Category Archives: funny things

What’s So Funny?

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If you ask me (which no one did), the funniest joke there is, is this one:

What did the Zen master say to the hotdog vendor?

“Make me one with everything.”

The second funniest is:

First Old Lady: My, it’s windy today.

Second Old Lady: No, it’s Thursday.

Third Old Lady: So am I. Let’s go have a cup of tea.

(I have a friend whose favorite joke is a filthy one about a guy in a clock shop. But I digress, and refuse to tell it here.)

What makes something funny? There are theories which sound scientific. One is that “a violation of expectations or incongruity between what is expected and what actually occurs” is the source of humor. I’m not sure if that applies to my favorite jokes, but I think it does to the filthy one. Another theory is that “humor can arise from a sense of superiority or relief that comes from perceiving oneself as better than others or from being relieved of a perceived threat.” That sounds like a load of dingo’s kidneys to me and doesn’t explain either of my favorite jokes. (I don’t think that I feel superior to the three old ladies. The older I get, the more sympathy I have for them. But I digress again.)

Anyway, I think that proposing theories of humor detracts from what is funny. What science can tell us is the effects of humor on human beings. Laughter releases endorphins, the body’s “feel good” chemicals, and decreases cortisol, a stress hormone. Rapid breathing while laughing increases oxygen intake and improves cardiovascular function. It “serves as a form of communication, signaling safety, playfulness, and bonding among individuals” and “can help regulate emotions by reducing stress and tension.” Also, laughter is associated with “improved cognitive function, including enhanced creativity and problem-solving skills,” which means that Weird Al must be a genius. (I mean, Weird Al is a genius, but this proves it.)

So, what’s funny?

For some reason, there’s a category of stock photos known as “Women laughing alone with salad.” I have no idea why single women find salad funny or why there are so many of these photos, but it’s a real thing. (I think the fact that it’s a real thing is funny. But I digress yet again.)

One of my favorite types of humor is puns. Many people consider them the lowest form of wit, but they crack me up. I’ve been known to indulge in them, sometimes in pun contests and sometimes in real life.

Once, over breakfast, a friend remarked that her eggs Benedict were slow in coming. I said, “Maybe the kitchen staff had to go out and steal a hubcap to serve them on.”

“I know I’m going to regret asking, but why?” she asked.

“Because there’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise.” She almost defenestrated me.

I also love improv comedy. I’m sorry that Whose Line Is It Anyway? isn’t around anymore. But at least some friends of mine have kept up the tradition with an improv group they call “Deep Fried Lemurs.” I’ve participated in it too, at least to the extent of providing setups for the “Scenes From a Hat” bit.

I also love literary humor. There are some great humor writers out there and some hysterical stories and books. For short stories and essays, I go for James Thurber and Erma Bombeck (both Ohio writers). And, if I may make recommendations for books (and I don’t see why I shouldn’t), Christopher Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, and Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy are among my favorites.

Two kinds of humor I don’t care much for are slapstick and revenge comedy. I just never got the appeal of the Three Stooges and hated The War of the Roses. I do like some forms of physical comedy, though, such as the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch from Monty Python And pretty much anything else Monty Python except the Mr. Creosote bit.

So, what are your favorite jokes and puns (filthy or not)? Do you have any theories of what makes something funny? Recommendations for sources of humor? I’d love to hear them. (I could use the laughs right now.) Perhaps I’ll include them in a future blog post.

Writing Sex and Fantasy

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A while back, I spent several years working on a mystery novel that went nowhere. Actually, it went to an appalling number of agents and publishers. It just didn’t stay there. And I wrote a short story that was a mashup of The Wizard of Oz and Star Trek.

But when it comes to fiction that I actually got paid for, my experience begins and ends with smut. Erotica. A dirty book. Whatever you want to call it. Now, I’m a big fan of freedom of speech and free expression and erotic literature, but there’s no getting around it—it was filthy. No redeeming social importance whatsoever, which used to be something people who wrote erotica aimed for. But I’m a ghostwriter and I write what the customer wants. So, I performed my writerly duty on the smut patrol and was compensated—not handsomely, but compensated. Then I went back to my steady diet of self-help books. But I lusted for something more…entertaining.

