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I read somewhere once the following definition:
Humour: The unexpected juxtaposition of incongruities.
I can see what they mean of course, and they may well be right, but it doesn't seem to satisfactorily explain the fact that some of the things you see or hear are just fuckin' funny! Take some of the excellent emails I get sent from time to time, for example. Reading them, you don't think to yourself, "oh yes, jolly fine juxtaposing," you just laugh out loud. In fact, some of them deserve a wider audience, so (with the author's permission) up they go onto the web...
There are seven so far, from:
If you'd like to have your juxtaposed incongruities unexpectedly immortalised on the Internet, send them along to mark@virtualcreations.com.au or use our feedback form (but please make sure it's original - I've already got over 10Mb of those email jokes that are endlessly forwarded around the Net).
The first is from Rhett. A week before I got this, Tim sent us all an email boasting of his recent drive in a Porsche 911, and how it went from 0-100 in 6 seconds, or something, and how it handled like it was on rails, etc, etc. Here is Rhett's response, slightly decoded for the general public:
Now look here, my Green Monster mountain bike might be a touch useless on the highway cycle, and maybe it doesn't have Tiptronic transmission, but it does me very nicely thank you very much. On the city cycle, the economy leaves me speechless. It does 0-22 km per hour in 23 seconds flat, and it has instant manual gear shifting, with a mindless choice of 15 in all. It has onboard muscle-soreness indicators, with a snooze recall attachment, in case you forget how much your legs hurt. It stops on a pinhead, usually due to lack of speed. It goes on the footpath, and handles dirt tracks just fine. And you can even ride it around the lounge room if you move the furniture out of the way first. Plus, it has free air, so even a Hyundai would make me scream out in happiness.
This is from Paul, sent to Tim (the Donk) and me, describing the weekend cycle trip he went on with Martin the Snorer and Rhett the Rhett.
3/5 of the boys went on a cycle tour this last weekend. You two were sorely missed and talked about many times (i.e. "Virtue would love this stretch of road with his front suspension" or "The Donk wants us all to do the Great Victorian Bike Ride with the kids towed behind in trailers"- everyone's in on that one).
We drove to Mittagong in the Cordoba (such a good car, to easily accommodate 3 bikes and 3 blokes, almost as good as the befamed Behweemoth which is probably sitting up on bricks in some deserted car yard) on Saturday morning. But not before having a leisurely coffee and carrot cake at the globe. By 3:40pm we were on our bikes with panniers making our way down the 68 km long road toward Wombeyan Caves, a.k.a. Wombat Caves after the numerous dead wombats that you pass on the way. Now you two blokes don't have to worry because the Caves were not conquered or even reached on this particular trip (I know Mark in particular was very eager to be involved in this cycle when I first mentioned it to him in 1997).
We did make it 50 k's down the road to the fertile banks of the Wollondilly River. Such a good camping spot, such a good weekend, such good company.
As you would have expected, Budd and I got Rhettorised several times during the course of the weekend. There were many typical Rhett style passing manoeuvres where he suddenly sprints off past you up the biggest hill with panniers swaying from side to side and slapping against his spokes as they do. There was his jumping off a six-foot drop in bare feet onto very sharp rocks to be the first to swim in the water next to the bridge type behaviour, but the best one was when I got woken from my lunchtime nap by a bowl of boiling hot, greasy noodles carefully placed on my bare shoulder, which not surprisingly ended up in my sleeping bag and around me on the tent floor. Budd I'm sure is fully acclimatised to being Rhettorised by now because he agreed that that was a perfectly acceptable way to wake someone up. He was just jealous that I've perfected the art of napping any time, anyhow, anywhere.
It was a tough night in the tent. What with Budd choking to death next to me on one side and Rhett rustling around in his soy-milk-soaked sleeping bag which had leaked in his pannier on the other, how was I to relax? So I just lay there while the rain stopped and watched the veil of cloud slowly recede and reveal a velvet sky full of brightly sparkling diamonds.
Such a top weekend, spent with such good blokes. The highlight was pumping our way down the road back to Mittagong in the receding light. The sunset was a peach. Soon it was dark and the boys were in single file with Budd and Klemes swapping the lead while Rhett kept us safe in the rear with his single flashing red light.
Pack the car, pasta dinner in the local Mittagong Italian their-kids-are-cute-when-they're-little restaurant - what a find! Got home just after midnight got a hard-on killed 'im.
Mate, when you two blokes get back it's gonna be on for young and old as far as Boys' Wild Weekends are concerned, so giddeyup.
love yas all, Klemes
This is from the lovely Cha (a.k.a. Chicky), thanking me for emailing her a photo of a Pashmina shawl that she was interested in. You see, her sister has one, and she was toying with the idea of getting me to buy her one. I informed her that they were £250 (A$660), which slightly dampened her enthusiasm. Even photographing the bloody thing was hard enough - as soon as the tight-arse shop assistant spotted the camera, she insisted that I get a clearance from their publicity department on the third floor.
Bonjour Monsieur!
Je beaucoup merci pour la photographie avec le Pashmina shawls. Je tres dissapointe, je rekon le shawls cest tres boring. Je rekon je purchaseur une tres similar avec Woolworths, alors perhaps n'pas tres fine, mais polyester, je rekon le Madames n'est pas tell le difference. Pour le 250 quid, je rekon je habit le vie sans le shawl. Je rekon la sibling est tres imbicile et la tete est tres soft. Et merci beaucoup pour riskeur la freedom pour le photographie, je rekon le shop assistante est tres Hitler Youth. Le Youth invadier la France et sur la bad books.
