YOU CAN LAUGH YOUR WAY TO HEAVEN IF YOU LIKE

One of the great problems with Utopians, Indefatigable Idealists, Bolsheviks of all description, Professional Feminists, Professional African-Americans (not meaning those with jobs but rather those for whom being Black amounts to full-time work), University Students Who Are Going To Save The World, Professional Native Americans, Professional Gays, Professional Old People, Professional Fat People, and all members of the Political Correct Army is this:
THEY HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOR
Or hadn’t you noticed?
(White Anglo Saxon Protestant joke: Q. How does a WASP propose marriage?
A. How would you like to be buried with my people?)
I thank my lucky stars that I no longer live in the United States (free about 11 years) and therefore no longer have to deal with all the bullshit. It’s enough just to read about it.. So I can peruse the internet and learn about the latest drive-by’s, the most recent ‘stand your ground’ executions, and all the carnage that mass murderers inflict at random, and feel safe as I sit on my balcony in the village of Bliznatsi with my trusty dogs at my side, listening to my lovely Russian wife play the piano downstairs, sipping my Zagorka beer and watching as the sun slowly sets over the nearby ‘wine dark’ sea, the green mountains (montagne verde) directly ahead of me, and the golden foot paths that crisscross the valley below.
Sounds like Paradise?
It is.
The really nice thing is that there is nobody here that I have to fight, nobody to be angry at, to offend or be offended by. Russians and Bulgarians and Englishmen and Germans and Ukrainians, etc., all live or visit here (the foreigners mostly in the summer) because of the climate and the relatively cheap prices. Young Bulgarian guys act just as macho and seem just as habitually pissed off as young testosterone-monkeys everywhere, but it’s small scale and, generally speaking, Bulgarians don’t give a fuck. They live without wealth but, as far as I can see, utterly without real poverty or misery. A guy can stand outside a cafe’ and drink his beer, everybody smokes, there is no racial tension (though it must be said the the local gypsies receive a very bad press — but for me, they are no trouble at all, and maybe will be the next group I try to join), and men and women seem to connect and couple without a lot of grief. If people here want to see what a shit-hole the world really is, they can turn on their TV. A lot of them don’t bother.

I am not trying to pretend all is idyllic here. If I told you it was, you wouldn’t believe me anyway, and you would be right. But it is a world without trigger-happy fury, knee-jerk rage, constantly imagined disrespect and a sense of having been offended, or compulsive need to RETALIATE (in advance).
As such, people here seem to enjoy life. Imagine that: take the words I just wrote and pretend they are sweet berries. Put them in your mouth and slosh them around, and reflect. I said that the people here ENJOY LIFE. Moreover, without coming across like a bunch of drooling idiots, they are quick with a smile and a chuckle. It puts you at your ease and doesn’t constitute a subtle shakedown or the construction of a future trap.
I cannot over-estimate the positive power of being able to laugh at life. Not only is it fun to laugh, it is also therapeutic. I know that I could never be a ‘life-partner’ — or probably even a close friend — — with someone who lacked a sense of humor. For one thing, it is an almost sure sign of high intelligence (screw college degrees, I dare you to identify ONE person you know, regardless of how uneducated, who not only possesses wit but who can verbalize it as well — who is not notably intelligent. And the reason is simple: only very intelligent people can make the apt connections between ‘reality’ and absurdity that result in humor.) Moreover, it is the supreme way — when real justice is not forthcoming, as it usually isn’t — of dealing with life’s darker sides: its countless minor headaches and occasional heart-ripping tragedies. If you really have to, you can laugh your way through life. But not if the boss is standing there, of course !
(WASP joke): Q. Why don’t WASPS have orgies?
A: They’d have too many thank you notes to write.)
Therefore, I would argue every time that laughter presents a problem only for those who take themselves too seriously — those who always insist on being doctrinaire or ‘structured’ (in the corporate way), or soaked through and through with the catechism of whatever inflexible religion they have been sodomized into accepting. (I mean this ‘figuratively’ of course, with the possible exception of certain unfortunate Catholic boys). I also speak of the bosses who have you strapped onto a time clock and cannot bear the idea that you are laughing and smiling and giggling and snickering while you are supposed to be MOPPING THAT FLOOR, or the preachers who are whooping and hollering and meanwhile trying to sell you a Hell-full of SIN for you to feel guilty about and.. “What’s that reprobate, you’re LAUGHING ?!! Wipe that damned smile off your face. You’re not laughing your way into OUR heaven, you fornicating Devil-worshipper!!

