From my teacher's log:


The students discovered a typographic error in the text of the syllabus which proved quite amusing.

The third paragraph of the syllabus should have read, in part: "We expand the work on the physical aspects of public presentation: posture, enunciation, projection, gesture, and expression. As preparation for the two major (and graded) oral presentations, expect to engage in a good deal of class discussion and practice. Some of the practical exercises are a bit silly."

However, the first sentence included a spelling error -- not, though, caught by spell check, for in fact the spelling was correct, but the meaning of this passage was greatly changed -- "pubic" for "public". So, we had great fun considering the importance of posture, projection, gesture, and expression in a pubic presentation, how presentations might be preparations for oral presentations, just how important not only discussion but practice might be in preparing pubic presentations, and it certainly should not be a surprise to realize that such "practical exercises" would be "a bit silly"... As J.G. Bennett said in a similar situation, "sometimes one makes a joke without meaning to".

After class, I showed the unedited document to one of the art history instructors, the dean of students, the registrar, and the librarians -- and not one of them caught the error without being specifically directed to it.

Kudos to the FVC students!

tourette's and narcolepsy

Just imagine a person who had both Tourette syndrome and narcolepsy.

She could be standing in the aisle of a grocery store, suddenly shout "God fucking shit damn it!" and then fall to the floor asleep.




Now that's comedy.

(See the Lufthansa joke post for the technical explanation of why.)

Jesus working the pearly gates

One day Jesus decides to give Peter some time off, so he goes down to the Pearly Gates. Peter is sitting there, bored stiff, ticking off names, motioning the chosen souls into Paradise and rejecting pretenders.

"Hey, there, Rocky," says Jesus. Peter scrambles to attention, spilling some ink and knocking scrolls onto the clouds.

"I, um, I'm pleased to see you, Lord," says Peter, "what can I do for you."

Jesus lays his hand on Peter's shoulder. "Don't get up; relax. I think you're doing a great job, but you could use a break. Why don't you get out a bit? -- go fishing."

"But Lord," Peter stammers, "Who will 'bind in heaven' and all that?"

"Oh, don't worry about that! I'll take care of it myself. Go on!"

So, Peter gets up and goes off for a vacation and Jesus sits down and starts reviewing the crowds lined up to come into Heaven.

He's working at this for awhile when the spirit of a bent old man comes up, carrying ghostly tool bags. Something about the old man looks familiar to Jesus.

"Say, old man, what do you have in those bags?" Jesus asks.

"Well, these are woodworking tools: in life, I was a carpenter."

"Really?" says Jesus, even more interested. "And had you a son?"

The old man replies, "Indeed I did! He suffered terribly, but in the end he was admired by all!"

Jesus knocks over the table in his eagerness to embrace the old man: "Father!"

And the old man returns his embrace: "Pinocchio!"

the Jack Nicklaus (Tiger Woods) joke

I learned this joke (again from my father) as "the Jack Nicklaus" joke; again as with the Lufthansa joke there could well be an infinite number of jokes about Jack Nicklaus (although I suspect not) but this is the one I know. It relies upon a culturally literate audience, although the degree of cultural literacy need not be great. Still, one must have some understanding of the tradition of Moses parting the Red Sea, of Jesus walking on water, of Jesus being God and therefore trumping Moses in the status department, as well as the merest understanding that Jack Nicklaus is famous as a world-class golfer who wrote a book about golfing.

I found, in telling the joke to teens and "tweens" in the 21st century, that Jack Nicklaus is unfamiliar (although Jack Nicholson is quite familiar, and some students develop a joke of their own, completely unintended by me, by confusing the actor for the golfer), so I have at times told it using "Tiger Woods" instead of Jack Nicklaus. I personally have so little interest in sport (if it is proper to think of golf as a sport; it is a game certainly, but is it really a sport?) that almost any name would work for me. But it has to be that of a good golfer who wrote a book on golfing to be effectively funny. Happily, Mr Woods also ("with the editors of Golf Digest") wrote an instruction manual on this game.

