Posts Tagged ‘humour’

The most embarrassing job interview

Posted: March 26, 2026 in Chat
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Let’s start about a month before, shopping on the high street. Two big heavy bags of shopping, one in each hand, and then slipping off a high kerb.
I felt something snap; and then the pain.
One of those little bones – metatarsals – in my left foot.

So, hobbling around with a stick, not just any stick, but a slim, neat hiking stick. Ok, but still hobbling. Not easy.

And then the interview, a job I’d applied for a while ago.
I turned up avec une canne and apologies on time on the day.
All seemed to go well at first, just myself and the interviewer, but it suddenly fell flat.
We came to a halt, and I made my way back out.

There were those long corridors with undistinguishable office doors off, and fire doors every so often along it length.
I hobbled along, through a fire door and reached back to pull it shut behind me. The interviewer with silent tread was right behind, and the way my fingers were hooked to hold and pull the door

slipped right between the buttons of her blouse.

There was a split-second as we both looked down. I hastily retreated, apologised and left. Only, with the stick not as quick as I would have liked.

I will give her this, she was a very good interviewer.
There was one part of the interview when I suddenly realised with horror and panic that I would hate that job. I said nothing, gave nothing away. But she picked up on something, because she decided from them on to finish the interview.
It was the kind of job you would become trapped in just to pay the mortgage. As you slowly shrivel up and die inside.

No, I didn’t get the job I didn’t want.
I did get this anecdote.
She probably got a funny water-cooler moment out of it.

Inner City Humour

Posted: March 21, 2026 in Chat
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I do wish that I still had the link to this video, but it was some time again, and….

Picture this, a narrow road between two low blocks of social housing flats.
We are watching from a second storey window, on someone’s phone.
What we are watching is a man walking down the opposite pavement, and he is the cause of some noise.

No, not walking, but strutting. He has no shirt, just trousers, shoes etc, and his fists are clenched at his side as he faces the opposite block, and keeps shouting.
And what he is shouting is,

Who wants some!
Come on, who wants some then!
Who wants some!

And he’s fair bristling at the point that he gets opposite us.
We watch him strut along the road, challenging.
No one is responding.
He carries on

Who wants some!
Who wants some, come on!

He has just gone past our vantage point when a light pleasant voice calls from our room

Yes, I’ll have some.

At which he swings round, with Whaaat!
But our room has dissolved into laughter.

*

Structurally this is a very neat piece.
How he dominates the scene, creates an aggressive mood, with very little. He develops the scene as no one responds, his stance and shouted threats become more assertive. The whole mood is his.

Then the intervention, in such a pleasant voice. almost saying Yes please, I’ll have some.
Like an excited child offered an ice cream.
But that complete change in tone destroys the man’s set-up. And the private laughter at our end finishes it all.

I do hope that he found his shirt again.

Hilarious Share

Posted: March 6, 2026 in Chat
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I just had to share this post. It is a ‘just what you don’t need, thank you’ situation in the crucial minutes.
Why not take a look at Stella’s site.

Gesehen in … /… Seen in

Viborg Herzklinik. Der Weg zur Toilette. Der gelbe Punkt unten indikiert, wo man hier und jetzt steht, das dunkle Dreieck oben zeigt uns, wo sich die Toiletten befinden. Viel Erfolg!

… Viborg cardiology clinic. How to find the toilets. The yellow dot on the lower edge indicates where we are standing right now; the dark triangle on the upper edge shows us where the toilets can be found. Good luck! 

Und ich habe mich über all die Menschen gewundert, die dort verwirrt herumlaufen 

… And I was wondering about all the people walking around there, confusion on their faces 

Hall of Curious Rocks

Posted: January 11, 2026 in Chat
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or, Chichubi Chinsekkan
https://artscape.jp/artscape/eng/focus/1703_02.html

is a wonderful place. A gallery of found objects, stones, rocks, that have a recognisable human quality of expression.
Truly delightful.

Susan Roberts Chikuba is a Tokyo editor and translator. She has written on Japanese popular culture, design, and architecture for the past twenty-five years.
In this article she introduces us to ‘spirited stones’, a museum space currently run by Yoshika Hayama, after her father set it up in 1990: ‘the museum holds well over 1,000 specimens he collected over five decades before his death in 2010.’

She writes of the great popularity of the museum, whose fame is partly due to the ‘inspired captions naming the rocks for the celebrities, politicians, and anime characters they resemble — Elvis Presley, Mikhail Gorbachev, and John F. Kennedy among them.’

All images are under license, copyrighted, so I cannot give examples.
If you get chance, do visit the site. It is well worth it.

https://artscape.jp/artscape/eng/focus/1703_02.html

Comedy

Posted: May 9, 2025 in Chat
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Question: What is most like a cat looking out of window?

Answer: A cat looking in at a window.

How does that read to you?
It all depends on what goes before. I read it to my wife, after several other jokes, and… it was so funny. It’s the dead-pan, and the unexpectedly banal.
The banal in the right place – and that is a skill – can be really effective.
The above joke, by the way, is from 18th century England, courtesy of Dr Bob Nicholson, historian of popular culture.
https://www.bobnicholson.co.uk
For myself, I find the phrasing adds to it.

An aristocratic London family were searching for their lost dog.
A American man contacted them, saying he had found their dog, going off their description of a shaggy type dog.
After a long, winding and protracted train and ship journey the man and dog jnock at the door on Park Lane in London. The butler opens, and the American man introduces the dog, saying I have brought the dog. It matches the description, as a brown, tall, shaggy dog.
The butler looked down at the dog, sniffed, and said,
‘Not as shaggy as that!’
And slammed the door.

