Laughter, the best medicine?

"A husband and wife were getting ready for bed. The wife was standing in front of a full-length mirror taking a hard look at herself. 'You know dear,' she said, 'I look in the mirror, and I see an old woman. My face is all wrinkled; my hair is gray; my shoulders are hunched over; I've got fat legs; and my arms are all flabby.' She turned to her husband and said, 'Tell me something positive to make me feel better about myself.'
He studied hard for a moment thinking about it and then said in a soft, thoughtful voice, 'Well, there's nothing wrong with your eyesight.'
Cribbed from the Bonners Ferry Brief, 1-9-06.

Funny, right? Well you should know that the Pentagon thinks laughter is very important. So important they have employed a laughter expert, "Scotty Scott," to promote "mirth as medicine." He does this presumably to "prevent hardening of the attitudes." He, and at least one other, are telling the parents of missing or dead soldiers they should learn to "laugh for no reason." Laughter is good and makes people feel better.

How could one argue with this? Just imagine the opportunities for laughter available at the present time. "Did you see the look on their faces when we told them their son had been killed in Iraq? They looked absolutely dumbfounded, sort of like Stan Laurel used to look in those early Laurel and Hardy things. Really stupid, you know, like they just didn't get it. Of course after we explained that when the Humvee was blown over and they were trying to escape it was really sort of like the Keystone Cops. You know, they hopped out of the burning vehicle and started running all over the place. As there was no water they just had to roll around in the sand trying to put out the flames on their clothes. It was hilarious! Three guys rolling around in the sand, getting in each other's way, they looked like the Three Stooges. It was soooo funny!

Even better though, remember the two guys we pushed off the bridge into the river, and they didn't know how to swim? God, that was funny. They just kept flailing away trying to get out but didn't have a clue how to do it. And those funny nightgowns and turbans they were wearing got all waterlogged and wrapped around the while they just started to sink. Served them right for not wearing decent clothes.

The best of all, though, was raping those boys in front of their parents. Man, did you ever hear anything like that before? All that screaming and begging for mercy? I mean, its not as if they didn't go around buggering each other all the time. I hadn't heard anything like that since grandma got her tit caught in the wringer. You know, people are really funny about such things. And when we piled them up on each other, you'd think they never saw naked people before.

It's strange that people don't really understand humor. Humor simply transcends everything else, just like the Pentagon says. Just laugh for no reason. It makes you feel better. Of course it helps if you have really funny situations, you know, like slapstick. I bet you could make a really funny movie about transporting children to the gas chambers if you had a bunch of old buses and some eccentric bus drivers that ran out of gas while pointing out the charms of Bavaria before delivering their cargo to Buchenwald or wherever.

I guess maybe the funniest sight of all might be when the white phosphorous starts to fall and everyone starts running in all directions, stumbling and falling and trying to run over everyone else to escape. Talk about Keystone Cops! And you know that most of them have no chance to escape. That is really funny. I guess that must be what Rumsfeld was laughing about in his picture on Antiwar.com this morning.

Anyway, just remember to laugh for no reason. If you find that difficult the Pentagon will provide you with a laugh instructor (but probably only if you are a Republican). Democrats, like me, have no real sense of humor.