Correspondence: Funny & not funny

Edited by Moristotle

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

The last time my short-term memory was updated I required an anaesthetic and several new microprocessors.

If you KNOW you are not remembering something, then you’re all right. It’s when you don’t know that you’re losing it.

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

We are on vacation and I have been reading voraciously. I just started Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s Cross Creek, a trip into another time and place – her home in rural Florida orange groves in 1942. The copy I found on our rental’s book shelf is a first edition and inscribed “...April 1942.” Wonderful little stories about her life in this backwater and her few white and black neighbors and the land, flora, and fauna. Extraordinary and accessible writing. A minor masterpiece if the first 39 pages are any measure and I am any judge. Not sad but tugs at my heart. A simpler world. What more could one ask?

Limerick:

There once was a woman, a tempter of fate,
who inspired in a nephew such heapings of hate,
    he spent oodles of time
    rehearsing in mime,
how and when he would sprinkle the aunt bait.

I saw this some weeks ago, and it is very clever. Unfortunately, I find it impossible to really laugh at anything about Trump. I have a sense of humor but not about evil.



I get you. Not actually funny. And yet, what are people like Randy Rainbow and Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah and Rob Rogers (the cartoonist who lost his job at the Pittsburgh Gazette over his Trump cartoons) to do? Neither they, nor you, nor I can do much about the evil that has come down on us from the debacle of the 2016 presidential election. We all seem to be reduced to bewildered spectators.

I accept the fact that Trump’s existence as POTUS is no laughing matter, but Randy Rainbow’s skit reveals so much truth! What baffles me is that so many supposedly intelligent people are eager to serve as Trump enablers. Whatever happened to Congress’s supposed responsibility to keep such clueless, antagonizing, disruptive, dishonest, and self-serving practices in check?

Grateful for correspondence, Moristotle