Category: Humour

Several years ago the Dutch supermarket, Albert Heijn, began selling beer mugs with a built-in breathalyzer, so that as your blood-alcohol level rose, the beer mug limited the amount you could drink. They called it the Albert Heijn Stein.

Pure genius!

From Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out, Chapter XV:

Here Rachel came up from the lower garden with a book in her hand.

“What’s that book?” said Ridley, when she had shaken hands.

“It’s Gibbon,” said Rachel as she sat down.

“The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?” said Mrs. Thornbury. “A very wonderful book, I know. My dear father was always quoting it at us, with the result that we resolved never to read a line.”

“Gibbon the historian?” enquired Mrs. Flushing. “I connect him with some of the happiest hours of my life. We used to lie in bed and read Gibbon—about the massacres of the Christians, I remember—when we were supposed to be asleep. It’s no joke, I can tell you, readin’ a great big book, in double columns, by a night-light, and the light that comes through a chink in the door. Then there were the moths—tiger moths, yellow moths, and horrid cockchafers. Louisa, my sister, would have the window open. I wanted it shut. We fought every night of our lives over that window. Have you ever seen a moth dyin’ in a night-light?” she enquired.

The passage continues:

Hewet picked up the book that lay on the ground.

“You like this?” he asked in an undertone.

“No, I don’t like it,” she replied. She had indeed been trying all the afternoon to read it, and for some reason the glory which she had perceived at first had faded, and, read as she would, she could not grasp the meaning with her mind.

“It goes round, round, round, like a roll of oil-cloth,” she hazarded. Evidently she meant Hewet alone to hear her words, but Hirst demanded, “What d’you mean?” She was instantly ashamed of her figure of speech, for she could not explain it in words of sober criticism.

“Surely it’s the most perfect style, so far as style goes, that’s ever been invented,” he continued. “Every sentence is practically perfect, and the wit—”

“Ugly in body, repulsive in mind,” she thought, instead of thinking about Gibbon’s style. “Yes, but strong, searching, unyielding in mind.” She looked at his big head, a disproportionate part of which was occupied by the forehead, and at the direct, severe eyes.

“I give you up in despair,” he said. He meant it lightly, but she took it seriously, and believed that her value as a human being was lessened because she did not happen to admire the style of Gibbon. The others were talking now in a group about the native villages which Mrs. Flushing ought to visit.

“I despair too,” she said impetuously. “How are you going to judge people merely by their minds?”

“You agree with my spinster Aunt, I expect,” said St. John in his jaunty manner, which was always irritating because it made the person he talked to appear unduly clumsy and in earnest. “‘Be good, sweet maid’—I thought Mr. Kingsley and my Aunt were now obsolete.”

“One can be very nice without having read a book,” she asserted. Very silly and simple her words sounded, and laid her open to derision.

“Did I ever deny it?” Hirst enquired, raising his eyebrows.

In Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, the narrator is an older woman who lives alone in a small rural community in southwest Poland. Walking in the forest one day, she meets an entomologist and, upon learning that he has been sleeping under the trees, invites him to stay with her and sleep on her sofa. The eccentric capitalization mimics the writings of William Blake, the English Romantic poet, artist, and mystic.

Boros’s presence reminded me what it’s like to live with someone. And how very awkward it is. How much it diverts you from your own thoughts and distracts you. How another Person starts to irritate you without actually doing anything annoying, but simply by being there. Each morning when he went off to the forest, I blessed my glorious solitude. How do people manage to spend decades living together in a small space? I wondered. How can they possibly sleep in the same bed together, breathing on and jostling each other accidentally in their sleep? I’m not saying it hasn’t happened to me too. For some time I shared my bed with a Catholic, and nothing good came of it.

*  *  *

As we were off to bed, emboldened by the wine, Boros and I embraced, to say thank you for this evening. A little later I saw him in the kitchen, taking his pills and swallowing them with water from the tap.

It occurred to me that he was a very good Person, this Boros. And it was a good thing he had his Ailments. Being healthy is an insecure state and does not bode well. It’s better to be ill in a quiet way, then at least we know what we’re going to die of.

He came to me in the Night and squatted by my bed. I wasn’t asleep.

“Are you asleep?” he asked.

“Are you religious?” I had to put the question.

“Yes,” he replied proudly. “I’m an atheist.”

I found that curious.

I raised the quilt and invited him to join me, but as I am neither Maudlin nor Sentimental, I shall not dwell on it any further.

—pp. 157, 166-67

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for the birthday card and your kind messages!

I confess to a moment of shock when I first received it. 

“What?!” I thought, “Is it my birthday?” 

I had to check my driver’s licence and the calendar on my phone. The first confirmed that my birthday is actually in June, and the second confirmed that we are still in the month of May. 

Then I saw Michael’s message: “All the best on your 80th!”

That sent me back to my driver’s licence. 

There seem to be three possible explanations. 

One, Michael is ten years ahead of us. Two, I am ten years behind. Or three, Michael wisely decided to wish me a happy 80th on the odd chance that he might forget to wish me a happy 80th in ten years. 

And then I realized the truth: this is all Dakota’s little joke, just because I’m always saying “Happy Thanksgiving!” and “Happy Birthday!” to her. Today is somebody’s birthday, isn’t it? So, Happy Birthday! 

But now she has taken it another step: actually handing out birthday cards to people, randomly. And I was the obvious first choice.

Good one, Dakota!

And . . . Happy Birthday to you all! 

(Including Queen Victoria!)

From one of my Grade 6 students:

I’m not complaining, I’m just showing my gratitude in an unusual way.

The news about entire retail shops being copied by clever Chinese entrepreneurs leads to the obvious question: where do we go from here? Clearly, fake stores are an intermediary step in the development toward a much more ambitious project: fake countries.

Think about it: millions of Chinese people would love to visit France, for example, but it’s too far away and too expensive. Solution? Fake France! Berets, baguettes, red wine, accordions, and an entire fake Paris complete with Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, and Jim Morrison’s fake grave (Jim himself, of course, is head of a highly successful import/export joint venture headquartered in Shanghai). Given the trends of the world economy,  it will soon be cost-effective to populate Fake France with real French people, drawn to the opportunity by attractive wages and the possibility of shopping in Fake Apple Stores on their days off. I’m sure there’s a spot somewhere in the south of China with an appropriate climate that’s already been staked out by developers.

But why stop there? How about . . . Fake Egypt! Just what Xinjiang Province’s barren sands need. Other countries, of course, could be more challenging. Fake Norway, for example: we can do snow, we can do fjords, but the crystal blue water in those fjords? Hmmm.

Lest you think all of this is a bad thing, think again. The Chinese genius for making exquisitely accurate copies—an art that goes back for centuries, by the way, prompted by imperial demands for copies of ancient art works that had been lost—may end up saving all of us. We continue raping, pillaging, plundering, and polluting the planet with little thought for the consequences. The Chinese, I’m convinced, are thinking ahead for us. When the planet has finally been rendered completely uninhabitable, where will we go?

Of course: Fake Earth!