(We will not now discuss the research needed for the smut assignment or how I conducted it. If you want to, you can assume I drew on interviews with some of my less-inhibited friends. Let’s just say that I needed to include corroborative detail to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. And think of ways to describe body parts other than “throbbing purple-headed warrior” and “quivering love pudding.” But I digress. (Bonus points for recognizing the sources I used in this paragraph.))

Then recently, I almost wrote another non-smut novel, or at least the outline for one with the likelihood of writing the book if the outline was approved. The project was a piece of fiction, 100,000 words of what I guess you’d call “paranormal romantasy,” which apparently is a Thing now. I’ve been looking for a fiction assignment. There’s nothing wrong with self-help—it’s my proverbial bread and butter. But there’s also nothing wrong with adding a little jelly roll to the mix.

I was on the shortlist for the assignment. I didn’t get the gig. But I learned a lot from it, mostly about myself.

Realistically, I shouldn’t have considered taking the assignment, even if they had selected me for it. I’m already working on a long project that will keep me busy for months. I really couldn’t guarantee that I could do the world-building and plotting that the outline required. (There are other kinds of plotting I have more experience with, involving sinister, gleeful laughter. But I digress again.)

So, if I had moved from the shortlist to the one-list, I could easily have gotten in over my head and done a piss-poor job of it. I might have let my current project slide. I might have been sabotaging myself. It could have ended very badly.

But, oh, I wanted it. The opportunity came up over the long Thanksgiving weekend, so I had plenty of time to wait for the offer to come. I found myself prewriting (aka sitting around staring into space). I named the main character. I toyed with what her paranormal power might be. I speculated about what worlds of the multiverse she would travel to. I contemplated who her love interest might be.

It was mental effort wasted. Or not wasted, exactly. I proved to myself that I have the writerly chops to engage with a major fiction project and come up with ideas. I learned how much I want to branch out into fiction. I discovered that I can still get excited over a potential piece of writing. (Not that I don’t like helping selves, but I could use a little variety. It’s slightly disturbing how much I enjoyed ghostwriting a book on flesh-eating diseases. Yet another digression.)

Would I write smut again? Sure. I don’t have a philosophical objection to it. I might someday even look into a job as a phone sex operator. It’s a work-at-home position (sorry not sorry) with no actual (physical) customer contact. But, no. I don’t think I could keep myself from snorting and giggling.

Romance has a similar effect on me, but combine it with paranormal fantasy and I think I can handle it—as I hope someday to prove.

When You Have the Flu: Some Unsolicited Advice

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I keep revisiting this post — this time because I just tested positive for COVID, which is, after all, uber-flu. Anyway, I feel too crappy to write something new.

Say you’ve got a touch of the flu. Keep far away from me – you feel awful and I don’t want to feel awful too. I know you don’t want visitors, but here I am, and at least I’ve brought a gift: a few suggestions for entertaining things you can do while you suffer in peace and quiet, except for, you know, the coughing and sneezing and assorted other noises you’re making. Relative peace and quiet, if you know what I mean.

Drink tea. It really doesn’t matter what kind, since you can’t smell it anyway. Earl Grey will smell just like jasmine. Peppermint and English Breakfast, the same. And if you want to, you can use any variety as the base for my father’s restorative tonic, which consists of tea, bourbon, and horehound candy (tea optional), or boring old lemon and honey, if you insist, though my father would not approve.

Cuddle large, fuzzy cats. Do this even if you’re allergic to them. You’re already sneezing as much as humanly possible, so you have nothing to fear from dander. Bonus: A large, fluffy cat makes an excellent substitute for a heating pad or hot water bottle.

Read. Or pretend to. Actual reading may distract you from how miserable you are (unless you’re reading Les Miserables). Pretend-reading will encourage people to keep their voices low, plus it doesn’t matter if you fall asleep with the book elegantly displayed on your chest. (Make sure it has a classy dustjacket, even if the book inside is Fifty Shades of Gray, which I don’t recommend, unless it’s for pretend-reading. It can lead to barfing, which may be in your future anyway.)

Eat chicken soup. Tell everyone that you need it for the fluids and the electrolytes, which is true. Egg drop soup is an especially good variety – if you can’t convince someone in your household to make it and bring it to you, you can always convince the Chinese take-out down the street to do it. Nibble saltines daintily, or the little fried things that look like Chinese tortilla strips.