One of the fascinating features of any kind of story is the degree to which such replacements may be made. This is of course one of the key features of communication.

I'll also note that some of the most "sacrilegious" jokes I've heard have come from ministers and denominational executives. What's that about?

Okay, the story:


Moses and Jesus go golfing. (Suspend disbelief -- now!)
Jesus has his nose in a book the whole time they're in the clubhouse and right out on to the course.
Moses says, "Um, Lord, what is it you're reading?"
Jesus says, "This is Jack Nicklaus' book. I simply can't go wrong with this. He has everything worked out."
Moses is suitably impressed.

Moses has to admit that with the tips from Nicklaus' book, Jesus' game is definitely improving: omnipotence, apparently, does not extend to golf, and Jesus' grace is, well, not that kind of grace. But he seems to be improving.

Then they come to a water hazard, and they have to drive over the water. So Jesus checks in the book and reports to Moses which kind of driver he should use, and their caddy Peter pulls it out and hands it to him, and he whales on that puppy and off it goes, chop! right into the middle of the water.

"Um, Moses... would you please...?"

"Oh, all right, just this once." Moses raises his arms, and the water hazard rises up to either side and Jesus walks out and retrieves his ball and comes back to where Moses and Peter are standing.

Jesus says, "I don't understand it. Jack Nicklaus said that that should work. Let me read this again." So Moses and Peter wait patiently while Jesus leafs through Jack Nicklaus' book. Finally, he looks up. "I think I understand it now," Jesus says, and he slices away and off the ball flies -- right into the middle of the water.

"Um, Moses...?"

"Very well. After all, you brought us through the wilderness." So Moses raises his arms, the water rises up to either side, Jesus walks out, gets the ball, comes back, all the time reading from the book. He tries a new club, chops at the ball and -- right into the middle of the water.

"Um...?"

Moses says, "No; I'm sorry, Lord, but I just cannot."

Jesus says, "Oh, you're right. Okay, I'll take care of this." He walks down to the water hazard and walks out on the water looking for his lost ball.

Just at this moment some other golfers come up behind Moses and Peter. They see Jesus out there and one of them says, "Who does that guy think he is, Jesus Christ?"

"No," Moses says, "Jack Nicklaus."

the Lufthansa joke

I don't doubt that there may be more than one "Lufthansa" joke, but this is the Lufthansa joke I know. I learned it from my father, who learned it (as I recall) from one of his associates at the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries. If that sounds unpromising, well....

I've been told that I don't tell "jokes", but "funny stories". I must admit, I'm uncertain what a "joke" would be (if it could be told) except precisely a funny story. But I'll also readily admit that a "joke" can also be an amusing action or set of actions (excuse me for implying by amphibole that telling is not an action, while of course it is): We played a joke on Bill by putting Gorilla Snot [a musician's supply item; great stuff, buy yourself a jar and stick 'em up {endorsement designed to compensate for lack of representation of trademarks held by the creators of immediately previously mentioned musician's aide}] in his cap [while researching this post {and you can readily admit it needed research!} I discovered that Gorilla Snot is also the name of a hair-care product, and I fear it could be the trade-name of any number of products, and now I'm thinking that I should not have been so specific in my example as to have included the name, but it just seemed like the thing to do at the time: funny, and, well, quirky enough to add a little "lift", which reminds me of luft which reminds me of Lufthansa which brings me back to the point, such as it might be]. So, from my perspective what follows is a joke, but at any rate it might be a funny story, if you think it's funny. I'm pretty sure it is a story.

I have always (since I first heard the story in the early 1970's) had the impression that the joke -- or maybe more specifically the funniness of the story -- lies in part in the appropriation of an advertising campaign by Lufthansa. However, I suspect that some readers (or hearers) of this story will not have been aware of this campaign and yet will find amusement in the story. It employs repetition of a phrase paralleling repetition of the phrase in the campaign, but the mere repetition of the phrase serves to build the amusement (a similar topicality and rhetorical technique is found in the Tiger Woods joke, a.k.a. the Jack Nicklaus joke, q.v.).

