Rabbit Hole Postcard

    I know, I know.  Calm down.  We’ll get back to the ancient jokes one day, I promise.  Maybe next Monday will do.  But I have this postcard I listed for sale, and I was so impressed at the hoops it made me jump through, I wanted to get it all down on paper as an example of what pop culture can do to a person.

    Mabel Lucie Attwell, was an artist who became famous for pictures of cute children (which she claimed were based on her own daughter; NO ONE is that cute.)  By the 1920s, she was popular enough that her name was being highlighted on the cards for sale, so you knew you were getting the REAL Mabel Lucie Attwell.  Her drawings stayed popular through two World Wars, and were still in demand—on postcards, calendars, dishes, dolls, and what have you—when she died in the 1960s, and her daughter took over the licensing.  Mabel Lucie Attwell was, and remains in the world of postcard collecting, a VBD (Very big Deal.)

    But this one includes not just the names of the publisher (Valentine) and the artist, but also promotes the fact that the character being spanked is named Snookums, and that this is one of a series of Snookums cards being illustrated by Mabel Lucie Attwell.  Very nice: so the kid’s name is Snookums, a fairly standard stock name for a small child in pop culture.  THIS Snookums, however, with a trademarked hairstyle (kinda stolen from the Kewpies, but hair is hair) appears on the card courtesy of Universal Pictures.

     Well, that was mildly interesting.  And as I could not read the date on the postmark, which is a nice thing to know when selling the postcard (if the post office said it was mailed in 1930, it is unlikely to be a facsimile printed in 2019).  So I looked up the career of Snookums in motion pictures.

     The fund of bygone media, YouTube, does NOT have any of the THIRTY motion pictures about Snookums, live action comedies involving a baby with that exceedingly annoying hairdo.  The movies focused on Sunny Jim McKean, as Snookums starting at the age of about eighteen months.  Snookums grew up as Sunny Jim did, and both Snookums and Sunny Jim made the transition to Talkies.  At the age of six, however, he retired, perhaps because he or someone at Stern Brothers, who made the films which were then distributed by Universal, decided he was getting too old for baby roles.  His subsequent story is no more cheerful than that of most child stars, as he died of an infection when he was eight.

    But with that depressing note we do NOT say goodbye to Snookums.    The movies were actually a licensed spin-ioff of a popular comic strip, which began in 1904 as The Newlyweds, and, after a few years, became The newlyweds and Their Darling Child Snookums.  (Or and Their Only Child or and Snookums.  Titles of comic strips were less stable in those days.)  The title raises my eyebrows, but I suppose if you’d been reading the strip, the first family-based comic strip, since 1904, you were wondering already how many years the couple could go on being Newlyweds.  (I suppose their last name could have been Newlywed.)  The stri[p was an early hit for George Mcmanus, a prolific and skillful comic strip artist who tossed off comic strips left and right (Another series of his, Let George Do It, was spun off into a film series, too, and one of the actors who played George also played Snookums’s father in several of THOSE pictures.)

    George McManus made his biggest hit, however, with a tale of ethnic diversity and social upheaval with Bringing Up Father, which was being made into silent movies a good ten years before Snookums, and whose leading stars, Maggie and Jiggs, have their own history in American culture.  But that’s a whole nother story.

    I have not yet delved into several further lines of research suggested by this saga.  Why “Snookums” as a kid’s name?  Is he related at all to Fanny Brice’s Baby Snooks?  Did the makers of Force Cereal object to a kid using the name of their advertising mascot, Sunny Jim?  (Mickey Rooney’s original movie name was the object of a lawsuit from another comic strip.)   And about that hairdo: Snookums was in comics pages before Rose O’Neill drew her Kewpies, but, really, neither of them indulged quite so consistently in gravity-defying hair.  But if we keep digging into pop culture, we’ll be demanding popcorn Pop-Tarts.  Let’s all go listen to Mozart for a while.

Hook, Line, Stinker

    In our last thrilling episode, as no doubt you recall, we discussed the extremely popular fishing postcard, and the tales it told of the success of the folks who dedicated their time and effort to the sport.  Cards extolled the joys of heading out at dawn to return with quite reasonable (record-breaking) castches.

