Last week, Mo asked you to share good news. It was a good strategy - the news out of the Middle East is increasingly fallow soil for anyone looking to score some quick, topical laughs. Massive destruction, even impending massive destruction, just doesn’t get the big laughs. That’s why nobody watches ABC’s “America’s Funniest Extinctions,” and also why “1001 Genocide Jokes” is consistently at the bottom of Amazon’s sales rankings.
It’ll pass. Twenty years from now there will be some great comedy about World War III. It will possibly be by and for hideously mutated giant superintelligent roaches, but it’s bound to be very funny stuff. Comedy equals tragedy plus time, after all, which is why the 1866 production of “Mr. Billingsley’s Antietam Follies” was such a massive failure.
So the fact that, for instance “Hezbollah” sounds like it ought to be the name of an attractive but out-of-your-league French girl (”Would Mademoiselle Hezbollah desire her usual table? Eet is ready!”) - that observation will have to wait.
And it’s possible that calamity will be avoided. Someone might blink, or step back. Someone might step up and agree to some sort of peace. Or if we stall everyone long enough, global warming will submerge the whole region and the only disputes surrounding the holy land will be the fishing rights.
Who knows? We just might get lucky.





25 comments
Edith, Mother of all Felbers
July 24, 2006 at 1:03 pm
1>>It will possibly be by and for hideously mutated giant superintelligent roaches>.
Well, they won’t think they’re hideously ugly. They’ll think the weird things that had internal sketetons that they keep coming across when they dig to form new hives were hideously ugly. And they’ll think we became extinct because a huge meteor hit the earth. And they’ll make animated movies about us, portraying us as sort of hideous but cute things that have external skeletons and who rescue a baby giant superintelligent roach from a raging river and return it to its home, before they walk off into extinction. It will be a huge hit.
Always look on the bright side.
nato
July 24, 2006 at 1:22 pm
2Can I put in dibs for some fishing rights, now? I’d rather avoid the rush, and since this is the most likely of the calamity-avoiding scenarios . . .
DouglasG
July 24, 2006 at 1:47 pm
3I heard that Mademoiselle Hezbollah is a Lezbollah? (Not that there is anything wrong with that…)
siobhan
July 24, 2006 at 2:11 pm
4Years ago, some sage person made this observation: The French are funny, sex is funny and comedies are funny - yet there is no such thing as a funny French sex comedy. Likewise: Americans are funny, president are funny, and jokes are funny - but no one is laughing after 5-1/2 years of having an American president who’s a complete joke.
My macaw should be good for another 50-60 years. Maybe she’ll be around to laugh about it.
dee
July 24, 2006 at 3:28 pm
5Would Mademoiselle Hezbollah desire her usual table? Eet is ready!”
“Ah, ma petite Katyusha, you are looking especially charmante tonight!”
Sharon
July 24, 2006 at 3:35 pm
6On the bright side, maybe we’ll run out of affordable oil and gas before it’s too late to reverse the human impact on global warming.
nato
July 24, 2006 at 3:56 pm
7So, is there a particular list of words that we should avoid if we don’t want to be trapped by Fanny and her spam filter? I’m trying to figure out how a comment with no links, no product names and no reference to sexual enhancement products and services triggered that damned rat. The most likely candidates so far: dibs, fishing and calamity.
nato
July 24, 2006 at 4:01 pm
8Cool, it must’ve been one of my three words (or the rat really doesn’t like me). Okay, let’s see if we can get past the comments filter with just two of the words. Then test by throwing the dropped word back in. I like this moderation game! The candidates (minus one) again: dibs, fishing.
nato
July 24, 2006 at 4:03 pm
9Testing, testing. Dang, Fanny REALLY hates me. Okay, it looks like calamity is a good, dog-fearing apathy word. How about dibs? Or was it the other one that caught the spam filter?
nato
July 24, 2006 at 4:09 pm
10Yes, my last comment made no sense without the context of the previous comments currently sitting in the moderation queue. “What’s different about this than any other comment you’ve ever submitted?” you ask? Well, this one is intentionally pointless. I was trying to figure out what word or combination of words triggered Fanny the attack rat in my original comment on this post. And it looks like I’ve figured it out (unless Fanny really does hate me and is just messing with me).
Dale
July 24, 2006 at 6:27 pm
11Al Qaeda? I hardly know her!
Mojo
July 24, 2006 at 6:32 pm
12Even if the giant cockroaches do inherit the earth, we’ve still got a chance. It’s entirely possible (in the imagination of a really bad writer) that they’ll clone us back into existence from the corpsecycle of Walt Disney in order to create a really ironic theme park. Then we simply break free with the help of the fat, craven cockroach and despite the warnings of the whiny, nerdy cockroach and crush them all. Who’ll have the last apocalyptic laugh then?!
