The BBC airs a comedy show where nothing is off limits.
This one made me laugh out loud.
I hope you are not offended. It turns popular prejudices inside out.
Archives for category: Humor
I saw this a long while ago and thought it was wonderful social satire.
It reminded me just a little of myself after my college graduation in 1960, when women’s voices were devalued. That was before the feminist movement. I married right after I graduated college and aspired to be the perfect wife. I wasn’t very good at it but it took a long time to figure that out. I identified with the woman in this video.
It is funny. You deserve a laugh today.
Alexandra Petri is the brilliant satirist for The Washington Post. She wrote this column, titled: “The Greeks Are Gone from Troy, for Sure,” by Mike Pence.
“In recent days, the media has taken to sounding the alarm bells over a ‘second wave’ of coronavirus infections. Such panic is overblown. Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and the courage and compassion of the American people, our public health system is far stronger than it was four months ago, and we are winning the fight against the invisible enemy.”
— Vice President Pence in “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave,’” Wall Street Journal
In recent days, Cassandra has taken to sounding the alarm bells over a “second wave” of Greek attack that will soon come sweeping over us like the wrath of Poseidon and leave our city in ruins. Such panic is overblown. (Although, technically, “panic” is fear induced by the god Pan, so really this is not even panic at all. But whatever it is, it is overblown.)
Thanks to the leadership of King Priam and the courage and compassion of the Trojan people, our walled city is far stronger and even less pregnable than it was nine years ago, and we have won the fight against the Greeks. And if you doubt that, just look at this enormous and beautifully constructed wooden horse they have left for us, which is definitely not hollow and will absolutely not be filled with handpicked soldiers ready to pour out and devastate our city.
The Laocoöns and Cassandras are full of negativity about this horse. At least, I think that was what Laocoön was saying before he was seized mid-sentence and crushed to death by sea serpents, along with his two sons! Probably a sign that what he was saying was not important. And when has Cassandra ever been right about anything?
The point is: The war has been a great success. And I can’t think of anyone better to have led us through it than King Priam. Yes, we have had losses, but ultimately we were victorious. That is what this horse means. We should seize it and be grateful.
Looking back, everything the king did was good. It was good, actually, that he put his sons in charge of everything, Hector, Paris — even Deiphobus. Hector was — how do I put this? — godlike. And so good at taming horses. We all miss him. And we even miss Paris, who actually turned out to be kind of helpful and, seemingly by random chance, managed to kill Achilles! I would think that shooting someone in the heel with an arrow would actually be a sign that you were just hitting body parts at random and not very good at what you were doing. But no, it was brilliant strategy! Which is what we have had throughout. And Deiphobus is here, too!
When King Priam asked me to chair our Get the Greeks to Leave and Destroy Their Champion Achilles Task Force nine years ago (Hector was busy), he directed us to pursue not only a Whole-of-the-House-of-Priam approach but a Whole-of-Troy approach. And now that the Greeks have left, spontaneously, I think, I can look back on that task force and see everything we did as a success. It must have been the partnerships I forged, or perhaps it was the weapons I forged. Maybe it was our alliance with the warlike Amazons, a match for men that put us over the top. (Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)
We’ve also made great progress on developing a device that will keep the Greeks out of here forever. Operation Wind-Swift-Footed Iris is aiming to have a technology that will shroud our city in something even better than Apollo’s protection — though what, really, could be better than that? I hope this wasn’t blasphemy.
I know we have asked the Trojan people to make sacrifices, like not leaving this walled city because there were Greeks outside, something that, amazingly, a few people were unwilling to do but most of you have been great about. But the time for sacrifices is over, except in the sense that we need to make a literal sacrifice to thank the gods for their protection.
Now is the time to bring in the horse and commemorate this achievement. We have defeated this visible enemy, which was also sometimes invisible because the gods are tricky.
Look, we can test the horse, if you like, but I think testing just makes it more likely you will find out information that makes you unhappy, and that is the last thing we need in our moment of triumph. But sure, have Helen walk around the horse calling out in the voices of the Greeks’ loved ones, just in case! Knock yourself out! I am sure the worst is over.
This is a time of celebration, and I think we can all sleep soundly in our beds. And I, for one, will sleep better once we get that horse inside. Congratulations, people of Troy.