Hit the Nyquil. I don’t mean the non-drowsy kind – sleep through as much of the illness as possible. Warning: Do not mix Nyquil with Southern Comfort or the bourbon-horehound mixture (see above). You’ll barf and you may be doing that already. Also, don’t mix Nyquil with cough syrup, which can cause unintended psychedelic effects and more barfing.

Squash tissues. Let them blossom all around you in a protective ring that no one will want to cross. If you try the tissues with built-in lotion, don’t use them to wipe your glasses before trying to read (see above).

Call the doctor. Don’t go see the doctor. You’ve got a virus and there’s nothing she can give you for it. Just ask how long it is until you can get an appointment and rest assured that your ailment will be over before then. You may want to actually go if you start making a sucky (in both senses), moist kind of wheezing sound when you breathe. The advantage is it will keep people even farther away from you, but the downside is that you may have pneumonia, which is even less fun than flu.

Use Vick’s Vapo-Rub. You won’t be able to detect the scent because your nose is busy with something else (snot), but other people sure will, encouraging them to keep a respectful distance. If you don’t have Vapo-Rub, try Ben-Gay. Bonus: nice warm feeling on your chest. Note: If you use either Vapo-Rub or Ben-Gay, do not cuddle the large, fuzzy cats (see above), unless you want to look like Bigfoot. Just sing “Soft Kitty” instead, or insist that someone else sing it to you.

Whine. Punctuate with coughs and sneezes. Again, the goal is to get people to leave you alone. If this tactic isn’t working, move on to even more disgusting symptoms. Keep a bucket by your bed, just so people get the idea that you could use it at any moment.

P.S. I’ll give you one guess why I wrote this. If you don’t get the answer right, I’ll start whining. And coughing. And sneezing. And barfing. Just bring me some egg drop soup and leave quietly.

You wouldn’t want to catch what I’ve got.

Keep me in Nyquil!

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It’s a Bargain!

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It was the gorilla mask that did it. Sure, it was after Halloween and, sure, I’m sure he got it for a very good price. But I ask myself, as my husband obviously didn’t, Why do we need a gorilla mask?

The easy answer is, we don’t. We don’t go to Halloween parties and don’t even dress up to hand out Halloween candy. Dan has breathing problems and can’t wear a full face mask for more than a minute. I have no desire to wear a gorilla mask at all (or to hand out candy either, a chore I leave to Dan every year).

The thing is, Dan works at a big box store and is in proximity to lots of things that are on sale. And he can almost never resist. (He also has a problem resisting free things, like stuff that neighbors set out at the end of their driveways. I’ve trained him to pass them by. But he expects praise for doing so. But I digress.)

There are pet supplies (in addition to the absolutely necessary gushy food for Toby). We have three cat trees, one of which sees use as a side table facing the TV. Toby only uses one level of the big one and ignores the third. He also ignores the catnip mice (though not the catnip treats). And who wouldn’t ignore the dog toy shaped like a giant t-bone steak that Dan thought Toby might use as a pillow? (Toby. Toby did. Dan did buy a nice cat bed that Toby uses a lot, so he gets points for that.)

Some of his finds are more like presents. When a sweater or tunic in my size goes on sale, he’ll snap it up and bring it home like it’s some kind of hunting trophy. (I don’t think he ties it to the hood of his car, though.) They don’t always fit, of course, and he says he’ll take them back if they don’t, but he never does. I need a separate section in my closet for them.

He’s also fond of clearance china. He brings home large soup mugs with appropriate sayings on them, like “Official Cat Mom” or “Looney Tunes” or less appropriate ones like “Merry Christmoose.” He also likes platters and sandwich plates that don’t always go well with our china pattern. Sometimes they’re at least in the ballpark, or completely neutral white. (Yes, surprisingly, we do actually have a pattern—Pfaltzgraff Yorktowne. I chose the paint for our newly rebuilt kitchen—blue—to harmonize with it. This is something I never thought I’d ever do (have a pattern), though I never thought I’d ever get married either. Life is surprising. But I digress again.)

