘French Fries!’”
Voltair, when asked by a priest to renounce Satan, "Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
James Rodgers, when asked his final request before facing the firing squard, "Why, yes -- a bulletproof vest."
Black Comedy Quotes
George Carlin, “If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.”
“At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.”
“Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.”
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a man and a dog.”
“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
Matt Groening, "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
Stephen King, "I like to tell people I have the heart of a small boy. Then I say it's in a jar on my desk."
“At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.”
“Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.”
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a man and a dog.”
“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
Matt Groening, "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
Stephen King, "I like to tell people I have the heart of a small boy. Then I say it's in a jar on my desk."