     But the postcard cartoonists were well aware that the opposite luck is just as likely.  Well, maybe more than likelyu.  Well, maybe standard.  (The only fish I ever caught had to be thrown back, being rather smaller than the little finger of the nine year-old fisherman I was.  This struck me as mighty poor sport, and though my father had spent a tidy sum of money on fishing equipment, I don’t recall using it again.)

    So the cartoonists admitted that sometimes the luck just wasn’t with you.

    Part of the problem could be having to share the waters with other, less focused individuals.

     Sometimes your own equipment gave you troubles.

     And often, it was a combination of your equipment and your own efforts.

     We have mentioned before that the sitting area of a human being was of great interest to your average postcard artist, so the number of bottoms hooked by unlucky fishermen goes far beyond what we can cover in this space.  (In fact, the number of bottoms uncovered by a lucky cast…but that’s a whole nother blog.)

     Perhaps it was best to fish with a group, so that each person could handle another sorry aspect of the piscatorial passion.

     Because sometimes it seemed that nature itself was in league with your quarry.

     Even your equipment could be working with the enemy.

     At the end of the day, of course, it was what you caught that counted, not the trials and tribulations on the way to the trophy.

     Even if sometimes the law stepped in to tell you you hadn’t done as well as you thought.

     You could still wind up with a catch that was, well, impressive.

     Then, too, perhaps what mattered to the friends to whom you were writing was not how your day went, but  how you told the story.

     Coming soon: even more perils for fishing folk

Jokes About Poles

     I think the time has come to address the five hundred pound walrus in the room.

     There was a time, hinted at hereintofore, when people sent postcards the way we send texts: it was a quick, easy, cheap method of communication.  But times changed.  The number of postal deliveries declined, the price of a postcard stamp went from a penny to two, and, what with one thing and another, a generation grew up which saw postcards as something for special occasions.

     Chief among these special occasions was the vacation trip.  “Send a postcard!” was the common phrase in goodbyes when your cousin or neighbor was headed out for adventures in the Cotswolds, Adirondacks, or Alps.  For a couple of solid decades, sending postcards back from a trip was simply your duty as a human being.  There was an art to buying postcards, like so many of life’s little pleasures, and, as with every art, some people lacked any perception at all.  This is why there are so many postcards of boring hotels and even more boring hotel rooms.  One of the largest categories of postcards we used to get at the Book Fair was the painting: people would stop and buy a picture of every picture they’d seen in the museum.  No need to deny it, or blush: I did it myself once upon a time.  We all did.

     But what we are going to consider in this column, and in several columns thereafter, is the fact that anyone who was NOT going to a boring hotel to dine at fine tables (also visible on postcards( and visit museums was instead going to some little cabin on a lake, where they intended to enjoy a little fishing.  I think there are more fishing postcards in this little assembly than there are on any other subject, even if you include all the dogs and trees in with the outhouse jokes for a general Potty Joke section.

     People who go fishing are just as likely to engage in a certain round of expected activities as dogs at fire hydrants or rooster in chicken yards.  One of those activities is, of course, to lie.  More than one postcard asks the philosophical question “Do all fishermen lie, or do all liars fish?”  The answer to that is one for the ages, like Mr. Spock’s first name.

     But fishermen are expected to lie, to an extent that whenever they DO accidentally tell the truth, they get no respect.

     Even among liars, there are some who have greater physical ability for the sport.

     And they may admit this all themselves, though they all dream of graduating from people who can only LIE about big fish.

     OF course, another theme of the fishing postcard is catching the Big Fish  It’s good publicity for the place where you’re fishing to let people know you can catch…well, bigger fish than this.

     No, I mean really big fish.

     I’m talking about the really big ones, the ones you brag about.  Not as puny as this.

     Something big enough to present a REAL challenge to a genuine sportsman, and not such dabblers  in the water as we see here.

    It’s not really all that good for publicity to show so many fish of insignificant size, though I suppose if one brags how MANY one catches, one could get away with such stuff.

    No, not the ones you cut up for bait.  The BIG fish, big enough to satisfy a storyteller at the bar or barbershop.

     There ARE postcards with really big fish: the kind that today you’d be proud to post of Facebook.  I don’t know why they keep showing off these….

     See?  Eventually you can get out to where a real sport fish is available.  Next time, we’ll consider the other kinds of fishing luck.

History Quiz

Ah, Monday, Monday.  Time for another attempt to get some use  from this book I composed once upon a time, asking for the punchlines to certain ancient, ancient jokes.