The bargain food tables are also irresistible. Not that he always knows what he’s getting. We’ve ended up with spices like togarashi and galangal (which I always thought were martial arts), plus pickled banana leaves. Our cooking repertoire runs to things like grilled chicken breasts and ground beef, seasoned with Mrs. Dash, garlic, and oregano. He also buys bargains that really aren’t. Olive tapenade in EVOO isn’t cheap, even at half price. We still have lots of odd culinary experiments just a-waiting for us to be brave or tipsy enough to try.

I can’t really complain, though. Last night he brought me Graeter’s black raspberry and chocolate chip ice cream, which was on sale for some unknown reason. It’s good to have someone watching out for me. I don’t even have to share (much) with him, since it’s not sugar-free. (My theory is he’s trying to keep me fat so other men don’t hit on me. My last digression for this week. I swear.)

Lest you think this all goes one way, I buy weird stuff for Dan, too, though I’m pretty much limited to shopping on the internet. One of my recent finds was a Mr. Natural Keep on Truckin’ t-shirt. I’ve also gotten him a Funko Pop Jerry Garcia. (Can you tell what era he grew up in?) We hardly ever save these surprises for Christmas. Instead, we give ourselves a treat. This year, we’re getting matching tattoos—one gift that I hope isn’t a slight irregular!

Cat Songs

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My husband and I have some silly traditions, some of which I’ve mentioned in the blog. There was naked cooking with Julia Child impressions, for instance. And we make up little nonsense songs. Well, Dan makes up most of them, mostly about me. (My nickname, which no one else may use, is Bunny, so they often have titles like “When Bunny Comes Driving Home Again.” They’re silly, as mentioned, but infinitely better than the NSFW song an ex-boyfriend once wrote describing my physical charms. But I digress.)

But this post is about cat songs. Not songs the cats sing, of course — their repertoire is pretty limited. Not songs about cats either (“Year of the Cat,” “Cat Scratch Fever,” “Stray Cat Strut,” “Honky Cat,” “Nashville Cats”). No, these are songs that we’ve made up about cats we’ve owned over the years.

Shaker’s song was really more of a poem or a chant than a song. It went:

Shaker in the park

Shaker in the pool

Shaker for dessert

Shaker after school.

Shake, shake, Shaker puddin’

Puddin’, puddin’, Shaker puddin’.

(Shaker was a very dignified tuxedo cat. She didn’t approve.)

The song will make no sense unless you remember a product from the 60s and its jingle (indeed, it doesn’t really make any sense at all, whether you remember it or not). The product was called Shake-a-Pudding. It was a brown plastic cup with a lighter brown plastic lid. If you put milk in the cup and added powder, then shook vigorously, hoping the top didn’t come off, what you got was something that at least resembled pudding. An interactive dessert. At the time, we thought it was neat-o.

Toby also has a song based somewhat on a commercial. It goes like this:

His name was Toby.

He used a Flowbee.

Obviously, this requires some explanation. First of all, it’s sung to the tune of Bary Manilow’s “Copacabana.” So far, so good. The Flowbee mentioned in the second line was one of those products you used to see on after-midnight infomercials from companies like Popeil or Ronco. Exercise equipment. Beauty products. That sort of thing.

Technically, I suppose you could call the Flowbee a beauty product. It was an attachment that you put on the end of your vacuum cleaner hose. It would make your hair stand on end so you could lop an inch or two off the end. I think it was mostly used on children who were too young to know any better and was responsible for the infamous bowl cut. It’s described by the company (yes, you can still buy them) as a “Vacuum Haircut System.” Need I tell you that we’ve never used one on ourselves, much less on Toby?

Louise had a song of a sort, or at least one line of one:

Every little breeze seems to whisper: LOUISE!

Naturally, the name was shouted.

Julia, the most beautiful cat in the world (she told me so) had a whole verse. Obviously, it was ttto “Julia” by John Lennon, which was written about his mother. Our Julia’s version went:

Julia, pinky nose

Pretty fur, naughty lips.

So I sing my song of love for Julia.

(No, I don’t know how the “naughty lips” part got in there. Cats barely have lips at all, and I don’t know how they could be naughty. That’s just the way the song went. So sue me. But I digress again.)

Dushenka had a tune that should be familiar to TV cartoon aficionados:

Shenka-Shenka-Doo

Where are you?

On your little kitty adventure.

Laurel’s song was melancholy.

Pooska-wooska-pooska

Pooska-wooska-pie

Pooska-wooska-pooska

It’s Laurel’s lullaby.

