Gabrielle's Friendship Day: humor

Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts

Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts

Catholic spin cycle

A faithful parody

The more-Catholic-than-the-pope fringe of Roman Catholicism is faithfully represented by the ultra-ultramontanes of RealCatholicTV, where Michael Voris shares his overweening smugness in a series of videos titled The Vortex. In recent installments he has decried the collapse of Catholicism in Ireland and reported that contraception has brought humanity to the edge of destruction. Voris would not know the meaning of “subtlety” if it hit him in the face with a sledge hammer forged in the white-hot intensity of a million suns. His antics would seem to put him beyond parody, but nothing daunts the truly brave humorist.

Enter Steve, the eponym of Steve Likes to Curse, a blog of peculiarly skewed and irreverent humor. This month he's unveiled a series of Vortex parodies that are wickedly on target. Sporting a helmet-hair wig every bit as authentic as Voris's and styling himself “Michael Whirly, B.F.D.,” Steve presents The Whirlpool (“where fibs and fabrications are pulled under and drowned”). Check out his denunciation of atheists (“stupid retards who only care about fornicating with members of their own sex and smoking drugs”).

Keep an eye on the background animation for the floating washing machine. Then take a look at some of his other videos. He sincerely pities “those silly Jews” and their “obsolete” religion. Consider how specifically he cites scripture as he lusts for an opportunity to stone Emma Watson as a witch. At least, I think stoning is what he wants to do to her. It is a wonder to behold.

Perhaps you have never wasted precious minutes of your life watching Steve's original inspiration, the egregious (I was going to say “inimitable,” but that obviously no longer applies) Michael Voris. You can get a rush of schadenfreude while marveling at the accuracy of Steve's portrayal as Voris wrings his hands and laments over the sorry state of the modern Catholic Church. (Steve does look down a bit too often at his cue cards, I admit, but he also doesn't flub his lines quite as often as Voris either. It's a trade-off.)

One thing does, however, confuse me. Steve says he has just observed his blog's fifth anniversary, but has yet to attract much notice:

After five years, the first four of which I posted at least one article a day, every day, Steve Likes to Curse’s popularity and exposure are still minimal. On a good day, this one gets around 100 hits. Most days it gets between 40-50. And yet this quiet little website of mine has changed my life. What must it be like for someone whose blog gets thousands of hits a day?

Something is wrong when a treasure trove of humor like Steve's blog gets so few visitors. Go give the nice man a little love.

I believe in a higher power

Even Homer nods

The all-knowing Shphinx (a.k.a. Mooch with a towel on his head), sometimes falls just a bit short in his oracular pronouncements. This was quite evident in his declaration concerning the solid, low-temperature state of water.

No, it's not H₂O squared. It's H₂O cubed.

Mooch should have said “to the third power” in the third panel.

Accidentally accurate

Oops!

Cartoonist Lisa Benson takes aim at the Democrats' opposition to the the Republican budget plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan. You know: the notion that we will save Medicare (and the nation!) by destroying it. Of course, if you're really gullible—or perhaps really dim—you might believe that converting Medicare to a voucher plan is a good idea. And good luck chasing after private insurance with those shrinking vouchers.

The only thing really missing from Benson's cartoon is an appropriate label: Step One! Tossing the GOP budget proposal over the cliff is merely a good start.

Step One!

Why wait till 2012?

The San Francisco Chronicle's “Bad Reporter,” Don Asmussen, neatly pots the crazy Minnesota congresswoman with an anticipatory cartoon. I'm just concerned it will give Bachmann ideas. Run for president a year early? It's just crazy enough to work!

Home boy

I've never been “home”

President Obama poked some gentle fun at several targets during the White House Correspondents Association dinner last week. He tweaked Biden for his use of profanity and Jay Leno for his recent ratings. And he tossed a barb in the direction of the birthers, the wacky people who refuse to accept the evidence of Obama's birth in Hawaii:

It's been quite a year since I've spoken here last—lots of ups, lots of downs—except for my approval ratings, which have just gone down. But that's politics. It doesn’t bother me. Besides I happen to know that my approval ratings are still very high in the country of my birth.

The fringe element that populates the Free Republic website seized on the president's comment:

gooleyman: Am I the only one to notice that Obama admitted on this video that he was not born in the United States.