Or my sister Jaki, describing my other sister Lindy's bemusement with all things computery (we're talking about the girl that pronounces the http://www... at the start of all web page addresses as "Hippopotamus Woooo"). Jaki is involved in the float of the Internet travel company Travel.com, so ...
... any time I mention the word Travel.com to Lindy she can't understand why I keep saying ".com" at the end, and so she "joins in" by saying things like "yeah, so then what .com?", or "yep, .com, that sounds like a good idea.com". She really is amazing.
You may recall that in my episode about the States I expressed confusion as to the difference between "Creole" and "Cajun" (here), and offered a prize for the best answer. Well, Rhett came up with a corker, and the prize that goes to him is: His words immortalised on the Net! Honourable Mention goes to Karen Toensfeldt, whose analysis, while quite accurate, didn't quite have the flavour of Rhett's offering:
The Creoleans - or French - were there first, so they rule, mate. But there's more to it - plus you get this free set of steak knives! Then came the bloody Spanish, splitters. Then (I think) the French came back and whipped their butts. This went on for some time. After a while, fire was invented, and then came the wheel - they put their guns on these and called them cannons. Somebody invented restaurants, and this is where they honed their skills into what we call Creole.
Around the same time those cannon thingies were floatin' about, 2000 miles (kilometres weren't invented yet & wrong country) north, in a place called Arcadia (now Nova Scotia), the Arcadians were getting their butts whipped by the British, and got driven (not in cars) south to Louisiana. These people were peasant stock and did not fit in with the affluent Creoleans, and so when African slaves showed up they said g'day and everyone was mates, including the American natives. That collaboration of peoples became known as the Cajuns.
Um, is that good enough? Well, where's my bloody prize?
Incidentally, Rhett now has his own web site, where you can go and get Rhettorised: http://members.xoom.com/grhett
The annual cross-country ski-camping assault on Mount Jagungal happened this year in August, without me, incredibly. Alison, the only female, was accompanied by Paul, Martin, Rhett, Greg S, and Dave Jenkins. Her account of this freezing flatulence festival is appropriately entitled:
Five Blokes and a Chick
or How I Survived Six Days with Farty Blokes
When I first got the email from Klemes telling us that we'd be leaving from Sydney at 3am on Monday morning I thought he was joking! But now I know that when you think that Klemes is kidding, he isn't, and when you think he's serious, he's f***ing with you. So now I don't trust him. Ever. But I never liked him anyway.
But I digress - we left Sydney at 3am and got to Jindabyne in plenty of time to be able to fart-arse around in the ski-hire shop for hours and hours. And all I needed was a bit of cord for the bottom of my gaiters. Then, when we finally got going and drove in to Guthega Power Station, we fart-arsed around for some more hours. In fact I think that the whole "Inaugural David Jenkins Expedition" itself should have been subtitled "To Fart and Fart-arse" as there was a fair amount of both activities during the week. Luckily in between these we did actually get some skiing in and I even managed to do my first telemark turn. Very unstylishly, but that's of no concern to me!
And we had some good food (well, until my supplies had run out!) and good company. I got to give my new sleeping bag (a Xmas present from my parents and I to me) its second run and its first proper test-out. It performed magnificently making Klemes and Budd incredibly jealous as they shivered away every night whilst I had to strip off down to the bare essentials to keep cool enough!! And the Gore Dryloft outer shell did what it's meant to do on the night we camped, when I was squished up against one side of the tent - trying to maximise the distance between me and the farty boys. One of the nicer highlights for me (apart from Budd teaching me telemarking) was sitting outside the Schlink Hilton Hut one night and actually being able to see the Milky Way in its full glory for the first time for ages. It was a good reminder that there's so much more to life than being stressed by work and money and traffic, etc, etc, and that life is there to be lived, not just survived.
Although that's what the farts were like - they had to be survived. And even though I have been in many different places where I have well and truly been in the gender minority (Macquarie Island included), I could not believe how funny blokes find their own farts (all blokes or just these ones? I think the former is truer than the latter). I mean, one would think that after the umpteenth fart (let's say 50 for example), that the novelty value of "Pfffftttt..... Ha ha ha ha ha!!" would diminish somewhat. But no, every time is like the first and the hilarity is expressed again! I swear that women will never comprehend this concept and I don't really want to try. Some of the boys were damn lucky that I didn't have any corks in my pack!
But if they invited me I'd probably put up with them again, 'cause I had an ace time. Thanks guys!
After reading about my attempt at a Vision Quest, picturing me sitting alone in the woods for a couple of days with no food or shelter, Cha thought it appropriate to forward an email to me that she received from her 14-year-old cousin....
I have just been camping out in the Flinders for an entire week (4 nights and 5 days) It was absolutely dreadful. We had to sleep in tents, take all our food, and everything we needed because there was no civilisation where we went. We also had to go to the toilet in the bush. I am not a camping person. Everyday we had to hike in the bush carrying these ultra heavy packs. Then once you get to the campsite, you had to put up the tent, collect firewood, and then cook some revolting dinner of continental macaroni cheese. I am soooo glad to be back.
