What in the hell …

I’ve got time off around the holidays. Some of it’s going to get burnt up rushing around visiting family. Some of it will be spent squeezing in visits with great pals who I always give too little time to. Hopefully at least some of that too-little-time is going to be spent drunk. (I figure drunk time counts more than sober time. Someone should calculate the drunktime to sobertime ratio. Like, how many soberminutes is a drunkminute worth? I want to know. Some science person should get on that one.) I’m going to spent much of my break sleeping. I want regular amounts of sleep on a regular basis while I’m off. That’s the plan, anyway. I’m not actually very good at sleeping.

Aside from traveling and sleeping - watching TV and reading more blogs and go to the gym. I haven’t been to the gym since I think early october? I had a groove going for a while, working out real regularly, then life got too hard and my resolve weakened. Stupid damn life. Stupid damn weakening resolve.

I have a tentative plan to regain my love of reading. Reading more blogs is part of that. Maybe a novel or two, too. I’m not sure, though. Reading and me, we’re kind of on the rocks. I mean, me and reading, we’ve had our good times for sure, and I’ll always cherish the memories. But I sort of feel like I need my space. It’s not reading, it’s me. We’ll see what happens. We’re definitely going to try and work it out, it’s just that this kind of thing takes time. We’re taking it slow.

I also have a big old stack of books I want to have already read. Those sort of books do not help my love of reading. This is part of the problem with me and reading. I think I’m developing a thing for having read. I never meant for that to happen, but it just, well, it just did. Having read and reading are like … they share some of the same great qualities - it’s kind of confusing actually, makes it harder to sort through all this.

And I’m gonna clean my stupid damn desk, and reorganize my bookshelf, and cook more. And play music with someone other than myself. And blog on occasion. I just remembered I need to write a syllabus too. Ah crap this is starting to look like a lot for one break. May have to turn this into new years resolutions. Stupid damn break. Too short.

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This stuff aside, I want to share a joke. A and me were watching the Muppet Show the other nite. Phyllis Diller was the host. There’s a bit where she gives Fozzy comedy lessons. She suggests several jokes, and he’s all “but I can’t say that, they’re not true.” She’s like “they don’t have to be true.” He gets all offended, “but I love the audience, I can’t lie to them!” She’s like “okay, do you have an apartment?” “yeah.” “is you apartment small?” “yeah.” She says, “how about this - my apartment is so small the mouse is hunchbacked.” He laughs, then says “but I can’t say that, I don’t have a hunchbacked mouse. He has gout.” Then pauses and goes, “oh I got one! My apartment is so small, the mouse has gout!”

I thought it was hilarious.

A funny joke where the punchline is another joke that isn’t funny.

I also like it because I like jokes that fail. Like I have this really long ghost story I tell about a funeral parlor that ends with a punch line along the lines of “so she takes out the cough drops, to stop the coffin!” I also like jokes that I think are funny but sometimes others do not. Like philosopher jokes. And light bulb jokes.

Here’s a philosophy joke.

Rene Descartes walks into a clothing store to browse.
The clerk walks up to him and asks, “Can I help you with anything?”
Descartes says “I don’t think - ” and POOF! He disappears!

Here’s another.

A mathematician, a physicist, and a philosopher are taking a train from London to Edinburgh. They cross into Scotland. They see a sheep out the window. The mathematician says “look, that sheep is white. All the sheep in Scotland are white.”

The physicist says “Well, at least there is one sheep in Scotland and it is white.” The philosopher says “Correction, there is one sheep in Scotland and it is white on one side.”

Wokka wokka.