This is supposedly the earliest – though I have truncated, some would say mauled it, badly – of the ‘shaggy dog’ tales.
There is so much in this – the hints at English-American relationships; the over-officious butler and his inability to find the right tone, which talks to me of someone unsure of his authority, his relationship to his ‘family’.
The ‘shaggy dog’ story is perhaps more about the journey, what happens in its twisting, turning events. A strong ending could only ruin it. An oblique ending the only way to defuse.

The subjects and expressions of comedy now are so vast. I couldn’t hope to tackle them in any way.

Steve Martin ‘s early days: he shared listing with a ventriloquist, in a beginners comedy venue. In rehearsal the club owner suggested, Move the dummy nearer the microphone.
What puzzles me about this, and I think he meant it do, is where the laugh is being pointed. Is it us, for taking it as ‘true’?
(‘Born standing up : a comic’s life’, by Steve Martin. Published by Scribner, 2007)

Angus Fletcher’s ‘Comic Democracies‘ ( John Hopkins University Press, 2016) takes us back to some of earliest recorded comedy – you guessed it, Aristophanes.
We are now so used to comedy as being ‘edgy’, politically left-wing. Aristophanes’ comedy was decidedly conservative, his comedy targets everything new, that veers from the straight, narrow and known. It is still very funny, though.

After Ronald Firbank

Posted: March 20, 2025 in Chat
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My wife drew my attention to this line from Ronald Firbank

‘The sigh of an Egyptian for his pyramid.’

Which, we had to admit was quite hilarious. It can be read in various ways, as a longing for death, a longing for home, and the uncertain overlaps.
Of course, we just had to run with this one, though lacking Mr Firbank’s finesse:

The grunt of a Saxon for his cairn
The groan of a Celt for his cromlech
The tut of a teuton before his tomb

Then it started it get a little more complex in structure, though perhaps cruder in content:

The bleat of a bog-body for their bog
The shh of a septuagenarian for their sepulchre
The titter of a Twitter-user at their delete-button
The vex of a X-user at their expiry date

Perhaps something a little more upbeat? Exploit the ambiguity more.

The pft of a painter for his palette knife
The purse of a payer before their purchase
The tsk of a tax-official closing an account

The smirk of an ex-smoker deep-breathing before a tobacconist (maybe not)
The gag of a goth before his fake grave-stone
The flummery of a politician in his podcast

The ragged breathing of the publisher reading the errors he missed

or, something a little more risqué:

The clack of the chess-player’s teeth as he mates

But, no, Ronald Firbank had a refined sensibility. It is very hard to approach his literary elegance.
Anyone?





Two-Man Orchestra

Posted: January 19, 2025 in Chat
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As we all know, performing classical music is a very serious business.
Mauricio Kagel shows us how.

The answer is …

Posted: April 3, 2024 in Chat
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This appealed to my quirky humour, I just had to share

http://getbacklauretta.com/2024/04/01/it-figures/

And the answer is literally ‘blowing in the wind’, my friend.

From the Get back, Lauretta blog
This is a hugely enjoyable and surprisingly varied blog page. I would urge you to visit, and explore.

Election Year

Posted: January 20, 2024 in Chat
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I was looking through US comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s book, Is This Anything ?, and came across an election year sketch.

Is This Anything? by Jerry Seinfeld. Published by Simon and Schuster, 2020. 
ISBN 978-1-4711-9558-7

I think this captures a lot of the scenarios wizzing around at these times – I certainly recognise my own thoughts there

from ‘Campaign 88’

‘I bet a lot of Americans are thinking the same thing about it.
In the back of your mind you’re like,
”I’m sure once the actual election rolls around, there’ll be other choices.
Once the word gets out that they’re hiring Presidents.
there’ll probably be lots of new people coming in.
I’m sure these are just placeholders for now….
……………………………”

……………………………………………….

Just the fact that someone thinks they should be the President
Is proof that they’re mentally off.’

And, yes, it’s election year again in the US.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67949560

And it’s on in UK too, the old razzmatazz.


For want of something else to watch we had The Day The Earth Stood Still, with Keanu Reeves et al.
Klatuu wanted to see the world’s political representatives, and I thought, these people were just going about their ordinary lives, then decided to manoeuvre themselves into top position. Why would we trust anything so important as the Earth, and world survival, with them ?
Do any of them have special skills that way ?

This is where humour and comedy come in, not just as coping mechanisms, but as prioritising sheer pleasure in fun and play. What it really is to be human, rounded out and human.

*


I wonder at times if it possible to order ourselves without politics, or politicians. Whether we will view that whole episode as a time of error, as though we had allowed ourselves to be duped by alchemists, or ‘snake-oil ‘ merchants.

The finer details of how we could do this, as usual, are beyond me.

– See, the humour is still there. Even if it directed against myself.

Watering High Flower Baskets

Posted: August 26, 2023 in Chat
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Watering high flower baskets on a warm evening
the water trickles to your wrist, cool on the day’s skin,
discovering the inner side of your forearm, trickles
to gather at your elbow. Their slow tracks then turning
on the inner side of your bicep, high upper arm…

you cannot lower it now but instead must follow this
as it continues its paths from wrist to shoulder, pools;
then runs off from throat hollows, and if
you offer an accommodating twist the outriders run

and your nipple rises to greet them.

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