If, as I was, you are raised as a Protestant. if, as I am, you are white, and if your background is Anglo-Saxon, as mine remains, then you had better straighten up fast and get serious about life, otherwise all the ‘Yessir-ing” and “Yes Ma’am-ing” Eagle Scouts will leave you behind. (“Then you’ll see that we weren’t joking, you INFIDEL!”) In America it has never been enough just to DO the job; it is vital that you be SEEN doing the job, and in order for that to happen it is very important that you don’t walk around with a shit-eating grin on your face. Because if you are having fun, you definitely must not be taking your work seriously.
Work is not supposed to be fun. LIFE is not supposed to be fun. Not if you are talking about serious stuff like God and Country.
Or race. Or gender. Or sexual orientation. You see where this is going?
(WASP Joke): Q. What is a WASP menage-a-trois?
A. Two headaches and a hard-on.
The jokes I have printed above (there will be more, if you didn’t like the ones you’ve seen) are designed to make light of a certain species of white person — one which in many respects could be said to resemble ME. I am perfectly aware that nobody talks much about ‘WASPS’ anymore as such (just as it is apparently no longer fashionable to refer to Jewish American Princesses as JAPS) and so maybe the terminology is outdated — if not the concept — but I am going to go out on a limb and say it is still relevant, maybe now more than ever. For these reasons: (1) they are funny; and (2) they contain an element of truth. Without the latter, they wouldn’t be funny. Example:
Q. What does a little WASP girl want to be when she grows up?
A. “The very best person I possibly can.”
There, now isn’t that so positively sickening that it’s actually humorous? And it’s true. I know MANY American white people who really do say stuff like that. Can you imagine a black kid or a Mexican vomiting up such icky, cheesy nonsense? Well…

Q. What does a WASP woman say to her male partner after successful sex?
A. “O Partner, you were just so…..ADEQUATE !!”
A bit of a stretch maybe…but it’s funny because very often a sexual encounter between two such people actually does involve a lot of validation/affirmation/evaluation/introspection/recrimination/victimization….and so on. Analytics. Psycho-babble. Claims and Counter-Claims. OF COURSE, as one of them myself — at least insofar as having been born into that world, I KNOW that it isn’t always like that. Nice White Anglo Saxon Protestants can get pretty down and dirty too behind close doors. But the reputation, the silly, ridiculous connotations, the STEREOTYPING, are precisely what make the jokes worth a laugh (and they ARE funny whether some of you anal-retentive, humorless, eager-to-take-offense, politically correct geeks think they are or not). The jokes amuse because their cutting edge of truth makes us uncomfortable, and only if we feel secure within ourselves can we move past the discomfort and laugh like hell because…IT IS FUNNY.
Political Correctness allows for no such therapy as being able to laugh at certain sacred cows. Sure, it’s OK if black people want to bust out with rap tirades and call each other Nigga this and Nigga that and MoFo this and MoFo that, and be as sexist as they wanna be, but white people can’t go there. Off limits. The old TV series “Amos ‘n Andy” was removed forever from American TV because it supposedly reinforced longstanding negative stereotypes about colored people, and yet shows like “The Jeffersons”, “In Living Color” and “Sanford and Son” exploited some of these very same stereotypes to great comic effect. Years ago there was a comedian named Bill Dana who created a Mexican character he called Jose Jimenez and the comedy was GREAT, until a few Mexican-Americans decided it was offensive. A classic American comedy series called “The Honeymooners” starring Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows, featured a bumbling loudmouth (but good-hearted) husband (‘Ralph Cramden’) and his very clever but outwardly unassuming wife Alice. Anybody could see that Alice was the brains (and the muscle) behind the family, but Ralph of course was always yelling about how he was King of his Castle, etc. And he would clench his fist and tell Alice that “One of these days, Alice, you’re going to the moon!” Today that would be called verbal abuse with the threat of domestic violence. It would never be allowed on TV. But it was great TV, classic TV, and — like many a program back then — the scripts were terrific, unlike the dismal one-liners you get now with the same old numbers game of correctly proportioned whites, blacks, females, Asians, etc. ‘The Honeymooners?” Rest assured, the PCers would ban it outright.