He actually admits he wasn’t born in the United States.

Some folks can't quite grasp the concept of a mocking comedy routine—even when they're the butt of it (or perhaps especially when they're the butt of it). These crazies were also excited when Michelle Obama spoke in August 2008 before the a conference of LGBT delegates at the Democratic convention (“The World as It Should Be”):

Barack has led by example: When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test for the very point of showing the folks in Kenya that there is nothing to be embarrassed about in getting tested.

Oh, my God! She said her husband's “home country” is Kenya! Oh, no!

I hope that the president's health care reform package includes increased coverage for psychiatric treatment. The birthers need help from competent brain-care specialists. The concept of “home country” is neither obscure nor difficult to understand—and it is not identical to “birth country.” I have reason to know.

The following paragraphs are a short excerpt from a novel I wrote last summer (still unpublished as of this writing, but I'm working on it). The manuscript recounts the travails of a contentious Portuguese immigrant family living in central California. (By a strange coincidence, I grew up in a contentious Portuguese immigrant family in central California. Weird!) This particular episode includes the following exchange between two pre-teen cousins:

“Tia Odette told me that my avô came to this country when he was still single. He was engaged to a girl back home.”

“In the Old Country. The Azores.”

“Yeah, back home,” said Ferdinando.

Paul thought it was interesting how they had picked up the expression “back home” to refer to a place that neither of them had ever seen. They had learned the phrase from their grandparents and it was a natural part of their language.

It's true. All my life I heard family members referring to the Azores as “back home.” I've said it myself.

But I've never been there.

People who misunderstand this expression out of ignorance or idiocy are probably beyond help. The lights are on, but no one is home.

"The Simpsons" did it

Where's the scoop?

The San Francisco Chronicle went berserk when Mark McGwire finally admitted to having used steroids to pump himself up during his baseball career. The weirdly wonderful Bay Area newspaper splashed a transcript of McGwire's remarks as its headline story, and accompanied it with an opinion piece by a sports columnist. On the front page!

Like I said, the Chronicle went berserk.

Normally this is the sort of story that would not hold my attention. My inclination is to snort in disgust and turn the page. If especially exercised, I might mutter, “Don't these idiots remember that they have a sports section?” (That's the part of the paper where game reports and box scores are conveniently sequestered so that I can conveniently dispense with them all by discarding that section of the newspaper.)

I put mendacious McGwire out of my mind and would probably have forgotten all about it except for a paragraph I encountered in John Ortved's The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History. Here it is, from page 253, where Ortved is discussing the celebrities who flocked to lend their voices to episodes of The Simpsons:

Of course, boys being boys, the real draw was always the sports figures.

Larry Doyle: The biggest hullabaloo was when Mark McGwire came in. That was when loads of people who didn't have any reason to be in the recording booth ended up there. All the girls and all the guys were there. He seems like a nice guy, but he looks like a monster. His arms are as big as your legs—that's not an exaggeration.

And I guess we now know why that was, don't we?

Juxtapositional humor

Trailing off in a joke

I don't think of myself as someone who follows the Mark Trail comic strip, although I glance at it when surveying the comics page. Its appeal escapes me and its survival mystifies me. Mark's current adventure involves taking a little boy camping in the woods (not too sure about the wisdom of that) and saving the boy's puppy from poachers who were using it for bait to attract alligators. Oh, and the puppy knocks over a wobbly car jack and traps the little boy under the car.

Note to parents and guardians: Do not let Mark Trail take care of your children or pets.

So now Mark needs to perform yet another rescue. He's desperately hunting for something with which to lift the car and save the little boy. He dashes off to a nearby abandoned store, breaks in, and finds—wait for it—an old jack! (Yay!)

But look at the climactic panel from the strip for December 12, 2009. See the artist's signature bubble? To what exactly is Trail referring when he says “old jack”? This may be the best joke to appear in the Mark Trail strip in quite some time. Is it deliberate? (What do you think?)

My fling with Stephen Fry

A celebration of Fry Days

I suppose it was meant to be. We were each minding our own business, never imagining how the stars were about to align. And then ... it happened.

Stephen Fry used his Twitter account to mention something that was completely and entirely unrelated to me. And promptly set off a stampede to my blog.

