Humor Blog

WHEN YOU GET OLDER,YOU HAVE SEEN A LOT OF FASHION

3/15/2016

            Living in a rural area outside of a small town, my early fashion experience was limited to the husky section of the boys’ department at J.C. Penney’s. It was not until Junior High that I even noticed trends like brightly-colored pants and tight “peg” bottoms. I advanced to the need of a sport coat or a suit with narrow ties by high school and then college just exploded with bell bottoms, wide labels and wide ties. Double knit fabric entered by Law School and I slowly saw what they are doing to us.
            A good suit and a decent pair of shoes can last a man a long time barring that pesky weight gain. Apparently, purveyors of such items figured that out. They cannot make money, unless they create new fashion trends. If you are frugal like me, you can hang on and just wait them out, as wide ties again become narrow and skinny lapels become wide again over time. Add to that the basic blue suit in all my growing sizes and you have a closet that the Mrs. regularly demands to be “good willed”. I get the clean-out-your-closet talk once a month now.
            Period based movies featuring French powdered wigs to Zoot Suits really show how stupid fashion can be. Flash forward to the present with short, tight arm-straining jackets and the tight pants you see everywhere. In the name of fashion, these men look like they are wearing little brother Jimmy’s clothes. Fashion be damned, non-cross fit body styles like mine demand that I reject this latest fashion trend. I have split many inseams before, but it was not due to purposefully choosing tight cuts on clothes on the date of purchase. It just happened as a force of nature. I cannot wait to see TV personality Ryan Seacrist burst the seams of that little outfit on national TV.
            On another pressing fashion note, exactly what distance to a paper box can one walk in a robe before you actually start looking like a mental patient? As another aside, my pharmacist again asked me the date of my birthday when I stopped to pick up my medicine. I am pretty sure she is going to get me something this year.

PASSWORDS AND US OLD PEOPLE

2/17/2016

                    When we got our first room-sized office computer around 1980, I resolved to stay ahead of this beast of change called Technology. I have done my very best to keep at it, but damn – it keeps changing. I recently was given “Tiles” to place on keys and such so all could be located with my smarter than me cell phone. By the way, that tech fails if you forget where you put your cell phone.
                    The biggest flaw in this Technology is Your Friend approach is the key to get into the technology – the password. A site known as Gizmodo posted the 2015 most popular passwords. It seems an outfit known as SplashData runs millions of stolen passwords made public during the last year and then ranked them in order of popularity. Keeping in mind that they did not work, as in were stolen, the list included:

#1 “123456”
[Yes, you let your pre-kindergarten child
watch Sprout and she picked this]

#2 “password”
[I hope you are mechanical, since you
are not creative]

#3 “12345678”
[Your IT group told you to use a more complex password
and this is what you came up with?]

#7 “football”
[Yes, you played and did not wear a helmet]

#10 “baseball”
[You were not even trying]

#19 “letmein”
[Using a Chinese dish was at least creative]

#20 “login”
[That is not Chinese you idiot]

#25 “starwars”
[Avant-garde and trendy, but no]

                    So, being a tech savvy boomer myself, I used the Inter-Webbie thingy and found another Gizmodo article which advises me to store my passwords in my subconscious. So some scientists advise to use so-called “procedure memories” like the unconscious ability to remember how to ride a bike, or play a guitar, that is stored deep in the frontal cortex. So I am to develop mental muscle memory by typing in the same long password over and over. Wait – did I mention that I got Tiles for Christmas so I would not forget where my keys and such were stored in the refrigerator.
                    I am thinking I have logged on with way too many sites in my remarkably long inter-webbie history. Each site expects me to have unusually strong unique passwords, even to order my coffee filters. It seems that the evil hackers have access to password dictionaries and there are computer programs and there is enough power available to test 400,000 passwords per second at a cost of only 28 cents per minute. So the IRS, Social Security cannot avoid being password hacked, but I am expected to have a “secure” password not following some pattern. The Lifehacker’s site advises that the only secure password is the one you can’t remember. They advise using a dedicated password management system that generates new complex passwords for each site. Guess what – you need a password to get into your dedicated password system.
                    I seem to be seeing a circle here. My security questions seem to be getting harder to answer. Perhaps multiple choice questions should be used there and the use of Tiles for my boomer friends if you can find your phone and remember its password, you can then use the tile locator and find yourself if you have one of those tiles in your pocket. I think I am totally tech secure since I cannot remember my password(s).