I even sang it at her funeral.

Of course, all the songs are doggerel (catterel?) and make us seem like idiots. But the cats don’t care. They’re used to us talking like idiots. (Does Toby want his noms? Pet, pet, pet, the incredible pettable pet. Mama loves kitty. Does kitty love mama? Ribbit.)

The Latest Book Trends

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(I shall begin with a digression. Actually, I can’t guarantee that these are actually the very latest book trends. I buy a lot of my ebooks based on newsletters from FreeBooksy and BookBub because they promote heavily discounted books, not all of which are, technically speaking, new. But most of them cost under $3 and, at the rate I buy books, I need to economize somewhere.)

That said, I have noticed what seem to be trends.

The first one is not a book trend, per se. It’s a trend in book covers. What’s hot right now (apparently) is book covers that don’t show faces. I’ve written about how men on the covers of romance novels are cut off at the neck (so to speak) or lost in the shadow of a cowboy hat, but these books feature mostly women on the covers. And they don’t have faces either.

The most common reason for this is that the woman or women are walking away from the person viewing the cover. (Bonus points awarded if the woman is wearing a red coat.) I don’t know why this trend has come to the fore, but I suspect it’s because the cover designers don’t like to draw faces or don’t want to read enough of the book to learn what the main character looks like. Or maybe the women are supposed to be all mysterious. Or the reader is supposed to imagine the woman having their own face. Like I said, I don’t know.

(A while back I noticed that there was a book cover that featured a man in a top hat walking through the rain, in the night, beside a wrought iron fence. In fact, there were two different books that had exactly the same cover. Both were terribly atmospheric mysteries or dark Victorian tales. I guess someone made the cover for one and an unimaginative art director tried to get away with using it twice. I noticed, however. But I digress again.)

Now, as to the contents of the books, I’ve noticed trends as well. When it comes to cozy mysteries, cats are perennially favorite characters or even sleuths. And Rita Mae Brown credits her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown, as co-author of her mystery series. Cats are as popular as ever, or more so. Every self-respecting woman in a modern romance novel has a cat.

Many of those romances take place in libraries and bookstores. The trope of the young woman who moves to a small town to restart her life, taking up the job of librarian or bookstore owner and meeting the love of her life, after suitable conflicts and misunderstandings, is a common plot. (Librarians are no longer portrayed as lonely spinsters—mostly. There can be an older librarian as a mentor and confidante, at least regarding the book aspects of the story. But I digress more.)

You can easily see what’s coming. The romantic heroine has both a bookstore and a cat. And the covers of the books reflect that. In fact, sometimes the cat and the books are all that appear on the cover. The woman herself is missing in (romantic) action.

One other trend that I’ve noticed in romance novels (I don’t actually read them, you understand—I learn about them through reading blurbs) is that, although traditionally the stories involve reckless, passionate, consequence-free sex (the “zipless bleep” that Erica Jong made so popular in Fear of Flying), is that increasingly, pregnancy results from the sex. (No, I’m not saying that romance novels are getting more realistic. They still involve royalty and billionaires, after all. And men from Scotland apparently are popular now, as in the book titled Too Scot to Handle. But I digress still more.) The pregnancy adds an extra layer of potential complications, such as the impending parenthood needing to be kept a secret.

If you’ve noticed any other book trends, feel free to share ’em. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for a book that features a man in a red kilt walking through the door of a bookstore with a pregnant cat in the window.

Deep Sighs and Facepalms

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My husband and I have any number of catchphrases that we use frequently. Some of them come from movies (Have fun storming the castle! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!), TV shows (I can’t promise I’ll try, but I’ll try to try. [humming the Jeopardy music]), songs (On the road again. Timing brought me to you.), and even books (Time is an illusion—lunchtime, doubly so.).

But not all our catchphrases are quotations. One of our traditions is that when one of us heaves a deep sigh, the other will say, “The Serenity Prayer.” (Not the whole prayer, just the phrase.) This started many years ago.

You may already know that the Serenity Prayer (“God grant me the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.”), which has been attributed to St. Francis of Assisi but was actually written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, has been a mantra of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step groups. They recite it at their meetings and remind each other of it in order to ground themselves.

