Actually, just about any caption would have worked with this Non Sequitur headstone gag. After an hour or so of reading strips in which the characters fall asleep before midnight on New Year's Eve, I was beginning to chuckle over the "This feature did not update" messages.
But I'd have liked this one anyway. Headstone gags are a regular feature in Non Sequitur and, since Wiley and I often grouse over the same sorts of things, and since I'm a fan of gallows humor to begin with, he connects fairly often with these.
Granted, there are probably people thinking that this guy needed to check out about six months ago, if he really wanted to avoid it all, but, first of all, then it wouldn't be a New Year's joke, would it? And then, too, six months wouldn't have been enough. The campaign began as soon as Obama took the oath of office.
But I like the timing, because we're three days from Iowa, a week-and-a-half from New Hampshire, and I suspect we ain't seen nothin' yet, folks.
I heard something on NPR some time ago that said campaign advertising spending wasn't terribly strong yet, and that the big dollars would roll out after primary season. Of course, as long as they can get all these groups to sponsor debates, why bother buying ads?
But then I've heard other reports claiming that New Hampshire voters are being hammered with campaign ads for this or that person, and I'm sitting here in New Hampshire not feeling it. Ron Paul sends me mail from time to time, and I've seen Gingerich and Huntsman ads, but not very many.
Oh, and there's some guy with signs on the roadside and when I drive by one, I think, "When I get home, I should Google this guy and find out what his story is," but I inevitably forget and, right now, I can't remember his name.
Which speaks to the extent to which he's pummeling me with advertising messages. A couple of hobo signs by the highway isn't exactly an overwhelming, or terribly effective, deluge.
And the special interest ads, which are invariably more deceitful, infectious and annoying than the candidate's own ads, won't start running until the tickets are set. (Note: I don't mean to imply that the candidates wouldn't stoop to running deceitful, infectious, annoying ads themselves. Simply that they don't have to.)
All in all, I think Wiley's fellow has picked a good time to check out.
As said, I like gallows humor. It targets our anxieties, which is where the real laughs come from. There's a reason why "Chuckles Bites the Dust" is on most comedy writers' Top Ten list of best sitcom episodes.
Graveside gags are always good for a laugh, and I include hospital bedside and near-death gags in the overall category.
At the park where we walk our dogs, there's a big effort these days to keep them from running down to the river, because it's starting to ice over and nobody wants to play cold water rescue with their dog. A few days ago, however, one of them interrupted a game to go get a drink and when he came back, his owner -- who had just been worrying about him going through the ice -- asked him, "Where's your ball?"
Which, of course, brought to mind the old punchline: "He was wearing a hat!"
Not to be confused with, "You're standing on my airhose" or "You're a 16, she's only a 10," a joke so old they've changed the system of dress sizes since.
But the "I only care when you seem to be dying" is not the same as "I'm going to have the last word," which is the gist of the headstone gag, whether it is the curmudgeonly joke of today, the apocryphal tombstone that reads "I told you I was sick" or even the "what a fool" gag, which, in most of its forms, preserves famous last words like "Watch this!"
Or the non-apocryphal headstone in Montreal, on the grave of a fellow whose friends were better at acrostics than at poetry.
There's something "not quite" about this, like the bumpersticker that trips over its own punchline: "Don't drink and drive. You might hit a bump and spill your drink."
Which probably tells us more about John and his friends than they expected. It ain't exactly "Horseman, pass by."
Of course, there aren't a lot of hilarious situations that turn out to be as funny in real life as they are in the abstract, and it's hardly surprising that gallows humor would fall squarely into that category.
A joke about a fellow taking a mistress and accidentally letting his wife know about it at her hospital bedside is very funny. But for a real husband to actually serve her with the divorce papers there? Not funny.
But making jokes about that husband? Funny!
Unless he wins. Then it's not funny again.
Best to keep your dark humor firmly in the area of the absurd.
(Okay, here's one for you: When I fetched that first video, it came with an anti-Gingrich ad. I was going to wait and see who sponsored it, but then saw that it was 15 minutes long. Yes, indeed, I'd rather be dead.)
I don't think I ever heard the second Albert before, but I could have done the first one right along with Stanley! Delighted to hear it again.
Posted by: vppeterson | 01/01/2012 at 12:00 AM