You will understand, I hope, that when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less. Therefore, when I say “stampede,”, I intend it in the rather limited sense of (drum roll) a thousand hits in one day.

Let's face it. That's quite a red-letter day for an nth-tier blog. And I hardly even noticed. I was having a very nice weekend fussing over personal projects and enjoying the days just before the start of fall semester. Then I noticed that my Sitemeter widget was indicating a total of 300,000 hits (since 2005, when I launched Halfway There; my first-ever post was uploaded on August 27 of that year, so we have a birthday coming up). The run-up to 300,000 had occurred several days earlier than I had been expecting. I soon found out that Stephen Fry was responsible. It was all his doing!

So what did Stephen do that was so special? He tweeted a mildly obscure remark from the movie War Games, sparking a rush to Google UK to discover the meaning of the string CPE1704TKS. It turns out (certainly to my surprise, and probably to the surprise of anyone else who's been paying any attention), my post on War Games is the No. 1 entry for searchers on Google UK. (Well, I'll be buggered!)

The twittering hordes are still coming to Halfway There in numbers well above my usual modest rate of traffic. Nevertheless, rush hour is clearly over. The numbers are ebbing and will soon be back to normal. I know, however, that I will never forget that magical weekend that I shared with Stephen Fry.

And he doesn't even know I exist! [sob!]

Say, I wonder what Hugh Laurie is doing these days?

Pining for Palin?

A mule for Sister Sarah

Jeanne Phillips inherited the Dear Abby column from her mother, Pauline Phillips, several years ago, after a transition period during which she and Pauline were coauthors. Jeanne also seems to have inherited her mother's sensibilities. Her answers to her correspondents' questions are not that different from what we might have expected from Pauline. Sometimes, though, you wonder if Jeanne's spider-sense is as strong as her mother's. Do you think Pauline would have run this letter, which appeared on July 10, 2009, in Jeanne's column?

Dear Abby: I live in a small town in Alaska. A relationship with a woman I loved more than I have ever loved anyone has ended. I'm left with only pain, misery and suffering.

I keep trying to move on, but everything I do makes me think of her. I have asked friends for advice; they all tell me to “man up and get over it!”

It's frustrating to be told to “get over her” and accept what is. I know brooding isn't helpful, but it's a natural byproduct of pain. What I need to ask you is this: Is it worth putting your heart and soul on the line with the likely possibility of having them crushed? I hope so, because without hope, then what is there to live for? That thought scares me more than anything I have ever experienced.
— Heartbroken Up North

Dear Heartbroken: Of course it's worth it, because without risk there is no reward. I am speaking with the voice of experience. You have plenty to live for. Falling in love is like prospecting for gold. Sometimes you strike the mother lode on the first try, but most times you have to keep digging. I don't know how small the community you live in is, but if it's so small that most of the eligible candidates for romance have been eliminated, then you should consider relocating.

One other question: If you had chosen to run the letter, would you have answered it the way Jeanne did? Here's one possible alternative response:

Dear Heartbroken: Get over it, Todd. Wasilla is too small for her and she's moved on to a whole new set of advisors. You're history. And she belongs to the world now. Well, the fantasy world of right-wing wish fulfillment in which abandonment of one's post is seen as a brilliant feat of political positioning. But don't worry. Your lost love is sure to rake in megabucks for giving pandering political speeches to angry plutocrats and you're certain to glom on to some of that during the divorce proceedings. (Hint: Don't try for custody of the kids. You won't get enough child support to make it worthwhile, especially if random grandchildren keep popping up.)

That's one possible answer, anyway. Perhaps you have a better one (in which case, please leave it in the comments!).

Of course, I could be wrong about all this. Perhaps the writer is just a smitten Republican voter who can't get over the loss of his charismatically tongue-tied idol. Or maybe Jeanne fell for a hoax letter from students at Yale. They used to write to Ann Landers (Jeanne's aunt), but the Landers column is defunct and Jeanne is the new game in town.

I play the fool

Is it April 1 yet?

Something was jammed in my mail box in the university math department break room. I bent down to take a better look. A sorry-looking old football had been wedged into it. When I pulled it out, the ball plumped up a bit to an approximation of its normal inflated dimensions, but it was obviously not up to full pressure. I fished out a memo or two that were also in the mail box, tucked the errant football under my arm, and started down the hall to my office.