    The school year approaches.  For many years, my school district observed a sort of gradual re-entry system, starting classes the Wednesday before Labor Day, so kids had a three day week followed by a four day week and THEN got into the Monday through Friday routine.    These were, by the by, the folks who provided me with those book order forms every month, where I could buy more and more joke books.  Who says you don’t learn anything in school?  Herewith, some of the japes I read over and over in those days when we scratched on rock notebooks with our stone pencils.

J1.Miss Sunshine watched her prize pupil stroll into the classroom well after the bell.  “Tommy!” she snapped.  “You should have been here half an hour ago!”

    “Why?” he replied.  “(          )”

J2.”And yesterday you missed school,” she went on.

    Tommy said, “(         )”

J3.Jennifer: “Teacher, would you punish someone for something they didn’t do?”

     Miss Sunshine: “Certainly not!”

     Jennifer: “Good.  (          ).”

J4. Miss Sunshine: “Class, we will have only half a day of school this morning.”

     Students: “Yay!”

     Miss Sunshine: “Quiet please.  (          ).”

J5.It was Nathaniel’s first day of Kindergarten, and his mother sent a note with him for the teacher.  “Nathaniel is a very sensitive child,” it said. “So if he misbehaves, don’t hit him.  (          ).”

J6.”Tommy, you were supposed to draw a picture of a stagecoach.  But all I see is a pair of horses.”

     “Sure, “ said Tommy, “The horses (         ).”

J7.”Well, now I see the stagecoach, but it doesn’t have any wheels.  What’s going to hold it up?”

     “(          )” said Tommy.

J8.Tommy: “I don’t think Columbus was such a big deal!”

     Miss Sunshine: “He discovered America!”

     Tommy: “Big deal.  (         ).”

J9. Miss Sunshine marched Tommy to the principal’s office.  “What now?” sighed the principal.

    “I asked him who shot Abraham Lincoln, and he answered ‘Well, I didn’t’,” said the indignant teacher.

    The principal fixed a stern gaze on the young man.  “Listen to me, and listen well, my boy.  (          )!”

J10.Miss Sunshine: “Tommy, where was the Declaration of independence signed?”

     Tommy: “(          ).”

J11.Miss Sunshine: “Tommy, when was the City of Rome founded?”

     Tommy: “(          )”

J12:Miss Sunshine: “Tommy, name as many states as you can.”

     Tommy: “North Hampshire, New Dakota….”

     Miss Sunshine: “The very idea!  When I was your age, I could name all the states in alphabetical order!”

     Tommy: “Big deal.  (          ).”

     Classroom comedy, by the way, goes back at LEAST to the days of vaudeville, when young comics (George Jessell, the Marx Brothers) got their break playing students in a classroom, delivering some of these very ANSWERS

A1.What happened?

A2.Not really

A3.I didn’t do my homework.

A4.We will have the other half this afternoon.

A5.Hit the boy next to him.  This will impress Nathaniel.

A6.will draw the coach

A7.Outlaws

A8.It’s so big, how could anybody miss it?

A9.If you did it, you admit it right now

A10.At the bottom

A11.I didn’t even know it was losted.

A12.There were only thirteen of them then

Did They Mean That?

    So in this column, I take my reputation as a scholar of elderly humor in my hands, and carry it gently through a minefield of postcards where I have to admit I may not be getting ALL the joke.    Perhaps the publishers of these cards intended more naughtiness than is coming through, and perhaps they did not.  Am I completely missing the gag, obvious in its day, or do I simply have a dirty mind, and, like viewers of the postcards ion one of last week’s columns, am I seeing more than was originally put in the picture.

    I have no doubts at all, by the way, about the card at the top of this column.  I just wanted to acknowledge that the classic Bamforth seaside postcard has not played a part in this series.  That is because Bamforth deserves a blog or two of its own.  Yes, they ALWAYS meant it.

    Now, we have discussed this gentleman before, and I admit I still haven’t QUITE gotten the joke.  He still looks fairly unconcerned for someone telling his date that his antenna…I just think they could have worked on this caption a little longer and made it more obvious, or less obvious, or something.  Maybe they did, and the censors wouldn’t allow it.