Q. What’s a WASP’s favorite song ?
A. I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.
I can laugh at myself. You will say, “Yeah, but you can do that because you are part of the ruling class, the people who have all the power.” I am familiar with that line of reasoning. The idea behind it is that the minorities have suffered real pain because of their true status as victims, whereas with a guy like me there is nothing at stake. I mean, does Bill Gates really care what you or I think? What about Elon Musk ? We — the mainstream white people — have all the power, and so anything untoward that gets said just slides off our backs, like water off a duck. It doesn’t matter because it can’t hurt us.
True up to a point. But I KNOW that in the United States or the UK — bastions of political correctness that they are — my status as an old white man (which is what I fucking well am, no matter how big my muscles still are from working out and refusing to fade away in weakness) subjects me to scorn and ridicule from certain quarters. I am perfectly aware that I am no longer taken seriously by some people. To a young black man I am beneath contempt — just some irrelevant old peckerwood cracker probably with a little dick. To youthful, trendy women I have become invisible. Even on the Moscow metro, sometimes, young men and even women used to stand up to let me have their seat — thinking they were being respectful to me because of my age, when in actual fact they were demoralizing me by showing how they really saw me. Most minorities now view me as representing all evils — a drearisome, monotonous, chauvinistic establishment-fossil (hahaha, if only they knew the truth — I could never keep a job), a chalky stick of rancid white flesh, a closet fascist most likely. I am yesterday and they are Tomorrow. They will smirk when I die.
Deep down it hurts to be dismissed in that fashion. To realize, once and for all, that, as in real life my powers are truly on the wane, it turns out that I am nothing, represent nothing, have never been anything… and no statues will ever be built in my honor. That I have almost used up my time on earth, and, not only have I moved no mountains, forked no lightning, saved no babies from burning buildings, nor rescued any fair maidens from the jaws of the dragon…no, not only that, but now, as the twilight gathers, I am scorned as being the embodiment of everything cruel, self-serving, greedy, bland, pedestrian, frigid, and even sadistic: Really?
“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous —
Almost, at times, the Fool.”
(T.S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
Really indeed? Me? Little old Eric LeRoy ? So that’s how it is?
Yep. That’s how it is all right.

And so, what do I do? I LAUGH. I laugh because, in a most existential way, I have beaten my head against the wall all my life in an absurd universe, and what do I have to show for it? The absolute, indisputable, inarguable evidence that in the grand scheme of things I am an irrelevant chunk of snot, a single snow flake disappearing amid a greater blizzard, a gaffer, a codger, an old urine-leaker and fart-slitherer whose whole sum total of days has probably been a waste of time and space which will be forgotten within weeks of my demise.
At this profound revelation, I laugh and rejoice. I look round at my fabulous dogs, listen to my wife’s amateur music coming from downstairs, gaze out at the lengthening afternoon of this late summer day here on earth, and I am HAPPY. I am happy because there is nothing anyone can say to me that would make me feel any more ridiculous that I actually know myself to be. I am not offended. At times plagued with a kind of wistful Sehnsucht, yet I beam and cackle and trip the light fantastic. I exist, and skyrocketing existence fills my heart. Let’s laugh together, at MY expense brothers and sisters, because there is nothing to be afraid of. Our cups runneth over, my friends !!
And you know what? It was the best I could do, just as the companions and colleagues and lovers and even enemies I have known and left along the way were usually doing the best they could do as well. Blacks, gays, lovely ladies, all of you: Try to imagine Beyonce’ or Melanie Trump sitting on the toilet-can, constipated, grinding and grunting, trying to wedge out JUST ONE DECENT TURD and then…try to take ANYTHING seriously after that !
Q. What’s the definition of a WASP?
A. Someone who gets out of the shower to take a leak.
Q. What do WASPS think Zimbabwe Rhodesia is?
A. A wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys.
Q. What’s an American WASPS idea of open-mindedness?
A. Dating a Canadian.
PCers out there, are you laughing ? I hope so. Because I sure am.
Like a FOOL.