I was in a curious sort of academic limbo in those days. Although I was no longer a graduate student in the doctoral program, I had been hired by the department chair as an instructor. I was still hanging out with my friends in the grad program, but I was now quasi-faculty. It wasn't a bad job and I knew some people were hired year in and year out as lecturers, making it possible for the real faculty members to do as little teaching as possible. That kind of insecure year-to-year employment didn't appeal to me for the long run. I had other plans. In the fall I would be leaving for a job with the California legislature, a prospect I regarded with mixed emotions.

The first former classmate I met in the hallway said a cheery hello to me and remarked, “Great idea, Zee! Count me in!”

Huh?

I reached the door to the stairwell and started the ascent to the next floor. A grad student was pounding rapidly down the steps. He gave me an unwelcome but friendly punch on the shoulder.

“I'm on board, Zeno! Definitely!”

Weirder and weirder.

I exited the stairwell at the next landing and started down the corridor. This was TA territory and my office was on its periphery. The occupants of my former TA office whooped as I went by.

“Hup, two, three, four!” they cried.

Oh, right. I had a damned football under my arm.

I was not particularly amused. I stashed the football in a desk drawer in my office and put it out of my mind. Later that day I returned to the mail room. In those days before e-mail, it was possible for important things to show up in memos written on actual paper. Still, I was surprised to see several slips of paper in my box. They were the torn-off bottom halves of a mimeographed form that had been tucked into the grad student mail boxes early that morning. I tracked down the top half in the wastebasket. I instantly recognized the style of a former office partner, although he was pretending to be me:

Date: April 1, 1978 Subj: Math Dept Intramural Touch Football Team From: Zeno Ferox, interim lecturer Wouldn't it be a good idea for the math dept grad students to join the fun and form an intramural football team? I would be willing to serve as the manager and my former office partner, who has experience with high school JV teams, has volunteered to be the coach. If you're interested, tear off the form below and leave it in my mail box. See you on the gridiron!

To anyone who knew how little I cared for sports, it was an obvious over-the-top hoax. Of course, that was also its charm. And hadn't I been seeing walking the hallways with a football tucked under my arm?

The grad students cheerfully joined in the fun and pretended to believe that I had solicited them to join a campus football team. They filled out the forms and tucked them into my mail box. And here's what the form said:

Please indicate how you would like to participate in our new math dept intramural football team by filling in the appropriate information. Would you like to be a linebacker? Height: _____ Weight: _____ a cheerleader? Measurements: _____-_____-_____ a tackling dummy? IQ: ______

There were a couple of other items, too, but I forget. The prank itself, though, will never be forgotten.

And the old football? The friend responsible refused to own up and so never reclaimed his ball, which was evidently an artifact of his younger days. The ball sits today as an odd souvenir atop one of my many bookcases. On the rare occasion when someone spots it, the old story gets retold.

April Fool, Zeno! You're a football team manager now!

My fellow Americans

Probably an 8-year term

There is a flurry of interest in the national media about the president's hair. In a dull period of world peace and universal prosperity, it's understandable that such an issue should seize the attention of American journalists and political pundits. Is President Obama going gray? It happened to Bill Clinton! Inquiring minds want to know!

Some people dismiss the significance of the graying of our presidents. After all, the median presidential age upon assuming office is about 55 years. During a man's progression from 55 years of age to 59 (or to 63 in the case of a two-term president), the choices about one's hair are reduced to “go gray” or just “go.” Absent hair dye or a wig, you're either bald or gray by the time your fifties have run their course.

That's why i was not particularly shocked by Don Asmussen's graphic journalism in the San Francisco Chronicle. President Obama may be only 47 right now, but it's clear that he is already on his way to Anderson-Cooper-ville.

Nevertheless, it gives me pause when I dare to mock the national media. Perhaps it is I who fail to appreciate the significance of Obama's life transition. We should consider the possibility that the burdens of presidential office are uniquely powerful hair-whiteners that go beyond the effects of mere natural aging. That would explain, of course, why major national media outlets would devote so much attention to the matter.