    Here I’m pretty sure I am just soured on this joke by George Ade.  The card is a simple pleasantry based on the idea that the lady inside the barrel is naked.  Not only does the play on words make this obvious, but barrels were the natural attire of people who found themselves deprived of their clothes.  It was a standard trope of slapstick, though it died as we moved into a world in which barrels were harder to find.  George Ade, however, associated the slang expressions “chicken” and “chick” with sex trafficking, and I think it is that alone that makes we wonder WHY the young smiling lady is crouching in a barrel in the middle of a meadow.

    Speaking of ladies in a meadow, here is a much later card where I wonder what’s in the minds of these two tourists who are plainly there to check out the farm lad’s backside.  Considering what he’s doing at the moment, are they suggesting they…of course not.  Just overthinking things again.  It’s Friday, and we’re tired.

    We move on to one I just don’t understand at all.  Or at least I think I don’t.  Are we just straight out suggesting the gentleman in the back there is a pimp, or, worse, a theatrical agent?  I can’t see him as a gigolo, nor can I see why the young lady would need to pay…you tell me.

    Let’s head out to the seaside again.  This card came out into a mid-century America which would certainly never have entertained the notion that the lady was suggesting anything but sharing her flotation device.  I am sure nothing else was intended.  Absolutely sure of it.  No, really.  Don’t know why I even included this picture.

    We have spoken before of how often babies in postcards were shown naked, or nearly so.  But this is a card of nearly a hundred years ago, and surely the whole enterprise, now a large business, of letting adults play dress=up in this particular fashion couldn’t have…. No, this is just a cute simple joke based on a simple expression.  (When I put this one up for sale, it set a new record for fastest purchase.  But, again, that’s probably us, and not the publishers)

    Oh well.  One just has to admit, sometimes, that one is lacking in understanding.  Or other things, like this charmingly non-specific gentleman.  Maybe you’ll explain it all to me when I’m older.

Yeah, They Meant That

    Last week, we considered a few postcards from days gone by which might today be considered dirtier than they were originally intended.  This was not meant to be some sort of argument that our ancestors were clueless when it came to sex.  How do you think they got to be ancestors, after all?

    So I thought today we might consider a few suggestive postcards which were intended to suggest exactly what they seem to suggest.  These are not the naughtiest postcards I have encountered—in all ages there are special wares for distribution among people who shared a taste for more obvious naughtiness (the type who run out the door when puns fly innuendo.  Sorry.)  These are just the SUGGESTIVE postcards.

    The seaside, besides being the traditional place for buying and selling naughty postcards, was also a source of suggestion, being a place where people might spy each other in minimal attire, even if, as at most beaches, ropes were set up to divide the insecurely clad women from the insecurely clad men.  The fine old message above was used on a number of such cards, always to easily understood effect.

    As bathing suit styles changed, jokes changed to fit them, sometimes very tightly.

    Some postcard artists were cads enough to suggest that ladies were scantily clad to attract the attention of the opposite sex: a shocking assumption, of course, but not as shocking as those who suggested an insecurely clad lady might be dressed for business, as with this career woman asking you to send her a letter.

    Such suggestions about the fashionably dressed go back to nearly the turn of the last century.

    Whereas by the 1920s, there were actually suggestions about how she could afford to be fashionably dressed in the first place.

    I don’t know if you recognize THIS executive young lady, who is doing the suggesting herself (with the artist tossing in another slam for the young man by having him hold up a bouquet if oansies, suggesting he won’t be able to manage either of her expectations) but I believe this is the one we saw in the bathtub a few columns ago.  She got around, I guess.

    Say, to go back to our last column discussing old jokes, do you know what the newlyweds always choose for their salad course?  Lettuce alone.  Anyway, in an era when a lot of people were pushing the idea that producing children was the only reason to….

    Speaking of children, it’s a little shocking how often our Edwardian ancestors included them in the naughty postcards.  Of course, as everyone in this picture finds humorous, the scorekeeper (marker) is simply announcing the score correctly.  In billiards, the person shooting is known as the Striker, and if that person is coming in second, then the way to announce the score must include the wortri Striker behind”.

    And yet, itr is shocking how many young street kids in early twentieth century postcards are incurable upskirt peekers.  Most of these are a little more subtle than this specimen, and even though it is the lad’s job to be where he is…well, thank heaven this was a phenomenon of the 1910s, and we did not repeat that sort of joke in later….

    Coming soon: DID they mean it?