REALLY?

1/18/2016

               Recently there was a “Love Your Lawyer Day” – really. This one was so bad that Hallmark was not associated with it. I realize it is an unusual hobby, but I do like to celebrate all the ethnic based holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, Columbus Day and German American Day. I get in the spirit(s) of those events and each nationality.
               Even as a lawyer for over 42 years, I am not seeing this newest day to celebrate lawyers. I have always been proud to be a lawyer and I am still offended by bad lawyers, advertising by lawyers, and lawyer jokes. I just never thought one should counter bad lawyer jokes with an equally bad holiday. It seems a lawyer marketer created this event in 2001 and it is slated to fall upon us on the first Friday of each November. Again, I must ask why?
               The American Bar Association (ABA) even got into it this year with a resolution encouraging others to call their lawyer and express their gratitude for them. Lawyers in turn were supposed to contribute to charitable causes or work pro bono on that date. So it seems the original intent was somehow to create goodwill as a way to combat lawyer jokes, advertising by lawyers, or bad lawyers?
               Despite the role of lawyers in the formation of our country and in our law, we have managed to develop some really bad ones who have helped shape an image leading to tons of bad lawyer jokes. I am thinking the “Love Your Lawyer Day” created by lawyers to feel better about themselves is a bit like the “Kick Me” sign taped to the back of a jacket. Unless someone comes up with a signature drink for this event, I just do not see it doing better than the “Talk Like a Pirate Day”, which is actually kind of fun when you do it in court.
          As the Judge said to me that day: “Rum is the reason pirates never ruled the world.” No wait, that was a country music song.

HUMOR AS A MEDICAL TOOL

12/16/2015

                    I have long advocated that a little humor is good for you. It keeps you from taking yourself too seriously. My working theory has been that all the jerks I have dealt with lacked any humor genes. Now I am leaning to medical issues explaining why they do not find me at all funny.
                    Susan Pinker, reporting recently in the Wall Street Journal, notes that English research published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease found that an altered sense of humor predicts dementia by as much as 10 years. A big change in the type or subtlety of the humor perceived appeared in many of those later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Humor requires a form of thinking that, in effect, processes a type of stress test for the brain. Thus the type of humor one perceived turned out to be a sensitive predictor of a later diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.
                    So, you folks who never laugh at my attempts at alleged humor — you may just not be right. Things may be going on with you and you do not know it. It’s you and not me it seems. Perhaps a social experiment might help with this test:

     • So, did you hear of the three-hour power outage at the local university? Thirty students were trapped on the escalator for over three hours.
     • You have a car on the interstate with your football team’s wide receiver, your defensive back, and two linebackers in it. Who is driving the car? The cop.
     • Your alma mater banned the wave at the stadium. Three fans drowned last year.
     • They no longer serve ice in the drinks at the stadium. The student who had the recipe graduated.
     • The difference between your team and a dollar — you can get four quarters out of a dollar.
     • Why do your team’s players eat their cereal straight out of the box? They choke whenever they get near a bowl.

                    Now see, I have concluded my medical research and some of you are just not doing well. Some of you people lack any sense of humor; simply are not right; or will be losing your recall within the next 10 years. I am glad to have helped.