(Totally irrelevant digression. Once when I was a waitress, a customer complained that the coffee tasted like mud. I replied, “That’s because it was ground this morning, and then we added water.” They didn’t get it. Just looked at me funny.)

(Slightly more relevant digression. St. Francis also didn’t write the “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace” prayer, as is commonly believed. It was written in 1912, long after the saint left this earthly plane.)

Anyway, Dan once worked in a facility where he had to engage with many addicts and alcoholics (no, that’s not where we met). One of them noticed that every now and then, Dan would sigh dramatically. “Why do you do that?” they asked. Dan thought quickly and replied, “It’s the Serenity Prayer. The short form.” That just seemed so apt that it has entered our own metaphoric vocabulary. We regularly say things that elicit a deep sigh from each other, so we use it all the time. We use it a lot since both of us are frequently exasperating.

Another common response to exasperation is not a quote, but a gesture: the facepalm. You see it in memes in which someone tells a really bad joke and the other one (usually Captain Picard or Commander Riker) places a hand over his face. One assumes that they also heave a great sigh at the same time, but don’t recite the Serenity Prayer, though they could, I suppose.

It isn’t only a response to a particularly appalling joke, however. There’s an AI image of the Statue of Liberty facepalming that comes around in response to some dire piece of political stupidity. You also see memes that say something to the effect that the poster’s guardian angel looks like this: [insert image of an angel, saint, or God facepalming].

Personally, I sometimes think of Jesus facepalming. The apostles said so many dopey things. Not the “Increase our faith” stuff, but at times such as when Jesus was transfigured and appeared in a vision with Elijah and Moses. “Shouldn’t we go put up three tents for the three of you?” the apostles James, John, and Peter asked, despite the unlikelihood of the long-dead Old Testament figures needing tents to rest in. That was worth a facepalm.

Then there’s the time when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. As the account goes, Jesus delayed going to Lazarus’s house, although everyone knew he was dying. He then told the disciples that Lazarus was asleep. The apostles, puzzled, replied that if Lazarus was asleep, he would awaken. Just the time for a Jesus facepalm. The apostles just didn’t get it.

(If you think this last part of the post is blasphemous, so be it. You can take it as just another of my many digressions gone wrong. I know a sense of humor is a dangerous thing to display when it comes to religion. My sister even objects to jokes regarding someone arriving at the pearly gates and bantering with St. Peter. If you have any complaints to make, I’ll be over here, hiding under this rock.)

-Punk, -Core, and Portmanteaus

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So you thought punk was something that had its vogue years ago and has disappeared since. Or maybe you just hope it has.

It’s true that you don’t hear much about punk music anymore, but punk is alive and well in the fictional world. As long as it’s combined with something else, that is. There is, as far as I know, no strictly punk genre of stories and books. But there are cyberpunk, steampunk, and even stonepunk and solarpunk.

(All of these are “portmanteau words,” squished-together words or sounds that combine two meanings to create a new one. Think smog, webinar, bromance, brunch, or spork (which I still call a runcible spoon). Or, given the time of year, spooktacular. But I digress.)

These varieties of fiction share the sensibilities of punk such as rebellion, individualism, social inequality, and unconventional thinking. (Less screaming, feedback, and safety pin piercings, though. Thank goodness.)

Most people’s introduction to the hyphenpunk world was a 1984 (appropriately) science fiction novel, Neuromancer, by William Gibson. It presented a dark, gritty, dystopian society in which a killer AI invaded people’s brains. At the time it served as a warning, which apparently we have not heeded. (Since then, almost all -punk fiction has been sci-fi or fantasy. At least I haven’t seen any romancepunk or mysterypunk. Again, thank goodness. But I digress again.)

Cyberpunk didn’t start any fashion trends the way punk music did (using the word “fashion” loosely). But another iteration of -punk has: steampunk. Steampunk combines Victorian-era technology and problems with a sense of adventure and invention and owes a lot to the writing of Jules Verne. You’ll find air battles between pirates in blimps, steam-powered robots pieced together from spare parts, and plots involving gaslighting (the streetlamp kind, not the manipulative kind). It’s a celebration of innovation, progress, and developing technology combined with nostalgia for a time when science was exciting, not threatening, and possibilities for advancement seemed limitless. Steampunk, unlike cyberpunk, is uplifting.