Comedy, or perhaps more accurately effective comedy, has two essential elements (it may have others, but it surely has these): an alteration (often a reversal or direct contradiction) of an anticipated situation, and an assurance that harmful anticipated outcomes implied in the story (or other amusing action) are not serious, real, permanent, irremediable. It is the latter that defines "comedy" in the most sheerly technical literary sense, I believe (cf. Comedia as in Dante's use), but it is the former which seems to receive the greatest attention; the alteration is the evident, obvious, surface-literal element: the assurance is the hidden, subtle, even unconscious or subconscious element. I'll leave it to you to determine where these may be found in the following story.

It really spoils a joke to belabour it with an introduction of this ponderousness, but I look for opportunities to seem literate whenever possible as a professional c.y.a.

So, here's the joke (or at least story), which you deserve well to read if you read all the above, and may a gracious providence bring you illumination through it.

On a rainy night, Lufthansa flight 645 is leaving Newark enroute to a layover in London, and the pilot's voice comes over the intercom [in German accented English, of course]: "This is the captain speaking. Hello and welcome to Lufthansa flight 645. We are climbing to an altitude of 30,000 feet and we expect a little turbulence as we pass through the cloud layer. Please remain in your seats with your seatbelts fastened until further notice. And thank you for flying Lufthansa." This is all perfectly normal, and the passengers sit doing passenger things until the plane hits the first patch of turbulence, and the passengers on the right side of the plane (at any rate those who have not drawn their windowshades -- why do people close the windowshades in airplanes at night?) notice -- can hardly avoid noticing -- a flash, and the whole ship is shaken as something happens out on the wing.

The captain's voice comes over the intercom [still with the accent, which he has throughout; presumably he is an English-speaking German person, which makes sense if you know what Lufthansa is]: "This is the captain speaking. Hello. Some of you may have noticed that one of the engines has just exploded, and fallen off the plane. We are investigating the cause of that, but rest assured that we will reach London on time as scheduled, as we have still three good engines. And thank you for flying Lufthansa."

So everything seems fine for ten minutes or so; the plane is not showing any unusual signs of trouble, and it continues ascending towards its cruising altitude, when, bang! The passengers on the left side of the plane (with their shades down) see a flash, and everyone feels the shaking and the captain's voice comes over the intercom: "This is the captain speaking. Hello. Some of you may have noticed that another one of our engines has just exploded. And it has fallen off the plane. We are also investigating the cause of that. But the co-pilot has just completed his calculations, and we assure that we will reach London about -- half an hour behind schedule, and we apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for flying Lufthansa."

And everything is fine for a few minutes, and then the captain's voice comes again over the intercom: "This is the captain speaking. Hello. The co-pilot and I have reached some conclusions in our investigations, and we believe that it would be prudent for those of you who can swim please to make your way to seats on the left-hand side of the plane, and those who cannot swim to make your way to seats on the right-hand side of the plane. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you, and thank you for flying Lufthansa."

This is a strange request, and the passengers look around, but in the end they comply: the swimmers are on the left and the non-swimmers on the right. A few more minutes pass, and everyone in the plane sees a huge flash and feels the plane bucking and diving, and the captain's voice comes over the intercom: "This is the captain speaking. Hello. Some of you may have noticed that both of our remaining engines have exploded and fallen off the plane. We assure that we will investigate the cause of this. However, we are losing altitude and we will have to crash-land in the North Atlantic. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. When we hit the water, all of those on the left-hand side of the plane, make your way to the exits and then swim like Hell. And all of those on the right-hand side of the plane, thank you for flying Lufthansa."

Holmes and Watson go camping

I've heard several variations of this. Jokes are like recipes: your own broccoli-and-mac&cheese-casserole is good (maybe) and someone else's is different but also good (maybe). I remember finding this listed as "the funniest joke in the world" (according to some poll). That may be. I think it is funny. But de gustibus non est disputandum, if I may be so bold as to use my "quasi knowledge of latin": don't dispute over taste.