I must admit, though, that I fear to face the implications of that possibility. I have done a bit of investigation myself and the evidence is unambiguous and compelling. There is an excellent chance that I was secretly president of the United States during the past eight years. Hair doesn't lie.

I'm melting!

Pip, pip, Cheerio, and all that

It all started because my morning newspaper was missing. Either my local carrier had screwed up or a passerby had “borrowed” it. People may not subscribe to newspapers much these days, but I've noticed they still like to pick one up from my driveway every so often (especially after a major sporting event; hell, you can have the damned sports page—just leave me the rest of the paper).

The absence of a newspaper at breakfast is a major crisis. Sure, there are heaps of magazines all over the place, but a newspaper is what I want. In its absence, I absentmindedly started perusing the cereal box. That's how I discovered that General Mills was promising me that I could lower my cholesterol: “You can lower your cholesterol 4% in 6 weeks.”

This concerned me. In fact, I was in a near panic. Could this be true? If so, I must be doomed! It's a simple matter of doing the math. If six weeks suffices to lower one's cholesterol by four percent, then what prodigies might be accomplished by a more lengthy regimen? I did the math:

I have been eating Cheerios for over fifty years, give or take a few months to account for irresponsible (but short-lived) dalliances with Frosted Flakes, Sugar Smacks, and Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Every time, though, I returned to my one true love. In round numbers, fifty years contains over 400 six-week periods. At the end of each six-week period, General Mills says one's cholesterol drops to 96% of what it once was. With 400 applications of this factor, we obtain

(0.96)⁴⁰⁰ = 8.1 × 10⁻⁸.

In other words, my cholesterol is down to approximately a twelve-millionth of what it once was, back when I was a chubby-cheeked youngster. How can my body even function under such impoverished circumstances? That's how I know I must be doomed. Surely General Mills would not lie to me!

But then I remembered that my doctor would certainly have commented on such an usual cholesterol level during my routine lab tests, which occur annually. My physician is not entirely delighted with my sedentary lifestyle, but he's always been quite complimentary about my exceedingly good cholesterol numbers. I told him it must be the luck of the genetic draw. High cholesterol has never been a family trait. We metabolize it well.

I went back to the cereal box and read the fine print: “A clinical study showed that eating two 1½ cups servings daily of Cheerios cereal reduced bad cholesterol when eaten as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol.” Ah, yes—“as part of a diet”—the old escape clause.

Perhaps I'll read the cereal box's back panel again on Sunday, as a reminder, when my weekday breakfast of cold cereal is usually supplanted by a three-egg omelet containing two kinds of cheese, ham, olives, and avocado. That should keep me safe from wasting away to nothing.

Candidate equivalencies

Hey, all my friends are doing it!

I laughed heartily when the locomotive version showed up in my in-box. Now it's made its appearance over at Pharyngula. Many other versions are on display at Fark. Well, if everyone else is doing it, how can I resist? Running with the crowd and trying to blend in is my absolute favorite thing to do. (Right.) Still, this time I couldn't resist. The real gag, of course, is the one devoted to Sister Sarah. The others are subject to more nuanced interpretations. I have some in mind. What are yours?

Subtext

Read the fine print

My mother has a firm policy about comic strips: If there are too many words, she won't look at it. (Peanuts and Doonesbury have therefore never been her favorites, even before she developed a right-wing allergy to the latter's political bent.) Mom comes by this inclination honestly, having inherited it from her father.

My maternal grandfather was the last member of the family to be illiterate. Despite this, my grandsire was a great fan of the Sunday comic strips. He would pore over the funny pages and guffaw at the caricatures he found most amusing. With a cheroot wreathing his head in aromatic smoke—and keeping the grandchildren at bay—Grandpa would chuckle heartily at wordless favorites like Henry and smile at the funniest looking characters in the strips with dialog.

I don't mind wordy comic strips, especially since my favorites include Pearls Before Swine, where the humor has much more to do with the dialog than the exquisite art. Piraro's finely drawn Bizarro, however, is an example where the artist's skill is a key component of the reader's enjoyment. Piraro famously embellishes his one-panel comic with recurrent icons, so the daily reader can keep an eye peeled to see where the cartoonist inserted the stick of dynamite, the slice of berry pie, the alien in his flying saucer, or the eyeball.

