You Monsters Are People.

Perhaps it is the writer in me but I find it remarkably difficult to write emails and text messages in “online-shorthand.”  It’s just too much work for me to bother learning chat acronyms and net lingo when I am already an exceptionally fast typist.  I am incapable of understanding it and am regularly perplexed by chat vernacular.  Anytime someone sends me a text using it, I usually assume they are drunk or suffering from a recent bout of violent head trauma.

The upside is that these people often include other emoticons that help you make a swift assessment of their current mood.  This is actually pretty useful when someone is being sarcastic but winks can come across as unsettling if mishandled.  In real life the winking of an eye normally implies a joke, a secret or eludes to some flirtatious advance.  However, when texting or chatting, some people throw around winks like an insecure person throws around their affections and the end result often gets muddled.  Frankly, a misplaced wink can even come off as downright sinister to a person with a slightly overactive imagination.

Emoticons have their uses and I often like to see smiles and winks in a message but we can’t just go around using these things all willy-nilly.  People will get confused or made to feel uncomfortable.  Although no amount of textual creepery can hold a candle to the real thing.  I was once complemented by an older gentlemen in several, increasingly uncomfortable ways.  I was putting fuel into my motorcycle on one of those mostly cloudy but still gorgeous and mild days, when he shambled over and commented on how much he liked it.  I told him that I appreciated the complement and quickly went back to watching the pump.  Before too long he told me that he liked my jacket too.  Putting the nozzle out of my tank I made a joke and then thanked him again, not realizing that he wasn’t quite finished.  He got a little closer and said, “You sure do look good on that thing.” and gave me a wink.

It is absolutely wrong to judge a book by it’s cover but, in some instances, that is all you can really do.  This particular book’s cover was about as scary as you could imagine, smelled like soup and seemed like it was making advances toward me.  He had, what could be loosely described as, a “hodgepodge” of teeth.  It resembled the mouth of a lamprey or hippopotamus more than that of a man.  It was like teeth were everywhere other than the places that you would expect them to be.  It was a sincerely unconventional arrangement and, several hours later, it was still all I could think about.  The bizarre circumstances accompanied by the intense visual stimuli had branded the event into my memory.  I’d imagine that mouth telling me awful things and then the right eye dropping down in an attempt to seal the deal.  Despite the experience being brief and not nearly as epic as many of my other adventures it has, to my dismay, embedded itself into my memory.

In conclusion, please be careful with your winks.  You never know what kind of irreversible harm that you might be doing.

I used to absolutely cringe anytime someone told me an old joke because, nine times out of ten, it was going to be awful.  Most old jokes have this habit of being entirely pun based or employing some form of bigotry for a laugh.  A lot of these jokes came straight from Vaudeville shows, an establishment that catered to segregated and non-segregated audiences regularly.  Every minority or majority imaginable had it’s own unique circuit that had acts catering specifically to their style and, let’s face it, hate always seems to be in style.  So you have your “a ________ walks into a bar” jokes and an arsenal of quips, puns, bon mots and other witticisms.

Rampant racism aside, there are actually a lot of good old jokes and I have found that it has everything to do with the delivery.  We hate these gags because we learned them from our grandfather and most people don’t not have a particularly funny grandpappy.  We loved this old man, he was good to us but he told us the same tired jokes in the same tired way time and time again.  “Grandpa, I get it.  Cows go to eat lunch at the calf-eteria.  It’s just that I’ve already head this joke before…” is probably terrifyingly close to something we’ve all said before.  If everyone’s grandparents were Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, all of these old jokes would probably still be funny because they would have been told correctly.

Don’t worry because  I am going to help educate you in delivering some “bad” jokes effectively.  You need to remember that, even if you don’t have confidence in the joke itself, you have to have confidence in yourself.  People will assume something just about anything is funny if it comes from the right person.  If you are a clever and assured person, the jokes will just come across better.  When you tell the joke you have to make it painfully aware that you know that the joke is awful but that is part of the reason you love it.  When you open, always open with a question so that they become unknowingly attracted by the setup.  Calmly ask someone, “What do you call a fish with no eye?”  When they say that they don’t know, they will continue to search for an answer in their mind before actually giving up.  Make the most of this moment.  I can’t help but smile before the payoff and, the worse the joke is, the more likely I am to grin uncontrollably.  Visually prepare yourself for the punchline.  Close your eyes and take a breath.  Build the suspense.

“Fssssshhhhh.”

Occasionally there will be a joke that has a plausible answer that you have to work around.  For instance, “Why does a chicken coop have only two doors?” may have a legitimate answer that a farmer might actually know.  If that does happen, let him finish and say, “No no no, farmer.  It’s because four doors would make them chicken sedans.”

I also cannot recommend touching someone’s arm before delivering a punchline of a bad joke enough.  They probably don’t want to be touched but that’s okay because they probably didn’t want to hear the joke either.  Touch them.  Hold onto their arm and make them a part of what you are doing, regardless of what they think they want.

I can recall a time that this worked perfectly.  It was winter and I was walking with the love of my life past some Santa ringing a donation bell.  I quickly wrapped my arm around her, squeezed her against me and stopped walking.  “Do you know what they call Santa’s helpers?” I asked.

She informed me that she did not and seemed terrified but elated with how immediately weird and intense I had become.

“Subordinate Clauses.” I raised my eyebrows in flirtatious self-satisfaction while she giggled and tried her best to pretend she hated the joke.  Perhaps she did hate the joke but she loved me for telling it.  I’m not entirely certain on how these things work.

The last few days have been incredibly busy.  I’ve hardly had time to think.

I would love to hear any old or bad jokes you, or your friends, are particularly fond of.