I hope you know the characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson, from Conan Doyle's delightful stories. If not, see what you can do about that before you read this one.

Holmes and Watson take what for them is an unusual vacation: they go tent-camping. They come to a beautiful secluded spot, Holmes noting how macabre and violent crimes are so much more possible in the country than in the city, they set up their tent...

... after their evening excursions, they return to the tent, climb in, and bed down for the night.

After they have been asleep some time, Holmes wakes, and then rouses Watson.

"Watson, look at the sky and tell me what you deduce."

Watson sleepily looks up at the clear night sky full of stars.

"Well, Holmes, there are thousands, even millions of stars... and some of those stars may be quite like the Sun, and if that is so, why, it seems likely that around some of those stars there may be planets revolving, and if that is so, why, some of those planets may be very like the Earth, and, well, there may be life out there, life on other planets!"

Holmes turns and looks hard at his companion.

"Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!"

the trial (sic.) of the snail

So, this snail is lying on his shell, waving his eyestalks around, and the local constable, a turtle, finds him and turns him right side up.

"There, now," says the turtle, "what's all this, then?"

"Officer, I was robbed by a pair of slugs!" says the snail.

"Can you identify them?"

"Oh, no -- it all happened so quickly!"

number jokes

This guy goes to prison, and he's not very tough, but he goes into the cafeteria at the prison and it's all these really rough looking guys who are like murderers and thugs and members of PACs and he's sitting there eating lunch and one of these guys all of a sudden shouts "Forty-Nine!" and everyone in the lunchroom starts laughing, and they're laughing, and this other guy shouts out "Sixty-Five!" and everyone is cracking up, and then this other guy shouts "One Hundred and Nine!" and the guys are like holding their sides and crying they're laughing so hard. Finally the laughter sort of dies down and the new guy turns to the guy sitting next to him and he says "Hey, um, don't you think this is a little odd, I mean, why does everybody laugh whenever somebody shouts out a number?" And the old guy says, "Kid, we've all heard all the jokes we know over and over, and it takes a long time to tell them, and we get bored easily, so we just numbered them, and whenever we hear the number, we think of the joke, and it cracks us up."

So, the new guy figures, "Maybe this is a way for me to get in with the other guys," since he had like been stealing paper from the office supply room or driving drunk or something like that, he wasn't a tough guy, so the next day everyone is sitting in the cafeteria, and all of a sudden the new guy shouts "Forty-Nine!"
And no one laughs.
So, he shouts "Sixty-Five!"
And no one laughs, but there is kind of a mumble.
So, he shouts "One Hundred Nine!"
And no one laughs, but they start like climbing over the tables to get at the new guy, and he turns to the old guy and says, "I told the same numbers as yesterday! Why aren't they laughing?" And the old guy says, "Kid, it's all in the way you tell it." [alt.: "It's all in the delivery, Kid.")

Viagra. Warning: this is a story about viagra.

So, I have to give a little bit of a warning here. This is more or less a transcript of a video presentation I recorded about a month ago. I think it's funny, but it is, well, about viagra, so if you are squeamish or prudish or whatever, just don't read this one, okay?


So, about a month ago a woman friend of mine said that since I am as I am now, were I to take viagra, I would be "Superman". That's what she said. Since I wanted to see what it would be like to be Superman, I decided to follow said friend's advice and ask my primary care physician about it (actually, my friend, who is bossy, said that I should demand that my primary care physician[pcp] provide me with either samples or a scrip).

So, I go in to the clinic, and my pcp hasn't seen me in about two years, and the last time I met with her I was separated but not divorced and having an affair with a married woman not my wife, and I was so depressed by that that I asked my pcp for treatment -- she referred me to a psychologist who might have been very effective with other people but who did not work out for me -- and at the same time I was being treated for rabies because a skunk had bitten me while I was freeing it from a trap set for groundhogs (I have a soft spot for skunks, thanks to my now ex-wife). So, you know, her experience of me is as a rabid depressed adulterer. Physicians have to put up with a lot.

