How Things Stand

Those of you who have been following this blog for a while, either willingly or because you’ve been unable to discover the secret method of unsubscribing, may have noticed a sharp decline in the frequency of posts over the past few months. There are several reasons for this:

1. There’s actually been a sharp decline in the frequency of posts over the past few months.
2. Since roughly February 6 at 2:47 PM, I have been besieged by issues, both personal and professional¹, that have sucked up my time as if it were green tea flavored bubble tea.²
3. The world, in general, isn’t funny anymore.

Let me elaborate on this last point. Global funniness reached its peak in 1949, when post-war euphoria combined with technological breakthroughs to create the air age, precursor to the space age. By the mid- to late 1950’s, however, a lot of returning Korean War veterans donned suits, assumed aliases and became part of the commercio-industrial complex known as Madison Avenue (or Madison Ave., for short). These suito-businessmen ushered in an era of … um, business, which, as we all know, is not funny.

Funniness enjoyed a brief resurgence in the late 1960’s, when people were high enough to laugh at anything, but Nixon, Agnew, Ford and the rest of them quickly put an end to that.

However, the major issue is not one of humor desensitization. Rather, real life has become so absurd as to render humor superfluous. Consider, for example, Senator Ted Cruz’s pleas for federal aid for flood-stricken Texas, after condemning similar aid programs for hurricane ravaged areas in the Northeast. Or the fact that the gray lady herself, The New York Times, devoted half the front (Web) page to the arrests of a bunch of corrupt soccer executives. Or the fact that soccer has executives.

As Dr. Warren Edelman, fictitious Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, has said, “Many a joke is spoken in jest.” Truer words were never spoken.³

¹Despite the millions of dollars that I earn from speaking engagements and the sales of TechCurmudgeon merchandise, I continue to hold a day job to maintain the appearance of normalcy.

²My time is, in fact, taro flavored bubble tea.

³In fact, these words may never have been spoken.