GenX and Funny. Or Not Funny. Who knows? Whatever.

My generation, X, has always dealt with serious issues by brushing them off like lint, then mocking the issue and making jokes full-bore.

As I age, I find myself at loggerheads with Millennials and at odds with the current political zeitgeist where harmful, hurtful things are NEVER funny or “subjects that other people — not me — can joke about.”

I’m not alone. Reactions to Dave Chappelle’s new special on Netflix reflect this same cultural divide — the toxic, funny shit that GenX says bumping up against the culture of respect younger liberals are trying to cultivate in modern America.

Maybe GenX behavior always hurt people and we are now hearing quieter voices say “enough.” And/Or maybe people are now more sensitive to things than they used to be because it’s part of the national discourse and “always on.”

I do my best to be a good listener (“I’m listening,” reads every mea culpa when somebody offends someone else). I entertain arguments, and sometimes take something away from them and grow. I am more progressive than I was ten years ago. At the end of the day, though, I’m very much the person I’ve always been, finding the same sick, twisted, insulting shit funny.

In fact, the worse it is, the funnier it is, because life is a big joke. Then, you get COPD from a tainted vape cartridge and die on the toilet — usually the same day you hit the lottery and find the woman or man of your dreams.

Someday, like old men in the generation before mine, I’ll be the guy who “needs to hurry up and die” so the world can be a better place.

Oh, well. Smoke if you got ‘em.