Nowadays, you can see steampunk aficionados at clubs and sci-fi conventions dressing in Victorian garb, embellished with brass gears, gauges, and wheels. One trendy accessory is the top hat with welding goggles as a hatband. Women can dress as aviators (aviatrixes? aviatrices?) with, obviously, aviator goggles. One would assume that the expected reaction from those not in the know is goggling at them. (Sorry, not sorry.)

(And that stonepunk and solarpunk I mentioned? Those refer to fiction that immerses the reader in a Flintstones-like past and a back-to-the-land agrarian setting respectively, with technology based on those eras. But I digress still more.)

Now on to -core, another element used in portmanteau words related to the music scene, rather than fiction. As you might guess, the word “hardcore” is the origin of the term. But instead of referring to pornography, -core applies to an extreme expression of any kind of music. Skacore. Thrashcore. Even emocore, unlikely as that sounds. (Theoretically, you could have punkcore music, but I’ve never heard that term used. Nor punkpunk fiction, for that matter. There is a subset of country music called cowpunk, so I guess you could have cowpunkcore. But I digress even more.)

Historical note: Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass pioneered the creation of portmanteau words. (A portmanteau is “a case or bag to carry clothing in while traveling, especially a leather trunk or suitcase that opens into two halves.” So portmanteau, when it comes to words, is actually a metaphor.) Carroll’s epic poem “Jabberwocky” contained several. Slithy (as in “the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe”) is, he said, a combination of lithe and slimy; frumious, a mashing-together of furious and fuming; and chortle, a portmanteau of chuckle and snort that is still used today.

(Less historical note: Thanks to the book The Annotated Alice (annotations by Martin Gardner), which I highly recommend, I learned how to recite the first verse of “Jabberwocky” in French, a skill with no practical applications whatsoever. But I digress. My last digression for this post. I promise.)

(Just kidding. Bonus digression. Back to -punk and -core. There exists a series of books that combines steampunk, thriller, and fantasy. (A Study in Silks (The Baskerville Affair)). Steampunk-Holmes-demoncore, I guess you’d call it.)

Seven Reasons I Hate The Bloggess

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jennymeFirst, let me say that I read The Bloggess’s (Jenny Lawson’s) blog all the time. I have her books and I read them all the time too. But secretly I hate her, and here’s why.

1. She had a weirder childhood than I did. She lived in a small Texas town full of farm critters and wild animals, and weird characters, including her father the taxidermist, and has interesting poverty stories, like the one about the bread-sack shoes. I lived in a nondescript middle-class suburb with a stay-at-home mom and a dad that went to work every day smelling of Vitalis and Aqua Velva, rather than deer blood.

(This was also the problem I had trying to write country songs. You can’t get very far with “I was born an industrial engineering technician’s daughter/in the Central Baptist Hospital of Lexington, KY.” But I digress.)

2. She had more interesting pets, with more interesting names than I did. She had a raccoon named Rambo that wore Jams and a delinquent turkey named Jenkins. Later she had a dog named Barnaby Jones Pickles and now has one named Dorothy Barker. Her cats are named Ferris Mewler and Hunter S. Thomcat. We had dogs named Blackie and Bootsie and rabbits named Christina and Mittens. Our recent dogs have been Karma and Bridget, and the only eccentric cat names we’ve bestowed have been Django and Dushenka.

(Ordinarily, I don’t like cat names like Baryshnikat and F. Cat Fitzgerald. I think cat names should be something you wouldn’t be embarrassed to yell out the door if one of them wanders off, like Louise or Garcia. I suppose the Bloggess’s neighbors are by now used to anything. But I digress again.)

3. She has more interesting disorders than I do. I have bad knees and bipolar disorder type 2 (and a blog about it, www.bipolarme.blog). The Bloggess has generalized anxiety disorder, anti-phospholipid syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, depression, and, apparently, an obsession with chupacabras and vaginas. This gives her much more to write about. Although I do have two blogs. Two! In your face, Bloggess!

4. She’s less inhibited than I am. The Bloggess would have ended that last paragraph, “In your face, motherfucker!” I didn’t learn to cuss till I was in my 20s and no one I meet ever believes I swear until I do. Then they’re shocked. Also, I swear all the time, except in my blogs, where I’m afraid I’ll offend readers, all of whom I assume have tender sensibilities. The Bloggess knows her readers better than that.