On the Road Again

    Oh, let us pause for another collection of old jokes.  If I contribute nothing else to twenty-first century society, I will at least have invented a new reason to dread Mondays.  This selection from my brilliant but unpublished book So I Bit Him! Deals with jokes about travel.  As ever, the punchline has been omitted, so you can supply from memory the ending of this antique fragment of bygone humor.  These will be provided at the end, just to see if you phrased it better than I did.

J1.Bob, standing at the airport surrounded by bags and suitcases, was furious.  “Did you have to bring every piece of clothing you own?  Every pair of shoes?  Every bottle and jar from the bathroom cabinet?”

    “We’ve been looking forward to this trip for five years,” Kathy told him.  “I didn’t want to spoil it by forgetting something.”

    “Well, I wish you’d brought the piano!”

    “Oh, stop being sarcastic.”

    “I’m not.  (         ).”

J2.Quincy stepped up to the counter at the bus station.  “I’d like a round-trip ticket, please.”

    :Where to?”

    “(          )”

J3.I just flew in from the Coast and (          ).

J4.Bob and Kathy did finally get on their flight, the fastest new passenger plane in the air.  After half an hour, the pilot’s voice came over the intercom.  “I have good news and bad news,” he said, “Our navigational computer has just blinked off, and we have no idea where we are.  But the good news is (          ).”

J5.Aunt Clara was taking a plane trip for the first time, and glanced out the window.  “My goodness!” she said, “Those people look ,like ants from up here!”

    “Ma’am,” said the stewardess, “(          )/”

J6.Velvet and Sissy were on an ocean cruise, and were gazing across the sea.  “Look at all that water!” Velvet exclaimed.

    “Yes,” said Sissy, “(          ).”

J7.Bob and Kathy got to their hotel.  “We’d like a room with a bath,” said Bob.

    The clerk said, “(          ).”

J8.”I’m sorry,” the hotel clerk told Bambi.  “We’re completely booked up.  Not a single room is available.”

    “You mean to tell me,” Bambi replied, “If the President of the United States walked in here, you’d tell him to go away because you didn’t have a room for him?”

    “No, if the President came in, we’d find him something.”

    “Good,” said Bambi.  “(          ).”

J9.When Bob and Kathy got home, Bob sat down and wrote a long letter of complaint to his hotel manager, noting that he and Kathy hadn’t gotten any sleep at all for all the bedbugs in the mattress.  Just five days later, he got a reply from the CEO of the hotel chain, offering deep apologies.  Such an outrage had never happened before, and the manager involved would be severely reprimanded.  Bob was gratified until he looked in the envelope and found a small slip of paper that said “(          )”.

ANSWERS

A1.I’m not.  The tickets are on it.

A2.Here.

A3.And are my arms tired!

A4.We’re making excellent time!

A5.Those are ants.  We haven’t taken off yet.

A6.And that’s just on top!

A7.I can give you the room but you’ll have to take your own bath.

A8.He can’t come.  Give me his room.

9.Send this jerk the bug letter.

They Didn’t Mean It That Way

    I hope we have established that our ancestors who sent (or at least bought) postcards were not babes in the woods.  We have discussed what they thought about having a bear behind, and looked over those people admitted they had tired donkeys, or suggested you spank their donkeys.  We have looked at a few (by no means all) of their jokes concerning laxatives, and how they took urination in stride as a basic, if occasionally awkward, bodily process.

    We have not yet covered the vast number of postcards about the activities of people on their honeymoon (hinted at above), the vast number of cards which involve obviously illegitimate offspring due to maternal flings (so far I’ve seen rabbits with skunk stripes, colts with mile ears, and a WHOLE lot of baby chicks with duck bills.)  The postcard studies of what roosters do for a living cover at least seventy years, and I do not refer to crowing at sunrise.

    This does NOT mean that they thought exactly as we do about all things dealing with the bathroom and the bedroom.  One or two of their jokes might appear to mean something to us when the makers of the postcard had no such idea in their heads.  The world has changed.  That’s why we study history: if our ancestors were exactly like us, there wouldn’t be much point in reading about them.

    This, for example, is just supposed to make you chuckle at how the lad is overreacting to his milk being spilled.  (You wouldn’t have liked it anyhow, kid: where did you get black milk?)  It is only to us, used to a generation of gags of men and boys getting hit in the crotch, that it seems obvious what the young man running away has done to make the boy spill his milk, and tears.

