Ha!

Ha!

Ha! again!

Blog Fun

Fun is everywhere these days. On sitcoms, in commercials, on billboards, and on everybody's lips.

It is the result of a culture which has nothing serious to think about, or to fight for. We don't take religion seriously, nor family (unless it is the "inclusive" families of aggressive homosexuals) nor country. We are easily bullied and easily coerced by the loudest voice in the group.

So there s nothing left but to have FUN.

Here is the word's origin, and history, from the online Thesaurus.com:

fun 1680s, v., "to cheat, hoax," probably a variant of M.E. fon "befool" (c.1400), later "trick, hoax, practical joke," of uncertain origin. Stigmatized by Johnson as "a low cant word." Older sense is preserved in phrase to make fun of and funny money "counterfeit bills" (1938, though this may be more for the sake of the rhyme); sense of "amusement" is 1727.

It doesn't look like much "fun."

But, all the contemporary synonyms given by the thesaurus are light, bright and airy:

amusing
enjoyable
entertaining
lively
pleasants
boisterous
convivial
diverting
merry
witty

Yet, people rarely seem to be having fun, in a mirthful, merry, boisterous way. What does that say about our times?

"Dogs, I Am Confident, Would Have Arranged Many, Many Things Better Than We Do"

First, I Do An On-Line Search
Cartoon by Arnie Levin
Published in the New Yorker October 5, 1998
I went to my (second) favorite spot to read - the Whole Foods Market cafe - my newly acquired (for TEN dollars, down from FORTY EIGHT dollars!) book, The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs.

Here is what the reviewers say about it:

...the amused insouciance, the self-deprecation, the gentle unfolding of a structural irony, the skip and reveal of the final sentence, the knowledge of Not Too Much that seems intrinsic to the New Yorker. And cartoons.”—Edmund De Waal, The Spectator

But, above all, it's funny, in that canine way, where all things are about the dog.


Thurber Dog With Butterfly for Nora, 1937
Illustration by James Thurber

Dogs, I am confident, would have arranged many, many things better than we do. They would have in all probability averted the Depression, for they can go through lots tougher things than we and still think it's boom time. They demand very little of their heyday; a kind word is more to them than fame, a soup bone more than gold; they are perfectly contented with a warm fire and a good book to chew (preferably an autographed first edition lent by a friend).
James Thurber, from "Dogs I Have Scratched"

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Reclaiming Beauty from Butch Feminists on Motorcycles

Reclaiming Beauty: Saw Mill River Parkway in New York
[Image from: Saw Mill River Parkway]

At Laura Wood's The Thinking Housewife, a commentator writes about the motorcycle death of:

Mary Thom, former editor of Ms. Magazine and a guiding force of the American feminist movement.

Her obituary in the New York Times reads:

Ms. Thom never married, and her friends said her true love was her motorcycle, a 1996 Honda Magna 750. On it, she zipped around town — to dinners in the West Village, feminist talks, and back home to her apartment on the Upper West Side.

On Friday, she was riding on the Saw Mill River Parkway shortly after 4 p.m. when she hit a car, throwing her onto the road, the Westchester County police said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Like one of Laura's correspondents, I laughed out loud that this "true love" of hers failed her at the end.

Another correspondent notes:

It always bothers me to read about a feminist (particularly a butch one) named "Mary." Such a beautiful name.

That was my second thought, after I got over the Monty Pythonesque imagery I had for a few seconds.

The simple and lovely two-syllable name holds so much within those few letters. We should have a law that only Christians can have that name. At baptism, priests should make it clear that if the girl, once grown, wishes to keep the name, she has to show regular commitment to her faith. Otherwise, a priestly committee will not deem the name worthy of her, and will remove it.

Take that, committees of feminists.

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Hell's Grannies take on the town on their motorcycles (don't mind the first few seconds, the punchline of the joke is "Boo").

Starting around the 3:40 point:



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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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