Proverbs 10, Verse 23
"A fool's fun is being bad;
a wise man's fun is being wise!"
---
CHIPPED WISDOM:
It's easy to get all weird and xenophobic when you start thinking about the ways in which people from different cultures have fun.
The French call it "divertissement." If you're a sweaty, hog-palmed Cockney bastard, you call it "AVIN' A LAUGH, GUV!"
I was curious, for instance, about what soldiers who were stationed in Iraq do. Seeing as I don't know any active-duty soldiers (Does it surprise you that I'm not exactly a Jarhead magnet"?) I asked Yahoo! Answers.
This is what I found.
Four years ago, "C" (probably not his real name) said:
"Gladiator battles to the death with scorpions or whatever other creature they can find that will fit in a bottle of water."
Another individual postulated that, according to his buddy, "they touch themselves a lot." Hopefully they wash their hands after playing around with those scorpions first.
Queen Elizabeth has some interesting hobbies/interests, according to a 20/20 profile done on Her Majesty in 2012. She evidently enjoys a good game of solitaire (though the Brits call it "patience", because they're Brits), she loves horseracing and horsebreeding (not breeding with them-- that was Catherine the Great. And Caligula, though he was just practicing for his sister) and she learned how to fix and rebuild truck engines during WWII, though I'm not sure she'd remember how, or whether she'd want to get her pastel outfits all greasy. She also, apparently, channels the late Peter Sellers in that she does remarkably uncanny impersonations-- probably of heads of state who are nowhere near as funny as she is.
To blow off a little steam, Al Pacino, as you probably expected, wrestles wild bison to the ground and kills them by punching them repeatedly in the face until they are blind, insane, and near death. Then he stands up, urinates on them, and sets them on fire while screaming,
"TRENT, HARRY, JIMMY--WHEREVER YOU ARE OUT THERE:
FUCK YOU, TOO!!!!!"
Look, fun is a very personal thing, and who am I to judge, really? Some people like listening to Andrea Boccelli sing "Funiculì, Funiculà", some people like going to those, um, donkey... shows in Juarez, and that's okay, I guess, as long as everyone (including the donkey) is a consenting adult. In April, we're going to take our Basset Hound to the Boardwaddle in Ocean City, NJ-- an event where hundreds of Basset Hounds descend upon New Jersey, many of whom will be in costume (the dogs, not the owners-- well, I suspect some of them will be, too) and, for many Basset Hound owners on the East Coast, this is the absolute highlight of their year. And that's okay, for them. For me, it'll be a fun, silly event and hopefully we'll get through it without the children having a Basset-sized melt-down because it's too hot or it's too windy or because we're not adopting five other Bassets and cramming them in the car with us.
I suppose fun has been on my mind because I'm not entirely sure what I do for fun. Watch "Frontline"? Blog? I don't quite know that those activities are necessarily classified by anyone who's a real authority on the matter as "fun". They bring me some level of enjoyment, as does playing the banjo and, um, eating and drinking Caffeine Free Diet Coke. And I enjoy going to plays, and (sometimes) acting in them, but I don't know that it's "fun". Maybe it's as much fun as watching two scorpions going stabby inside an empty Fiji water bottle, but the word "fun" to me conjures up images of my children laughing hysterically as they're being tickled, or a dog with his head out the window of a car and his tongue slapping crazily against his face or some dickhead on a rollercoaster throwing up and not even noticing it's happening because he's in ecstasy, or on it. I used to hop in the car and go for a drive-- to nowhere in particular-- for fun, but now that gas is $3.60 a gallon, this activity has kind of been robbed of its pleasure value.
Maybe I'm overthinking this. I do that sometimes. At least I'm not the kind of guy who thinks hiring a midget for a Bar Mitzvah, stag party, or St. Patrick's Day is fun.
Seriously:
http://www.rentamidget.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment