"If your friend is struck by lightning and he seems to be all right, but his hair is smoking, is it O.K. to laugh?"

From "The Mysteries of Humor" by Jack Handey in The New Yorker.

I'm quoting my favorite from this set of questions, but I must confess that there is one that made me laugh much more than any of the others, and it's a different one. But on the theory that you can get in there without a subscription (or you have a subscription), I'll leave it to you to explore the mysteries of humor and I don't want to step on your experience by clonking you over the head with my idiosyncrasy.

I'm delighted when I have an existing tag for something very specific that comes up in a new post.

In the case of that last post, it was: worms.

I have 31 posts with the tag "worms." Isn't that wonderful — the wonderful world of blog worms? For example, back in July 2013, I was (for some reason) interested in the question whether the word "hello" appears in the Bible, and I found:

Job 17:14 Then I could greet the grave as my father and say to the worms, “Hello, mother and sisters!”

There was the line from the "Ode to Joy": "even to the worm ecstasy is given."

And "Paragordius obamai — a parasitic worm" (named to honor Obama).

And the Jack Handey deep thought: "The other day I got out my can opener and was opening a can of worms when I thought, 'What am I doing?!'"

There was my favorite page from my old "Amsterdam Notebooks," page 21, with a worm in the apple:


(Enlarge.)

There was that time back in 2005 when I was blogging and: "As I write this, the little kid across the street is screaming: 'A worm! A worm! A worm! Oh! Ah! A worm! A worm! A worm! Oh! Ah!'"

And that's me now, when something so specifically taggable comes up:  A worm! A worm! A worm! Oh! Ah! A worm! A worm! A worm! Oh! Ah! 

Or... there are so many exquisite little tags... I'm always exclaiming...  

Nostrils/nipples/nuance/nuns/neckties! Nostrils/nipples/nuance/nuns/neckties! Oh! Ah! Nothing/nostrils/nipples/nuance/nuns/neckties! Nostrils/nipples/nuance/nunsneckties! Nostrils/nipples/nuance/nuns/neckties! Oh! Ah!

"Brevity is a big factor for me in a stand-alone joke. To get a laugh with the fewest number of words possible."

"Which is why 'Take my wife, please' is such a great joke. The closest I’ve ever come is probably 'The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.'"

Did you know there was a serious author who was being ridiculed in Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts"?

Yes. His name was Hugh Prather, and he published a book called "Notes to Myself" in 1970. It included things like:

¶“Another day to listen and love and walk and glory. I am here for another day. I think of those who aren’t.”

¶“My prayer is: I will be what I will be, I will do what I will do.”

¶“When I get to where I can enjoy just lying on the rug picking up lint balls, I will no longer be too ambitious.”

Later, he wrote “I Touch the Earth, the Earth Touches Me” and “Wipe Your Face, You Just Swallowed My Soul.” He "founded and ran a religion, the Dispensable Church."  Also, the Moosewood Restaurant (in Ithaca) was named after his dog, Moosewood.

He's dead now, at age 72.

And I love "Deep Thoughts"....

You might think that the favorite plant of the porcupine is the cactus, but it's thinking like that that has almost ruined this country.

That conversation about a whole lot of blood.

Another one of Jack Handey's "Deeper Thoughts," read aloud...

You know what's probably a good thing to hang on your porch in the summertime, to keep mosquitoes away from you and your guests? Just a big bagful of blood.

... stirs up memories of a question in another book, "Innumeracy," by John Allen Paulos: What would be the size of a cube containing all the human blood in the world?

I tried to answer, using a reasonable method, thinking about the amount of blood in one person times the number of people in the world, divided by the number of gallons I believed to be in a swimming pool, times what I guessed to be the length of that swimming pool reimagined as a cube. I came up with 40 miles, which was way off, caused in part by getting the first number wrong. (It's 4 quarts, not 4 gallons... obvious now.) The right answer is 870 feet. Amazingly small, yet still insanely huge. Don't worry. If all the blood were in a cube, there would be no human beings to get upset by looking at it.

That reminded me of something I read today about the movie "The Shining":

Stanley Kubrick, known for his compulsiveness and numerous retakes, got the difficult shot of blood pouring from the elevators in only three takes. This would be remarkable if it weren't for the fact that the shot took nine days to set up; every time the doors opened and the blood poured out, Kubrick would say, "It doesn't look like blood." They had tried shooting that scene for an entire year.

Yeah, well, check out this feminist performance art -- NSFW -- "Red Tide."

Not Christmasy enough for you? Eh... it's red.

"When this girl at the museum asked me whom I liked better, Monet or Manet, I said, 'I like mayonnaise.'"

"She just stared at me, so I said it again, louder. Then she left. I guess she went to try to find some mayonnaise for me."

-- Jack Handey. "Deepest Thoughts."

Resisting...

I am resisting getting drawn into intrablogospherical squabbles. I hope you appreciate it!

After that long, sole post this morning, I feel I would be doing my regular readers a disservice if I posted what I just composed in my head, which is a response to a couple of very conspicuous taunts that are out there today.

But you taunters -- you know who you are! -- be advised: I could taunt you right back so hard it wouldn't even be funny.

But I want to be funny. I need something frothy and amusing to talk about. Oh, here's a quote. Let's just call it my "Quote of the Day.".. if you know what I mean.... Andrew???.... Anyway, no intrablogospherical squabbling! Really! I mean it. I don't want squabbling! I want amusement! Here's the quote:

The other day I got out my can opener and was opening a can of worms when I thought, "What am I doing?!" --- Jack Handey, "Deepest Thoughts."

Audible Althouse #70.

It's a new Audible Althouse. With porcupines, cactuses, sharpened daggers, and poison pens.

Books referred to:

Jack Handey, "Lost Deep Thoughts: Don't Fight the Deepness"

D. H. Lawrence, "Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays"

Jill Krementz, "The Writer's Desk"

Martin Amis, "Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million"

And that plant I mentioned: hens-and-chickens.

Stream it right through your computer here. But all acutely incisive sharp people subscribe on iTunes:

"You might think that the favorite plant of the porcupine is the cactus..."

"But it's thinking like that that has almost ruined this country."

— Jack Handey, "The Lost Deep Thoughts: Don't Fight the Deepness."

"As they leave, in an aside to Eve, Adam imitates the expression on God’s face."

I love Jack Handey's "Ideas for Paintings." I heard this on the radio when I was out somewhere in the middle of my long drive. I remembered it tonight as I was reading this humor test -- reading it aloud for someone who was trying to answer the questions and when I got to question 10 -- "Which of the following 'Deep Thoughts' by Jack Handey is the funniest to you?" -- it took me about 10 tries before I could get the second "Deep Thought" out without breaking down into hysteria. And the second one wasn't even the funniest one. I haven't laughed that hard in years.

(Thanks to Diane Meyer for the link to the test.)