Bizarro's cartoonist also likes to embed secondary jokes in his panels, today's entry being a good case in point. While the ape responds to the woman's envious observation concerning the greater usefulness of his feet, he reads a newspaper containing the headline “Global Village to Lose Idiot.”

This secondary joke gave me a bigger laugh than the primary joke, but then I paused. The joke, after all, has been on us for eight long years. That part of it hasn't been much fun.

Power-packed Palin prepped for pummeling

Palin 2.0 sure to defeat puny Biden 1.0

Who can save you now, puny humans? The GOP's mad scientists have been working around the clock to augment their vice presidential nominee for Thursday's epic battle with the Democrats' Joe Biden. Thanks to the tireless investigative reporting of Don Asmussen, the inimitable “Bad Reporter” for the San Francisco Chronicle, we now know what La Palin has been doing during her days of sequestration and anti-media quarantine.

The winsome and winning governor of Alaska is undergoing a shocking transformation into a Borgian assemblage of talking points, rhetorical gambits, and factoids. What chance does Joe Biden have against such an amped-up debate machine? The senator from Delaware is widely reported (by most accounts) to be merely a human being. Is his heart pure enough to give him the strength of ten men, and therefore a tiny fighting chance against being utterly consumed by Mecha-Palin? The fate of the Free World hangs in the balance!

McCain's "Hail Mary" pass

Looking for a miracle

Hail, Sarah,
Fair of face,
McCain is with thee.
Vetted art thou amongst women,
And swinging is the state of thy state, Alaska.

Pretty Palin, desperate hope,
Can you make John a winner?
How?
Not by the cast of our vote.

Amen.

Ass for sale

Get your frango while it's hot!

A fellow writer of sophisticated tastes and refined sensibilities sought my assistance recently with a vocabulary problem. His curiosity had been piqued and he knew I was just the person to alleviate his confusion:

Zeno, could you use your knowledge of the Portuguese tongue to explain this here pitcher? My mind reels with possibilities.

Is it true that flesh from the ass of the Brazilian frango tastes just like chicken?

Or could it be that “frango” is the first-person singular form of the verb “franger,” which translates roughly as “to frandge”?

It's a surprisingly good guess by my erudite friend, but—alas!—not quite on the mark. I hastened to set him right:

Well, we're on dangerous territory here! Literally speaking, frango is chicken. It's likely that ass in this context is an abbreviation for assado, which means roasted or baked. In other words (namely, English words), the vendor is advertising roasted chicken.

Then, of course, there are the slang possibilities. First of all (and most tamely), frango means a mistake, blunder, or cock-up. (I include the last one advisedly because frango is often translated as cockerel, an iconic symbol of Portuguese legend. The more common term, however, is galo, meaning rooster.)

More scandalous, however, is the usage of frango assado to indicate the position of the passive partner in the act of anal sex, which usage comes to us with the assurance of The Alternative Portuguese Dictionary. I'll have to take their word for it, since I've never heard the phrase used in that sense in my family circle. (Or if I did, I had no idea that that's what anyone was talking about.) This suggests the possibility that the vendor in the photo was not selling chicken ass, but this is a good place at which to end this discourse. Especially since you now know more than you could ever have wanted to know about frango assado.

—Z

My correspondent had sent his inquiry with copies to several other friends and acquaintances in the hopes of ensuring an enlightening answer. I, however, discreetly sent my reply only to him. When the other e-mail recipients began to pepper him with responses of varying degrees of seriousness, he decided to forward my response to everyone.

I didn't notice that Senhor Zeno replied without cc'ing everyone else.

Here 'tis.

This is NOT required reading, and while it is certainly informative and answers the original question, it may come under the heading of too much information—or as they say in England, “Too many data.”

Or, as they say in Portuguese:

“Bastante!”

Finger exercises

Several easy pieces

They call it keyboarding these days, but when I was in high school in the sixties the name of the course was typing. Despite being a college prep student, I took a full year of typing, sitting among the future stenographers of America. I knew it would be useful during my future career as a writer.

I was wrong about the career. There were periods of professional writing, such as my brief stint as a journalist and a few magazine pieces, but my livelihood comes from the classroom. Nevertheless, keyboards are a big part of my life and it helps that I can rattle off text with aplomb, speed, and accuracy. It was a big advantage when I returned to grad school for a math education degree.

