Unremitting Relief

Time for a good Polak joke: The Pole has a dilemma when asked, "You have two prisoners in front of you, a Nazi and a Russian, and you get to shoot them both. Which would you kill first?" "The German, of course. Duty before pleasure." That joke is dated. Thank god. That era is over. Some of my favorite Poles would not think it a pleasure to shoot Russians in any case. But the age-old conflicts still stir about. Unresolved history stands in the way of moving forward. And not only between nations. One of my favorite things about myself is my sense of humor. Perverse, perhaps. Droll, wry. But unremitting. My old friend, Steve Elde, wrote tonight, "I laugh, therefore I am." It is the truth. It is the absofricckinglutely pligging truth. The first thing I read after I'd been attacked was humor. Calvin Trillin is my drug of choice. I reread everything he'd ever written and even the serious stuff I figured out a way to find it funny. Then it was the joke threads on the internet. And Calvin and Hobbes. And Dilbert: "Since when did ignorance become a point of view?" I still want an answer to that one.