ON THE SUBJECT OF HUMOR

11/16/2015

                     No one laughs at my jokes at home. My late big golden retriever just looked at me with her big dark clueless eyes. The Mrs. just rolls her eyes and walks away. After the publication of my first, last, and only humor book, my friends casually, and indeed politely, suggested that I keep my day job. Yet in my head, some things I say and write just make me giggle, but maybe just me. We all know people that should never tell a joke or even try to be funny. I had one friend who would be giving a talk and would say: “All jokes aside, we . . . .” and all of us would say: “What jokes”?
                     So, I regularly read humor articles, listen to the comedy channels, and look for the amusing elements of life to get better with a sense of humor. During my recent “research” I stumbled upon “The International Society for Humor Studies” (ISHS) and laughed riotously in my head, thinking it is a joke. But ISHS says it is a scholarly and professional organization dedicated to the advancement of humor research. They even held their 34th International Humor Conference in San Francisco this summer they say.
                     They accept members such as educators, health professionals, managers, writers, performers, students and others “interested in the advancement of humor studies and research”. ISHS membership dues are up to $110.00 next year, but include a copy of the quarterly journal and discounts on books in the Humor Research series. I looked at the membership list and they seem to be from all over the world. I did not see any of my relatives on the list.
                     So, I am thinking this is perhaps too much for me. It sounds like work to belong to this group and I would need to study something to get better at it. Some of my grade school neighbors said I could not find a book in a library. We did not have ice at home because we lost the recipe. Did you hear that the Governor’s Mansion burned down? Yeah, it almost took out the whole trailer park. I know, keep the day job or matriculate at the Humor School.
                     My goal here is to develop something for a speaker to say at my funeral. I am hoping that one will say: “Steve was a humorist” because no one will know what that is. It will sound scholarly and is not likely to be confused with any kind of perversion by some old person.
                     In my head, that does remind me of the right proper Baptist couple in my home town who, upon checking into the motel, asked if the porn channel was disabled? The clerk looked at them and said: “No, it is regular porn, you perverts.”

Old People--Like Us

10/15/2015

                    When one of us does something by mistake or forgets an important fact, a friend of my age walks up, smiles and says: “I love Old People.” It is a very polite and warm way of saying: “You dumb ass.”
                    As I have reconnected with high school era classmates and acquaintances, I realize many of them are now old people. Strangely, only a very few look like they did in high school. Out of these few they are equally divided between males and female. The rest of us just look like hell. How did all this happen? Often when you attend reunions they give you badges with your high school picture on it. People will argue with you that you are not that person. As they say: “Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened?”
                    This concept of becoming your grandfather (or grandmother) just creeps up on you. In my mind, I am still thin(er) with blonde hair. Yet when I see one of my classmates, I realize that both of us have become Civil War veterans. It is really scary how this just happened. You remember that as a child you thought nap time was punishment. Now it feels like a vacation.
                    There are times when I just want to crawl in one of those big commercial dryers for ten minutes and come out wrinkle-free and three sizes smaller. However, we have lots to look forward to with more years. Some older friends of mine say “Getting Lucky” means walking into a room and remembering what you went there for in the first place. They say they enjoy walking now because it is the only time they hear heavy breathing again. I wonder however if all that exercise at our older age just means longer stays in a nursing home?
                    At least at your layout they will say: “Don’t he look good?” I was always amazed at that expression at the funeral home. People actually would walk up to the casket of the recently departed and say that, as if that made it better than he looks door knob dead, doesn’t he? Regardless of the age of my reader, the age thing will happen with the absolute certainty of taxes and cracks in your concrete driveway. As the young people say currently: “Whatever.”

HUMOR MUST BE IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

9/1/2015

                      I never trusted anyone without a sense of humor. In fact, the difficult people in life seem to be born without that humor gene. If you have the gene and you get the humor, all things just seem easier. A high school friend recently posted that 90% of his posts are in jest, and 10% are deadly serious. The problem is that some do not know which is which it seems. Therein lies that gene issue.

                      Humor can be like holding a sword by both its edges. Common sense comes into play in this area. Speaking to a group of big-boned people, it is more proper to say: “Skinny people are so easy to kidnap” instead of “Fat people are harder to kidnap.” It is the fine art of the use of the language. Never say “It went faster than a Domino’s pizza at a Weight Watchers meeting when addressing the XXL Nation. Likewise, humor at funerals is a fine art as well.

                      We here in West Virginia do seem to generally fit the larger or full-figured model. Some say it is unhealthy lifestyles, but I blame the commodity cheese that the USDA provided to public schools when I was young. They made everything but clothes out of these huge blocks of cheese they had paid the farmers to produce with government subsidies. Peanut butter and pinto beans also came with all the school lunch programs then. All of that went right to my hips from my lips.