Last month I was reminded about my weeks in typing class when I started digging through one of the archive boxes evicted from my parents' basement. Mom wanted to reclaim some space, which entailed certain adult children taking responsibility for material left behind. I started sorting through the box's contents and found myself looking at ancient documents from high school. The forty-year-old papers included some sheets from my typing class. Doodling!

Did you know you could doodle on a typewriter? I was already a self-taught typist when I began the typing class and picked up speed rapidly. My instructor didn't care if I finished the in-class assignments early as long as I did not distract my slower neighbors. Therefore I often banged out random short stories. (My preferred genres were science fiction and mystery.)

I also, however, tried my hand at some typographical humor. The source of my inspiration is unknown. Perhaps I had seen previous examples, but I don't recall any. All I have is the silent testimony of two pages of typewriter doodles. The players are characters from the keyboard and their dialog floats above their heads. Here's an example:

How did he lose his leg? / Y X X

I seemed unduly fond of amputation humor. Perhaps it just suits the medium:

Victor, you don't have a leg to stand on. / V Y They had to amputate his foot. / E E F

How delightful. The surgical vein continues.

I happen to know that it's silicone. / p p P And the Queen said, "Off with his head!" / 8 8 o Oscar, I don't think that Clyde is all there. / O O C

Of course, I was in high school. The local scene must have inspired this one:

Shocking! And in public, too! / I I X I I I I

It's tricky trying to replicate some of these typewriter gags on a computer. For example, here's a joke that depends on an overstrike, which is easy on a typewriter. Not so easy with a word processor or on a blog. The image is a scan of the original document:

Good typewriters also offered half-line spacing for convenience in creating superscripts and subscripts. I'm sure I used half-line spacing to place the feathers (apostrophes) close to the horizon (underline characters):

Just think. Had my mother simply trashed the contents of her overstuffed basement, these gems would have been lost to history. What a precious gift they are to us today, four decades later!

Stewie exposed

Who is Stewart Gilligan Griffin?

It has long been apparent to even the most casual observer that there is something disturbingly odd about the youngest offspring in the family of Peter and Lois Griffin. Despite being a toddler somewhere between the ages of one and two, Stewie Griffin speaks the Queen's English with an effete Rex Harrison accent and a vocabulary that eclipses those of the other family members. Stewie is familiar with such old-fashioned notions as box socials but is out of touch with his contemporaries. For example, he sketches blueprints for time machines, but is at a loss when expected to act like a child (“Blast! What do kids draw these days?”).

The conclusion is inescapable: Stewie Griffin retains many of the traits and faculties of a previous life. Peter and Lois have spawned the reincarnation of a totalitarian autocrat. But who?

The study of past lives is properly the endeavor of trained parapsychologists. I fear that I am but the merest of dilettantes in this field, lacking any professional qualifications. Nevertheless, I will forge fearlessly ahead, striving to adhere to the rigorous standards one would find in any psychic research lab. I will follow where the evidence leads me and I will never ever fudge any of the data (unless, of course, I can't get positive results otherwise; this, too, is a psi lab tradition).

Let us therefore regard the treasure trove of circumstantial evidence before us and home in on Stewie Griffin's previous identity. It was probably male, since totalitarianism has not been a hobby readily accessible to females in the past. (And we can't consider Margaret Thatcher, since she was still inconveniently alive when Stewie was born.) He was almost certainly British, if not specifically English. The obstetrician who delivered Stewie at birth noted the curious presence in the afterbirth of a map of Europe (marked with “bomb here” annotations). That makes one think of Hitler, of course, but it's more likely that Stewie was once a British-born Nazi sympathizer.

The noose tightens. We should search for Stewie among Britain's homegrown version of National Socialism—namely, the British Union of Fascists.

Who among the members of the BUF was a Nazi sympathizer with his own dreams of dictatorship? While virtually all members were Nazi sympathizers (customarily although not officially anti-Semitic), the likeliest individual who fancied himself a future Führer was none other than its founder and leader: Sir Oswald Mosley.

What the deuce?

