The last three weeks have provided much inspiration for blog subjects.  The question of whether President Trump should be impeached because he incited the mob that invaded the Capitol is one worthy subject (he should be) but covered by many commentators.

For those of you who are appreciative of Twitter suspending Trump’s account, you may want to rethink your position if the social media account of Alexei Navalny is suspended.  Navalny, who just survived a Putin poisoning, uses social media which is the only way he can effectively speak to fellow Russian dissidents.

Finally, who thought it was a good idea to turn Washington D.C. into a war zone for the Biden inauguration just because a number of wingnuts were making threatening comments on the Internet, none of which came to be even remotely true.  There will be those who say that the reason they did not become true was because of the show of force.  In my view, 5% of the show of force would have accomplished the same thing and everything else was overkill.

While all of the above would have been fit subjects, one reader told me it was time for a “light” subject which I took to mean something silly that did not offend anyone (I am waiting for a reader to now say “if you are not going to write about anything important, why should I read it?”)

The pandemic has given us a good subject which are the “jokes” which have been shared as we are all sheltering in place and living on our computers.  Every day, for the last nine months or so, I have received jokes, clever images and the like from friends and acquaintances.  Most are mildly entertaining but some deserve more attention.

For example, as President Trump left the White House, I received the following one which was not great but faintly amusing.

The joke received at Thanksgiving was memorable. 

A man goes to a pet shop and buys a talking parrot. He takes the parrot home and tries to teach the parrot how to say a few things, but instead, the parrot just swears at him. After a few hours of trying to teach the bird, the man finally says, “If you don’t stop swearing, I’m going to put you in the freezer as punishment.” The parrot continues, so finally the man puts the bird in the freezer. About an hour later, the parrot asks the man to please open the door. As the man takes the shivering bird out of the freezer, it says, “I promise to never swear again. Just tell me what that turkey did!”

At Christmas there was Edna.

There was a man who worked for the Post Office whose job was to process all the mail that had illegible addresses.

One day, a letter came addressed in a shaky handwriting to God with no actual address.

He thought he should open it to see what it was about.

The letter read:

Dear God,

I am an 83 year old widow, living on a very small pension.

Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had $100 in it, which was all the money I had until my next pension payment.

Next Sunday is Christmas, and I had invited two of my friends over for dinner.

Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with, have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope…

Can you please help me?

Sincerely, Edna

The postal worker was touched.

He showed the letter to all the other workers. Each one dug into his or her wallet and came up with a few dollars.

By the time he made the rounds, he had collected $96, which they put into an envelope and sent to the woman.

Christmas came and went.

A few days later, another letter came from the same old lady to God.

All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened.

It read:

Dear God,

How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me?

Because of your gift of love, I was able to fix a glorious dinner for my friends.

We had a very nice day and I told my friends of your wonderful gift.

By the way, there was $4 missing.

I think it might have been those bastards at the post office.

Sincerely, Edna

However, by far the one of the funniest (and surely the longest) jokes was the following:

One day a man decided to retire.

He booked himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeded to have the time of his life, that is, until the ship sank.

He soon found himself on an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing, only bananas and coconuts.

After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to the shore.

In disbelief, he asks, “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”

She replies, “I rowed over from the other side of the island where I landed when my cruise ship sank.”

“Amazing,” he notes. “You were really lucky to have a row boat wash up with you.”

“Oh, this thing?” explains the woman. ”I made the boat out of some raw material I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm tree branches, and the sides and stern came from an Eucalyptus tree.”

“But, where did you get the tools?”

“Oh, that was no problem,” replied the woman. ” On the south side of the island, a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock is exposed I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into ductile iron and I used that to make tools and used the tools to make the hardware.”

The guy is stunned.

“Let’s row over to my place,” she says “and I’ll give you a tour.” So, after a short time of rowing, she soon docks the boat at a small wharf. As the man looks to shore, he nearly falls off the boat.

Before him is a long stone walk leading to a cabin and tree house.

While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man can only stare ahead, dumb struck.

As they walk into the house, she says casually, “It’s not much, but I call it home. Please sit down.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“No! No thank you,” the man blurts out, still dazed. “I can’t take another drop of coconut juice.”

“Oh, it’s not coconut juice,” winks the woman. “I have a still. How would you like a Tropical Spritz?”

Trying to hide his continued amazement, the man accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk. After they exchange their individual survival stories, the woman announces,

“I’m going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There’s a razor in the bathroom cabinet upstairs.

No longer questioning anything, the man goes upstairs into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet is a razor made from a piece of tortoise bone. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge are fastened on to its end inside a swivel mechanism.

“This woman is amazing,” he muses. “What’s next?”

When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but some small flowers on tiny vines, each strategically positioned, she smelled faintly of gardenias. She then beckons for him to sit down next to her.

“Tell me,” she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, “We’ve both been out here for many months. You must have been lonely. When was the last time you played around? She stares into his eyes.

He can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You mean…” he swallows excitedly as tears start to form in his eyes,

“You’ve built a Golf Course?

One just received proves the Shakespearian line that “brevity is the soul of wit.”

There was a man and woman living separately in a retirement community who became friends as they both had dogs which they would walk every day. Most of the time, they would sit on the bench and talk while the dogs played. One day the man asked the woman what she thought about moving in together. He said they both would be paying half of their current expenses. It turned out that both of them were financially secure and their children were grown and well taken care of. She then asked the man: “What about sex”; he replied: “Infrequently”; she thought for a minute and then said: “Is that one word or two?”

Clearly corny jokes still abound such as “A penguin walks into a bar.”

Bartender:  “My goodness, I now think I’ve seen everything:  A penguin walking into my bar.  What can I do for you?”

Penguin:  “Thank you for that welcome.  I am looking for my brother.” 

Bartender:  “Happy to help.  What does he look like?”

And in the time you have taken to read this, there is a fair chance that another one has landed in your inbox.

P.S. In the early days of television one of the most popular shows was “I Love Lucy” featuring the celebrated comedian Lucille Ball and her TV (and real life) husband Desi Arnaz who played a Cuban American band leader. In almost every episode Desi would become exasperated with Lucy’s antics and say, in fractured English, “Luceee, you has a lot of ‘ess plane ing’ to do.”

Listen to this video and will someone please “ess plane” to me how this is possible.