                      Well now, all these grade schoolers of the Commodity Era are Boomers now. You can hear us coming with our walkers, or the Jazzies we ride in the mall. Ban the use of tennis balls on the walkers and you can dominate this portion of the population. Just do not try to throw us under the bus. The physics of that does not work.

                      When I was little, my mother took me to the “Husky” section at stores like J.C. Penney’s. That was profiling and I just did not know it then. Take that initial profile and add 44 years of sitting at a desk and you get what Will Ferrell refers to as “a very attainable body style”. I have often thought of a money-making business teaching distance runners and anorexic people how to “Carb Load”.   Most great business ideas are born of one’s passion. I have always been a scratch eater with a zero handicap. Growing up in Fayette County, West Virginia, it was just bad manners to be a picky eater. You did not have to ask for seconds, but you were expected to clean the plate.

                      I observe a tendency of us big-boned, larger frame, full-figure models to joke about our weight to deflect the basic insecurity we all must feel that got us there. Again, not in my case since it was the damn commodity cheese. Some New York film crew wanted to film fat people here “who like to have fun” as a reality show in Huntington, West Virginia. I sense mockery of the first order here, like the reality show “Fat Guys in the Woods” — really. The Huntington Mayor made it plain to Loud Television that they were not welcome and they backed off, so watch out Mississippi.

                      So, as a long-time trial lawyer (bear in mind we lawyers poll only slightly better than Broccoli or Brussel Sprouts) who is “big boned”, I must be very judicious in my use of humor with a jury. Sometimes they just do not see it as humor. The local story is that an older local lawyer, always known for his brash talk, argued in a wrongful death case that the widowed husband was actually saving money by not buying dresses, or for the deceased wife’s hair appointments. Of course, there was a statutory cap in wrongful death cases then. In those days, the legal advice was to back up if you only wounded someone with a car because there was a statutory cap if they were dead. Even I did not find that humorous.

                      So boys and girls, today’s lesson on humor is to be careful with it. As you can see, some things are just not funny.

HAVE YOU USED ALGEBRA TODAY?

8/3/2015

                    Alternatively stated, “Death Rate Holding Steady at 100%” says The Onion Headline. Let’s stop sweeping both these topics under the rug. I freely admit I have not used Algebra once this week. I did not understand it when favorite teacher John Duda taught me, and even when I got it right I could not explain it to Mr. Duda when he asked. We all had great respect for the man, but when it came to his course in Algebra, I believe most of the Board of Education book was written in Klingon. Thank goodness that this educational black hole has not kept me from my work as a trial attorney. Actually the lack of mathematical acuity caused me to be a lawyer — as in, “Steve could not get a real job.”

                    Enough nonsense and on to important subjects for my friends. A Philadelphia writer for the Wall Street Journal proposes that we need to consider dropping some friends as we get older. She says retirement encourages us to throw out stuff in our offices and homes that is no longer relevant to our current lives. So, why not do the same to friends!

                    We all have friends in different eras, but they come with baggage and some unwanted memories. This is a bit more than the add-and-delete-a-friend on social media. She suggests letting some just lapse on their own. That is, just stop sending cards and emails or calling them. So those connections just wither away. So, all you college girls who were unavailable for dates due to major hair washing that weekend and dead grandmothers, I am tossing you into the memory can. Really you cannot have more than two natural grandmothers to pass away. The few hundred of you in that group are now dead to me. I feel better already.

                    Rather than be cold-hearted about this, I find that many of the long ago friends have just naturally dropped out of the memory bank. At the periodic school reunions when asked: “You don’t remember me, do you?” I often say you are right: “I don’t have a clue”. It is not conceit or anything of the like. Some password or telephone number has just pushed them out of the memory. If you know Algebra, you know there is a finite space in the mind and I must have used it up and Earl got squeezed out. My favorite grade school kid’s drawing is the equation and the directions to find “X”, and the kid draws an arrow to the X and says: “There it is.” To me that is Algebra at its highest and best use.

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

7/1/2015

                      I am not sure if Mr. Forest Gump said that, but it sounds right. The comedian Ron White always says it most aptly: “You can’t fix stupid.” You know that, but you have tried to convince one of them before, and only gotten frustrated in the process. Saying the same thing louder does not work either. Nothing you can do will fix their issue. They could not find a book in a Library. You know the type: If he was dumb as dirt, and he would cover about an acre.