5. She has way more readers than I do. And she’s published books and has another coming out. I have some followers, but I think most of them want to sell me books on how to publicize my blog. I should probably study a book like that, but I’d rather read ones about emerging viruses, cloud cities on Venus, and mostly true memoirs. On the other hand, I have the distinction of being the only writer ever to have articles in both Catechist and Black Belt magazines. So take that, moth . . . Bloggess!

6. She and her husband have more interesting arguments than my husband and I do. We never even talk quietly about whether Jesus was a zombie.

7. She has a stronger voice than I do. I mean her writing voice. I had no idea what her speaking voice was like until I saw a video clip of her on the web, talking about vaginas. But when I’m going to write in my blogs, I have to lay off reading her for a day or two, because her voice takes over my weak, tiny mind and it wants to sound like her. I wish I could write like that. Or at least as well as that.

But, like the Bloggess, I am a strangeling. And that’s a start.

The Future of Sex and Cleaning

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Forget about all the robot assembly and manufacturing machines that are out to steal our jobs. As far as I can see, the only occupations  chores activities that are likely to be overrun by robotic thieves are sex and cleaning.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite – cleaning. (I mean favorite in terms of one thing we’d like to have taken off our to-do lists  hands plates – including cleaning the plates.)

Of course everyone knows by now about the Roomba and its cousins, those vacuuming wizards and automatic cat transports. And although they’re not the Jetsons’ Rosie the Robot Maid, they’re fine. As far as they go. Which supposedly is around corners and table legs, over shag carpets and pet stains, and through any detritus (other than Legos, which have overcome every attempt to remove them from floors so that they don’t attack unwary feet. But I digress.).

But do you have any idea what other household chores have been usurped by mechanical minions?

A quick tour around the Internet reveals the possibilities. As of this writing, there are, in addition to mechanized, self-propelled vacuums, robotic:

window-washers

barbecue grill-cleaners

gutter-cleaners

pool-cleaners

dustpans (I can’t make this stuff up)

baby-rockers

plant- and lawn-waterers

and lawnmowers. (At $2100 per, a bit pricey compared to the kid down the street or your own reluctant teenagers. But I digress again.)

It would be nice if there were one robot that would satisfy all our needs  do all that, but unfortunately, every chore needs its own robot. So we humans still have to multitask, even though our machines don’t.

But, speaking of multi-tasking, there is the RealDoll (Abyss Creations), apparently the be-all and end-all  epitome (for now) of sex dolls. They’re easy, but  not cheap. And they’re marketed to men. (Do I need to say that? The sexbots-for-women industry is tiny  minuscule  nearly invisible  not yet growing  unimpressive.) Starting at about what you’d pay for a robotic lawnmower, but rising rapidly  at increasing price points or more, you can have a “plastic pal who’s fun to be with.” (Apologies to Douglas Adams. Couldn’t resist.)

Make no mistake, for that price you’re getting more than your standard blow-up doll. Or blow-up sheep (which I’ve actually seen). More than “just silicone orifices,” according to one writer, the sexbots are jointed, with synthetic skin, and customizations tailored to the customer’s preferences  desires specifications as far as hair color, skin tone, eyes, clothing, booty jiggliness, and genitalia go.

(That customizable genitalia feature has me perplexed. According to the specs, that can mean “removable, exchangeable, flaccid, or hard.” I don’t quite get why someone would want a sexbot with flaccid genitalia. And if you know, don’t tell me. Removable kind of gives me the creeps too. But I digress yet again.)

For those of you not in touch with  an aficionado of  deeply into conversant with the world of artificial intelligence, any number of quandaries are brought into being by the creation of sexbots. You (well, not you) pay for them, so are they prostitutes? What happens when a company decides to make a robo-sex-sheep (and you know they will)? Will a sexbot that can fulfill antisocial desires make it more or less likely that users will act out criminal lusts IRL (as the saying goes)?

Sexbot visionaries have lots of plans for the future: camera eyes for facial recognition, multiple downloadable personalities, etc. The goal is to have either a sexbot that can pass the Turing Test (being indistinguishable from a human being in conversation, the gold standard of AI) or one that you can fall in love with.

Long before then, however, we’re going to need a sexbot-cleaning cleaning robot. ‘Cause otherwise, ew.