Tag: Humor

Molly Ivins on Picking a Governor

Tough as Bob War and Other Stuff June 7, 1986

We’ve just survived another political season largely unscathed. I voted for Bobby Locke for governor: he’s the one who challenged Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to hand-to-hand combat. In the Gulf of Sidra. On the Line of Death. At high noon. Next Fourth of July, “Only one of us will come out of the water alive,” said Locke. Locke thinks the trouble with America is that we’ve lost respect for our leaders and this would be a way to restore some. Me too. Besides, you should have seen the other guys.

The Republicans had a congressman running who thinks you get AIDS through your feet. That’s representative Tom Loeffler of Hunt, who is smarter than a box of rocks. His television advertisements proudly claimed, “He’s as tough as bob war” (bob war is what you make fences with), and also that in his youth Loeffler played football with two broken wrists. This cause uncharitable persons to question the man’s good sense, so he explained that he didn’t know his wrists were broken at the time. Loeffler went to San Francisco during the campaign to make a speech. While there, he wore shower caps on his feet while showering lest he get AIDS from the tile in the tub. He later denied that he had spent the entire trip in his hotel room. He said: “I did walk around the hotel. I did see people who do have abnormal tendencies. I’d just as soon not be associated with abnormal people.” If that’s true, what was he doing running for governor of Texas?”

Molly Ivins

The Nation 1865-1990: Selections From the Independent Magazine of Politics and Culture

Mistaken Identity in the Bookstore

I was browsing in an Oxford bookshop when I noticed a display of Made Simple books – German Made Simple, Chemistry Made Simple, and so on. A friend of mine, a distinguished Oxford philosopher, was standing beside the bookstand, leafing through the Philosophy Made Simple volume. Seizing the chance of a jape, I crept up behind him and murmured into his ear, ‘That’s a bit difficult for you, isn’t it?’ He swung round in alarm, and my first thought was that he had undergone cosmetic surgery. Then I realised that it was not my friend at all. It was a complete stranger. Muttering a hasty apology, I scampered out of the store. Somewhere in the world there is a man who believes people in Oxford are so odiously elitist that they jeer openly at total strangers seeking to improve their minds.

Humour
Terry Eagleton

RIP Richard Belzer

Check out his comedy special, Another Lone Nut, however you can find it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Belzer

Rom-Com Reality

Peter, for example, is a Manhattan marketing consultant with commitment problems. Early on, he breaks up with his latest girlfriend at the six-month mark; in his next scene, he has a near-identical conversation with his latest corporate clients. (The clients take it harder.) Debbie, a risk-averse single mother in Los Angeles, is pilloried with advice from one friend (Tig Notaro) — “Get your degree, find a man, then come home and redo your kitchen” — and escapes only to immediately collide with a second pesky pal (Rachel Bloom), who tacks on that the self-sacrificial parent should also pursue her dream job as a book editor.

The pacing of these scenes feels as though we’re trapped in a spaceship airlock and can only faintly remember what natural life felt like back home on Earth. It only takes a squint to see that Debbie’s adorable foibles — rules scribbled on Post-it notes stuck all over the house, an insistence that her overprotected 13-year-old son (Wesley Kimmel) is allergic to everything from grass to fun — would, in reality, demand an intervention and, perhaps, a diagnosis of Munchausen by proxy. But no one in this movie is playing anything near a human being, although Kutcher occasionally resembles one when he lowers his head, crinkles his eyes and chuckles.

‘Your Place or Mine’ Review: Try Neither
This humdrum Netflix romantic comedy features Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher as longtime friends with possibly hidden feelings for each other.
Amy Nicholson

Existential Crisis – Definition, Example of

In psychology and psychotherapy, existential crises are inner conflicts characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning or by confusion about one’s personal identity. Existential crises are accompanied by anxiety and stress, often to such a degree that they disturb one’s normal functioning in everyday life and lead to depression. Their negative attitude towards life and meaning reflects various positions characteristic of the philosophical movement known as existentialism. Synonyms and closely related terms include existential dread, existential vacuum, existential neurosis, and alienation. The various aspects associated with existential crises are sometimes divided into emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. Emotional components refer to the feelings they provoke, such as emotional pain, despair, helplessness, guilt, anxiety, and loneliness. Cognitive components encompass the problem of meaninglessness, the loss of personal values, and reflections about one’s own mortality. Outwardly, existential crises often express themselves in addictions, anti-social and compulsive behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_crisis

Doctor in Brooklyn: Why are you depressed, Alvy?
Alvy’s Mom: Tell Dr. Flicker.
[Young Alvy sits, his head down – his mother answers for him]
Alvy’s Mom: It’s something he read.
Doctor in Brooklyn: Something he read, huh?
Alvy at 9: [his head still down] The universe is expanding.
Doctor in Brooklyn: The universe is expanding?
Alvy at 9: Well, the universe is everything, and if it’s expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything!
Alvy’s Mom: What is that your business?
[she turns back to the doctor]
Alvy’s Mom: He stopped doing his homework!
Alvy at 9: What’s the point?
Alvy’s Mom: What has the universe got to do with it? You’re here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not expanding!
Doctor in Brooklyn: It won’t be expanding for billions of years yet, Alvy. And we’ve gotta try to enjoy ourselves while we’re here!