Christine Baranski, the gifted actress who has appeared in many films (including “Mama Mia”), reads a very, very funny short story by Thomas Mehran before a live audience In New York City B.P. (BeforePandemic). I almost cried with laughter. Enjoy!
Thomas Mehan’s utterly hilarious short story “Yma Dream” is one of our perennial favorites to listen to–especially in the hands of the incredible Christine Baranski. Tune in to join this absurd dinner party of Mehan’s imagination and try to keep up with Baranski’s masterful delivery.
Randy Rainbow explains Trump’s latest Tweet-storm.
It’s all about distraction. He doesn’t want you to think about the pandemic. He doesn’t want you to dwell on 100,000 deaths.
The biggest scandal of our era, he says, is Obamagate.
What does that mean? No one knows.
When the protests and demonstrations became loud in D.C., Donald Trump took shelter in the secure bunker under the White House. Although this was widely reported, Trump denied it, claiming that was merely “inspecting” the bunker.
Randy Rainbow didn’t believe him.
Humorist Andy Borowitz of the New Yorker recommends moving the GOP convention from North Carolina to Moscow.
The GOP has friends there. No protests.
SomeDam Poet warns:
The trolls are waiting under bridge
To pounce upon the passing kids
Disguised as broads and billy goats
With candy and with diet kochs
This is another of the great Internet discoveries that everyone else in the world seems to have discovered.
A friend sent it, and I was mesmerized by the quartet of talented performers.
You will be too! I promise!
On his daily “The Writer’s Almanac,” Garrison Keillor recognizes two important historical birthdays today. I must have read every Edward Lear poem and limerick to my children. His writings gave them a love of language and wordplay, which I believe is a firm foundation for learning..
Today is the birthday of the poet and artist Edward Lear (books by this author) who wrote lots of limericks and nonsense verse, including “The Owl and the Pussycat.” He was born in London in 1812. He was the 20th of 21 children, about half of whom died in infancy. Lear himself survived to the age of 75, but he suffered epileptic seizures and was prone to fits of deep depression, which he dubbed “the Morbids.”
He began selling his drawings when he was 16, and later found work as a drawing teacher, and a sign painter, and an illustrator of medical textbooks. He was hired by the London Zoological Society to produce a series of bird paintings, and he insisted on only painting from live specimens, not stuffed dead birds. His paintings impressed Edward Stanley, the Earl of Derby, so much that Stanley asked Lear to come and document the animals in the private zoo he kept on his estate. Lear lived at Knowsley Hall for four years on and off, working on the paintings, which were eventually published in the book Gleanings from the Menagerie and Aviary at Knowsley Hall (1846). He also befriended the Earl’s grandchildren and began writing poetry for them including “The Owl and the Pussycat.”
It’s the birthday of Florence Nightingale, born in Florence, Italy, to a wealthy English family (1820). Her parents didn’t have any sons, and they gave her advantages that would have gone to a son, though they still expected her to marry and be a wife and mother. When she was 25, Nightingale told her parents that she wanted to become a nurse. Since nursing was a working-class occupation, her parents were horrified, but she believed she had been given a purpose by God.
In London, Nightingale met Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America. Blackwell encouraged and inspired her, and she finally obtained her father’s permission to study nursing when she was 31. And in 1854, with the British Army crippled by outbreaks of typhus, cholera, and dysentery during the Crimean War, she took a group of 38 nurses to Turkey. She became known as “the lady with the lamp,” because she would quietly make her rounds among the patients at all hours of the night. Conditions in the field hospitals were appalling, and she began a campaign to reform them, but the military stonewalled her. She used her London newspaper contacts to publish accounts of the horrible way wounded soldiers were being treated. Finally she was allowed to reorganize the barracks hospitals. She thought that the high death rates were due to poor nutrition and overwork; it wasn’t until after the war that she realized the role that proper sanitation played in patient care.
After the war, she continued to fight for military hospital reform and the education of nurses; she was soon one of the most famous and influential women in Britain, second only to Queen Victoria. In 1860, she founded the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses. But she had returned from the war an invalid herself, possibly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and for the last several years of her life, she was in need of nursing herself.
Here is Lear’s most famous poem. Someone set it to music, and we used to sing it together.
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’
Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-Tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
‘Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
Diane Ravitch's blog 