    I wasted a great deal of time researching this card.  I am still convinced that a hump was some kind of term expressing the form of a wave, and we are encouraged to make the connection between that surfside term and the quite alarming hip measurement of this bathing beauty.  “Humping” existed as a slang term as early as the Revolutionary Wat, but people who performed this were Humpers, never Humps.  I hope we have made that clear.  (Um, you DID think that, didn’t you?  It’s not just MY dirty mind that…next slide, please.”

    Anyway, this one deals with someone who is making an excuse for not writing which will sound good as long as you don’t know about the picture.  (Like all those cards about cleaning up at the race track by men pushing sanitation carts or the salesman who has been making contacts…with the local dancing girls.)  I am certain the double meaning of “feeling low” naturally refers to the height of the sofa, and not at all to wherever she (or he) is feeling (out of sight to us but causing come concern to the dog.)  Anyway, that’s the story you’d tell your Aunt Hazel, even if you told your brother the card had a triple joke.

    This one, however, has no intention of moving along transgressive lines.  It’s our favorite Dutch kids back again, and referring to the fact that a lover would go down on one knee to declare his undying love.  The young lady is suggesting that his knees are patched because he’s been reciting poetry on one knee, and not that…of course, then why would BOTH knees…well, lovers could kneel using both knees, and….

    Oh, well.  Let’s address the 300-pound zucchini in the room.  That is her HAND.  They’re just making a joke about Blind Man’s Buff, and how she’s cheating to get out of his way and never intended…and even if they did, her face is too far from him for that to….

    Coming Soon: Yeah, they meant that one.

YOUR Future

    It is not often I feel I must perform a public service, and when I feel like that, I generally lie down for a while until the urge goes away.  This is why I will never be a star on social media.

    But this postcard was such a strain to me I thought I would just improve on it a bit for the modern reader.  My complaint is not with its basic precepts, which are appropriate for their day and age, but with the fact that the dang thing had to be printed so small, so everything would fit on a postcard.  I bought it largely sight unseen because I couldn’t enlarge the picture online enough to figure it out.  I just thought it would be interesting.  It was a little easier in person, but even then, it was a trifle small.  So we are going to go over it here, at a magnification which will make the whole device easier to handle.

    See, this is a postcard meant to be cut apart and reassembled into a fortune-telling device.  It’s a rather elementary toy (at this period, books which would do the same thing in greater detail, and take longer to play with, were bestsellers.)  Here are the directions.

    See, this is a postcard meant to be cut apart and reassembled into a fortune-telling device.  It’s a rather elementary toy (at this period, books which would do the same thing in greater detail, and take longer to play with, were bestsellers.)  Here are the directions.

    Now, to begin.  All these magnifications have been kept to scale, so the device, though larger, should work as well or as badly as the original (my thanks to whoever owned this and decided NOT to cut it up, by the way.  First, you cut out the arrow, and stick a pin through it.  This is your spinner, to be used on the succeeding circles, which should be readable under each other, as they have been measured to work that way.

    Spinning the srrow on Circle I will grant you a Yes or No answer to anything you ask (provided you ask a question that can be answered yes or No.  Asking “Who will win the World Series this year?” will do you no good.)  You should also spin for a number, which will tell you how many times to spin for the next circles (I suppose it’s harder to cheat the spin that way.)

    Also making the spin difficult to cheat is that the letters of the alphabet have not been placed on Circle II in alphabetical order.  This will give you the first letter of the name of the man you will marry.  (YOU pick first name or last name or nickname: there has to be SOME fudge factor in this.  These fortunetelling games were, by the way, generally aimed at women, or, to be more precise, women between the ages of 10 and 17.  There WERE fortune-telling books which could suit men or women, but these were in the minority.)

    Circle III probably is of the most sociohistorical interest.  This spin will tell you the profession of the man you will marry, and it is an interesting selection.  Farmer, for example, does not get a look in, and neither does Writer (we bloggers are united in our disappointment.)  I THINK that’s supposed to be a sailor hat under “Marine”, indicating someone in a seagoing profession and not necessarily a member of the Corps, but I can’t be sure.  I am also troubled by the inclusion of “Millionaire” since, after all, any of the other professions COULD become a millionaire (except, possibly, handicraft, whatever that means.)  Does this mean if you spin one of the other professions, your hubby will NOT be a millionaire?  But since, after all, a Soldier could be an Artist as well, or that odd handicraft person could be an artist, maybe…or am I overthinking this again?