As a member of the British aristocracy, Mosley certainly had the accents of privilege in his spoken voice. Several of Mosley's speeches are available on-line at the OswaldMosley.com website. Sir Oswald started his political career as a Conservative member of parliament, but he was not content as a Tory MP and eventually went into opposition as an independent. He signed up as a member of the Labour Party after the Tories lost their majority and a Labour government was installed. Mosley, however, was never entrusted with the kind of high-level ministerial position he coveted. After half a dozen years as a socialist radical in Labour's ranks, Mosley left the party in frustration and his pendulum swung toward the extreme right.

His next move was to found the New Party, which embodied many of the principles of Mussolini's Fascist Party in Italy. Mosley had visited Italy in 1931 and found much he liked in Mussolini's approach to government. When the New Party was unable to win any seats in parliament, Mosley decided to found the British Union of Fascists. The BUF's bully boy enforcers were known as the “Blackshirts” after the paramilitary uniforms Mosely selected for them (in apparent homage to Mussolini's preferred fascist garb).

Mosley favored a corporatist approach to government. Members of the House of Lords would no longer have life peerages; rather, the upper house of parliament would be replaced by a body representative of major industries and the Church of England. You would have, for example, a member of the upper house representing Rolls Royce in lieu of a lord. If a similar practice were followed in the United States, there'd be senators from Exxon and IBM instead of senators from states. (One wonders, rather unkindly, what would have happened to the senators from Enron and Bear Stearns under such a system.)

The BUF was a force in British politics during the 1930s but fell short of accruing any parliamentary representation. The big rally at Earls Court in 1939 was both a high point and the swan song for Mosley's organization. While over 10,000 British fascists turned out to cheer their leader, a year later the BUF was suppressed as a threat to national security in the face of World War II. Mosley and many other fascist leaders sat out the war under internment, which was later reduced in his case to house arrest.

Discrepancies?

How confident can we be that Sir Oswald has been reborn in Stewie? While the argument is plausible enough, there are problems with the identification. Stewie, of course, is a fetishistic cross-dressing latent homosexual with sadomasochistic tendencies. His relationship with the family dog Brian is intimate to the point of bestiality. These qualities mark him out as an individual of peculiar characteristics.

Do these traits conform to what is known of Sir Oswald's life? There are significant discrepancies. Although Mosley liked to dress up in basic black to address his fascist comrades, that's not quite the same thing as a passion for wigs, dresses, and lipstick.

By contrast with Stewie, Mosley was a notorious philanderer who constantly pursued women. He had affairs, for instance, with both the sister and stepmother of his first wife. However, this may not be a disproof of the link between Sir Oswald and Stewie. Fears of latent homosexuality may provoke an exaggerated acting out of the heterosexual role in overcompensation. Then, too, there is the undoubted impact of the genetic heritage of the new incarnation; we cannot expect to find a precise one-to-one correspondence in all respects. We might also note that it is unavoidably premature to discuss Stewie's sexuality, as it is unlikely to be fully formed in one so young. He is ambiguous in his nature and has on a number of occasions seemed inclined to seduce female companions or engage in “sexy parties.” It is, of course, uncertain whether Stewie really understands the implications of such parties.

Rigorous proof of the identification of Stewart Gilligan Griffin with Sir Oswald Mosley is beyond our reach. We have only sifted the possibilities and found a plausible candidate for Stewie's earlier life. Extensive further research must be done before we can be certain, in which case we should be cautiously alert for the first stirrings of a Quahog Union of Fascists. The ominous signs cannot be denied.

Happy Towel Day!

Do you know where yours is?

Every May 25 is Towel Day, a holiday in honor and memory of Douglas Adams, the British humorist who penned The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. As holidays go, it's mostly harmless and largely neglected. Nevertheless, it's worth recalling that “any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

Have you hugged your towel today?

Douglas Adams was a nonbeliever, so don't bother offering up any memorial prayers on his behalf (although you can do it if it's going to make you feel better; Adams is in no position to object and probably wouldn't have cared anyway). We can, however, go more respectfully to our shelves of favorite books and pull down one of the five entries in the no-longer-increasingly misnamed Hitchhiker's trilogy and spend a couple of hours in rapt towel appreciation.

And consider giving a visit to the Towel Day website, where you'll find useful suggestions for appropriate observances.

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