David
July 24, 2006 at 8:25 pm
13Ah, the lives and times of archy and mehitabel. Don Marquis should be alive today and writing the sequel: archy and mehitabel and the cedars of lebanon, or how to stop worrying and learn to love carnage and suicidal geopolitical stupidity.
Nato,
One episode is entitled “freddy the rat perishes.” Could be updated to “fanny the roborat perishes.”
Katie
July 24, 2006 at 9:50 pm
14david
great post except you used punctuation marks
katie
Murray
July 25, 2006 at 3:03 am
15The 1920 World Flue Comedy Tourgasm never really filled the theaters the way they had hoped either. It’s annoying when your audience is already dead before you get there.
Mary
July 25, 2006 at 9:39 am
16Maybe WWIII will accomplish what the most recent pandemics haven’t - give the earth a ‘flea’ bath to control it’s human infestation.
A fanatic walks into a Zenbollah bar and says, “Make me one with everything!” (Henny Youngroach)
Harold
July 25, 2006 at 10:44 am
17“What’s the deal with humans and their kids? I mean, kid? ‘Cause usually they had ‘em just one at a time! ONE! I mean, come on!”
- Jerry Seinroach
“Humans, I tell ya, no respect. No respect! My great-great-grandfather went to a human and tried to explain to him what they were doing wrong, how they could end their wars, how they could avoid extinction, all that stuff. And what happened? The human stepped on him! No respect!” - Roachey Dangerroach
siobhan
July 25, 2006 at 10:55 am
18Robber: Your money or your planet!
Jack Benroach: I’m thinking, I’m thinking…
jpj
July 25, 2006 at 11:28 am
19Adam, maybe you were thinking of Miss Mam’selle Hepzibah, the attractive French skunk in Pogo. She has her own Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Mam%27selle_Hepzibah
Just another piece of evidence the Right can use to prove that Libruls are rooting against the US in the GWOT! Israel was attacked by a FRENCH skunk created by Walt Kelly, a LIBRUL!
Murray
July 25, 2006 at 12:45 pm
20Yup, “we have met the enemy and he is us.” - Pogo
David
July 25, 2006 at 5:00 pm
21katie
yeah the damned comma snuck in after lebanon
its that english teacher reflex
archy can you forgive that slipup
the lives and times of archy and mehitabel was one of those books my mother kept scattered around the house for her young uns to pick up and read when the urge struck
tess
July 25, 2006 at 6:52 pm
22I don’t imagine this becoming comedy in years to come: more like a “Nature” documentary where the hyperintelligent roaches discuss the remains they keep finding in a roach-version of George Page’s soothing voice, and discussing the various and remarkable things they keep finding . . . like copies of Godless, or The DaVinci Code. That is our legacy to the future of this planet — toilet literature.
Dale
July 25, 2006 at 7:41 pm
23There is a certain genre of comedy that takes a slightly offbeat twist on a real event or phenomenon and then proceeds to make it more and more absurd, each joke topping the next in its sheer inversion of everything that makes sense. I see “2000-2008: The Comedy” in this vein:
A: I’ve got it. Let’s pretend the president finally decides to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein.
B: Nice. Hey, let’s make that president the son of the guy who invaded Iraq and didn’t depose Saddam Hussein.
A: Yeah, yeah, but let’s make him make up the reason to invade, like saying that he knew there were weapons of mass destruction there.
B: Okay, I’ve got it. Let’s say they get there and find out that there were no weapons of mass destruction and…
A: I get it, I get it…and that gets him re-elected!
B: What the hell, let’s make the war be a total failure too.
A: We could totally have quotes of people saying…I don’t know…that they felt safer under Saddam Hussein.
B: Hold on, who could the president have run against in the election? Who is the most decorated war hero in US politics you can think of…
A: John Kerry! John Kerry! And let’s have him lose because somehow people think he’s “soft” and the guy who wins….
B: Who should of course have dodged the draft…
A: is a “war” president…
B: and a “values” president…
A: even though he was an ex-alcoholic drug addict…
B: no, no we should have a current scandal too, what’s the most horribly immoral thing you can think of…
A: Ummm, an affair?
B: No, no, we’ve done that. Torture! Dogs! Orange jumpsuits! Secret plane flights! Wiretaps of Americans! All at the same time!
A (doubling over with laughter, gradually regaining composure): okay, okay, I think we’ve had one too many…Nobody will buy that… Say, is that a cockroach over there?
SeattleDan
July 25, 2006 at 11:22 pm
24tess, not unlike Walter Miller’s classic novel, “Canticle for Leibowitz”. Wherein a laundry list from the past constitutes scripture.
Adam Felber
July 26, 2006 at 2:28 pm
25jpj -
Nice. That’s exactly the skunk I was thinking of - I’m a longtime fan and collector.