    And if you recall the poem—First comes Love, then comes Marriage, then comes Blogsy pushing a baby carriage—you know what Circle IV is all about.  You spin to find out how many children you will have in your “married life”.  I assume this phrasing does not imply anything about you up to the wedding.  Presumably if you spin a 12 ut NOT the twins or triplets spaces, you are going to have all those children one at a time.  When does your husband have time for handicrafts?  Note, also, that Zero is not a possibility; presumably we could not conceive of that sort of…yeah, I said it, but I’m not proud of it.

    So, as Cupid blows on the fires of prophecy to keep them bright, I leave you to print out the blog, assemble the bits, and check on your future.  Let me know how the whole handicraft thing works out, won’t you?

Takin’ What They’re Givin’

    A number of years ago, in response to no particular demand, I developed a musical lecture on the “I Hate My Job” song, a style of song as basic to the American experience as the hymn.  Had I been able to clear all the rights….

    But there is a broad literature of people taking out their workday frustrations, and this means there were plenty of jokes about the subject.  Yes, banana cream burrito, this was all an excuse to present another excerpt from my unpublished joke quiz.  I honestly am struggling hard to keep this from becoming a Monday tradition, but what can I do in the face of overwhelming demand?

    You recall the rules: these are really, really old jokes which you should know well enough to supply the missing punch lines.  Answers provided below so you can critique the way I phrased a classic.

        J 1. “I’d like to apply for that job as blogger,” said Justin.  “What’s the salary?”

    “I’ll pay you what you’re worth,” said henry.

    “Oh,” said Justin, “(          )”

        J 2. “Hey, where have you been?” called Fred, as Manny walked into the bar.

    Manny collapsed onto a barstool.  “Got a new job.  It’s a killer: eight hours without a break, the foreman’s a slavedriver who isn’t convinced you’re working until you drop over exhausted.  Nothing but work, work, work.”

    “Sounds rough,” said Fred.  “How long have you been at it.”

    Manny sighed.  “(          )”

        J 3. “Hello?  A young man named Hollingsworth listed you as a reference on his application for a job with my firm, and I wondered what you could tell me about him.”

    “Young Hollingsworth?  Comes of excellent stock.  He’s descended from the Feltons, the Harringtons…in fact, most of the First families of new England.  His grandfather was one of our leading bank executives, and….”

    “That’s very interesting.  But (          ).”

        J4. “The job is yours.  You realize, of course, that what we pay you is a private matter, and not to be gossiped about.  You are expected to keep your salary a secret.”

    “Don’t worry about that, sir.  (          ).”

        J5.  They call it Take-Home Pay because  (          ).

        J6. The junior assistant held the phone away from his ear as Mr. Gotlots ranted about a mistake in his latest report.  “Whew!  He’s going to get an ulcer!”

    “Not him,” said his office partner.  “(          )”

        J7. Alvin showed up for work at eleven, his face bandaged, his arm in a sling.  “Sorry I’m late,” he told the boss.  “I leaned out the window this morning to check the weather, went too far, and fell twenty-two stories.”

    The boss glared at him.  “(          )”

        J8. “Miss Collins, where’s my pencil?”

    “Behind your ear, sir.”

    “Come, come!  I’m a busy man!  (          )”

        J9.  Zuleika hugged her friend.  “Now that you’ve won the lottery, I guess you’ll be quitting your job as a cleaning woman.”

    “No,” said Arabella, “After thirty-five years I wouldn’t know how to go on without a job.  But (          ).”

        J10. “Took kind of a long lunch break, didn’t you, Buster?”

    “I had lunch and then I got a haircut.”

    “What makes you think it’s okay to get a haircut on company time?”

    “”Why not?  (          )”

        And, if you really need them, the ANSWERS

A1 I couldn’t live on THAT.

A2, I start tomorrow.

A3. We weren’t hiring the young man for breeding purposes.

A4. I’m as ashamed of it as you are.

A5. That’s the only place you can afford to go with it.

A6. He gives them.

A7. That took two hours?

A8. Which ear?

A9. “God help the boss if he gets in the way of my mop.”

A10. It grew on company time.