So, this is my first complete physical in like three or four years, and she's asking me about one thing and another and somehow smoking comes up. I guess it says on my chart that I used to smoke, and she says, "how many packs did you smoke a day?" and I was like, "none, 'cause I used to smoke pot." So, I could just see her picture of me expanding: rabid, depressed, pothead adulterer. Physicians have to put up with a lot. I just know somewhere that patient confidentiality thing is being tested to its limits.

So, I have a whole list of ailments and conditions. Two years ago when I was so depressed I also had lumbago. Usually people talk about lower back pain, but lumbago to me always had such a cool sound to it: sort of like Tobago, so this sort of Caribbean thing going on, and then the lum part is like lumbering around or maybe even like rum, which goes well with Tobago. But Benjamin Franklin had lumbago as well as gout and whatever else, but these seemed to me like old-fashioned terms for old-fashioned diseases from which no-one suffers anymore. Not so. Since it was my lumbar spine that was out of whack, I suffered from, according to the medical records, lumbago. So, that was two years ago, and after two years of physical therapy and six months of a better mattress, I am not in daily pain.

We got past that, on to my specific questions. First, I have a lot of trouble focusing my attention, and I think I might have ADD; there is a family history of this, so the pcp writes out a referral to a psychiatrist. Next, I started working out regularly and I want to be sure that my diet is sufficient. She wants to know whether I am seriously pumping iron or using nautilus machines or whatever, so I say, No, I'm just using ten pound dumbbells. So, she says I could use a protein shake, but it doesn't need to have any added lycopene or anything like that.

So, next, I ask her, should I be concerned about the mole beneath my lip? So she looks at that. Then there is the weird little thing on my nipple, so I lift up my shirt and she looks at that. Okay, so she writes out a referral to a dermatologist. Now it must have seemed to her that I was doing some sort of strip tease, because the next thing I wanted her to check out is what I think may be a hernia -- a bulge in my groin, which, since you are already interpreting this wrong, is to the left and above my penis, not the penis itself. So, I explain away the fact that I am shaven (which probably also is being discussed in a mild breech of patient confidentiality) by saying (and this is true) that it is easier to see what I am talking about without the hair over it. So, I say, should I show you? And she says, "Well, we have to do the prostate exam anyway, so let's just do that and get it over with." So, we do. And she says, "Maybe this was the bad day to choose not to wear underwear." But what she doesn't realize is that it's rare that I chose TO wear underwear. But such is the life of unclear, assumptive thought. So she hands me some kleenex to wipe myself and it's a little awkward, but what the hell, do I really care? So, I've got like four kleenexes between my ass-cheeks and I pull up my jeans, which of course have to be button fly, but anyway...

So, she kind of checks that out weird little lump or bulge or whatever with direct palpation (which, I might add, she did not use when she was examining my lumbago two years ago. Do you think I should report her to someone?) and declares that she does not think that it is an inguinal hernia. Well, that's a relief, I guess. But what the fuck IS it, then? She doesn't know, and doesn't write any more referrals.

So, now we get to the question about viagra. You know, here is this shaggy-headed, shabbily-dressed dude who says he thinks he may have some sort of DSM-IVtr condition, a rabid, depressed, marijuana-dependent adulterer who doesn't wear underwear and shaves his pubes. Maybe this is normal.That would actually be kind of cool, don't you think? but anyway...

So, I say, "This woman friend of mine says that since I am the way I am now, if I were to take viagra, I would be Superman, and I kind of want to find out what it would be like to be Superman, but I'm concerned about whether that would be a problem because of blood pressure or whatever." My friend says that physicians love it when you self-diagnose and tell them what to give you, and that might be true. Or maybe the pcp was just tired from the long list I had to discuss. Or maybe she thought that I was going to add something even more bizarre to my list and just wanted to move things along, but anyway she says something like this: "Well, I'm not a guy, but my supervising doctor is, and he says that with some of his male patients he finds that when they have difficulty with an erection it's because they have some doubts or fears about the relationship." And see, my thing is, I'd love to have sex eight times a day and my partner does, too, and she has no trouble keeping up, but I do. But I didn't say that to the pcp. In the end, she wrote out a scrip for me for viagra, for twelve pills with two refills.