                      Those annual Darwin Awards directed and acted by The Stupid would be funny, but you know some of them are true and are happening right around you. For example, a Georgia man gets a cell phone and starts looking for an illegal product with it. He sends a text by mistake to his probation officer: “You have some weed?” So the officer notifies the Albany, Georgia police and when they execute a search warrant, they find a bag of cocaine in the texter’s possession which ends him back in prison.

                      So stupid people are now using tech to do stupid things quicker. Let’s coin a new phrase and call it Cyber Stupidity. You know it happens every day at your own workplace. Don’t you just want to drop kick the “Reply All” people with the stupid and inane response to all. I hope I did not write that out to all, but I was sure thinking it.

                      Not that it is stupid de facto, but people with way too much time on their hands have listed the hot words of 2014. The word “culture” was at the top pushing out the word “society” to describe a multitude of things. Eliminating the elitist feel of the word society, culture can mean many things when combined with other words, like for example consumer culture. Nostalgia, insidious, legacy, and feminism were other widely-used words in 2014.

                      The French phrase “je ne sais quoi” clocked in at number six for one reason — a burger commercial where the listener said to the phrase user in response: “Jenna said what?” Again, the topic for this month is stupid. As John Wayne is reported to have said: “Life is hard—It is even harder if you are stupid.”

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO BURN A FEW BRIDGES –JUST TO KEEP THE CRAZIES FROM FOLLOWING YOU

6/1/2015

                    There are many such pearls of wisdom that sometimes appear on tee shirts at the beach. People will do some strange things while at the beach. You know the “I’m with Stupidà” kind of shirts. Living in a Biscuit Belt state, we often see such things in everyday downtown life, instead of at the beach where it might be deemed whimsical. My firm once donated a collection of Firm branded tee shirts to a charity and they ended upon a regularly visible group of men who daily drank cheap wine out of bottles in brown bags. Well, so much for either good intentions or marketing efforts.

                    Writing a monthly “Alleged Humor” article is easy because as the boys on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour say, “You can’t make this stuff up.” It just happens around you and you are just the reporter. As comedian Ron White says with a Texas drawl: “You can’t fix stupid.” Stupid does seem to be gaining some ground, at least where I am located.

                    When you follow the Seinfeld model of doing an article about nothing, it should be easy but sometimes you get a writer’s block. As Oscar Wilde said, “I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of day taking it out.” I was getting as nervous as a Baghdad parking lot attendant when I realized I had a publishing deadline approaching, albeit a self-imposed deadline for which absolutely nothing would happen if I missed it. But as a type A, only child, it seemed to matter to me and to my imaginary friend. It was almost like when the voices in my head argue among themselves, as if I wasn’t even in the room.

                    I do try to look about me for inspiration and I read daily sources of information, including even holding those old-fashioned sheets of thin paper and drinking coffee while I read them. I also look at that inter webbie thing for information while drinking coffee. That was a beverage habit I developed as a spanking new lawyer. There was the huge law library and there was a coffee pot in the room next to it. We became friends.

                    Perhaps because they saw depictions of chain smokers with endless coffee and pressing deadlines, some felt too much coffee was bad. I have lots of habits, and now coffee is not bad for you reports the Washington Post and the New York Times. Three to five cups a day (considered moderate) drinkers had clearer arteries. Even a 2012 New England Journal of Medicine study found that older adults drinking coffee had a lower risk of death than those who did not drink it. Harvard’s School of Public Health tracked 50,000 women and said those who drank four or more cups of coffee with caffeine were 20% less likely to develop depression. They stopped short of saying to women to drink more coffee. Even Diabetes Care said women had a lower diabetes risk if they were coffee drinkers.

                    Of course, you wonder if Starbucks funded any of these studies. I do not want to investigate and I am just happy that some (one) of my habits is in vogue. My new friend, The Antioxidant, seems in play in beer, wine, whiskey and coffee. If I can only get a reliable study done for either Biscuits and Gravy or Krispy Kreme donuts, I’ll be happy. You know you always want to be thin and lose weight – when you are not hungry.

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