So, I go directly from the clinic to the pharmacy, which is in a grocery store. And I give them the scrip and they kind of go off for a minute, and I'm waiting for them to tell me when they can have it filled. Most times when I go to a pharmacy, the scrip won't be filled for hours. But here the guy pharmacist is over at the counter counting out doses with his little stainless steel scraper, and I say, "Oh, do you have some right on hand?" And he kind of looks at me and grunts. And he brings over the bottle, you know, in the white paper bag with the instruction sheet on the outside, and I pay him and sign for the pills and he hands me the package and says, "The prescription lists twelve pills, but we only give out six at a time."

So, I'm like, "Well, that's fine." I don't care if they give me six at a time or twelve at a time or any other multiple of three. 'Cause I'm not going to take more than one at a time, although I did kind of wonder why they wouldn't just fill the prescription the way the pcp made it out. But I don't pretend to understand these things. And, like my friend said to me later that day, what am I going to do, stand there in the grocery store and shout at the pharmacist, "No, damnit, I want my other six viagra RIGHT NOW!" Or maybe even worse, in a whiny voice, "Oh, please, please, give me the other six viagra I reaaaallly neeeeed them!" Not very cool or manly, you know?

So, I walk out of the store and make it as far as my van before I open up the package to check out the bottle, and here it says on the label six doses with two refills. Now, I'm not great at math, but the way I read this, that's a total of eighteen doses. Eighteen.

So, my pcp gave mea scrip for thirty-six doses and the pharmacist gave me a bottle labelled like I could get no more than half that. And the real kicker was at the bottom of the label, which listed the date the prescription was filled, 4/28/09, and a note that said, "2 refills by 4/28/10". So, the way I read that, I can only have two refills IN A YEAR.

Okay, so if this is true, my pcp thinks that in three-hundred-and-sixty-five days I'm going to want viagra thirty-six times. Think about this. That means she thinks that EVERY TEN DAYS I'm going to get it on, or at least take a viagra. This seems to me like a pro-abstinence stance to me.

But the pharmacy is even more abstemiously-oriented: they seem to think I'll only be needing the stuff EVERY TWENTY DAYS!!! Come on, now, guys, that's almost like when I was married!

Raunchmouth and the Designated Flosser

A friend of mine recently said that she experiences a carb crash after eating Snickers. She basically passes out wherever she happens to be, and this in and of itself isn't a terrible thing. People may have to step or steer around her, but so far this hasn't been a problem. What is a problem is that she doesn't brush her teeth before this happens. Apparently, the sequence must be something like: unwrap the sweet, eat a bite, pass out. Well, it's a lot cheaper than crack, I'll give it that.

Anyway, so she wakes up wherever and has raunchmouth. This of course is a problem both personally and socially. And there is far, far, too much of this happening these days. People, we must band together to rid ourselves of the scourge of raunchmouth.

The next time you even consider eating a Snickers, or whatever sweet you happen to feel like eating, please, make sure you have a designated flosser, because after you have that first bite, it's anybody's guess how long it will be until you pass out. And you don't want a stranger sticking her or his dubiously hygienic hands in your mouth, especially for those tight spaces between the bicuspids and the front molars. Gosh, I know that I'd hate to wake up and find a stranger messing with my canines. Actually, that has happened to me a couple times, and believe me, it's not to be recommended. Well, the one time was actually sort of nice now that I reflect upon it, but that's not really my point.

This is about planning ahead, knowing your own weaknesses, and acting to protect yourself against yourself. So, before you ever even rip open that bag of bite-sizers, do yourself the favour of declaring a designated flosser. Your teeth will thank you and so will your neighbours.