Probably you’ve already heard about the traveling salesman whose car breaks down and he has to spend the night in the barn of a farmer who has a beautiful daughter? On no, wait! Sorry! Actually, have you heard about the professor at Northwestern University who applied for and accepted a $700,000 federal grant, from stimulus funds, in order to create computer software that can tell jokes?
If you are like me and hoards of other people, the immediate reaction is one of outrage but think about this for a minute and put it all into the context of the moment. Yes, it’s easy to sit here and exclaim that we are at war, the economy is failing, our country is being led by a hack, racism is alive and well, lawlessness rules the streets and our borders, unemployment is soaring, the Arabs still are hating on the Jews and politicians are perhaps the most corrupt they have ever been at anytime in history. All this and we need to spend $700,000 on joke telling?
If you don’t think this is a laughing matter, just watch this video and if you have a “natural” sense of humor (I’ll probably have to explain that to some of you), you’ll find it inanely absurd.
If, however, you found this discussion to be one of a serious nature, you are probably one of those starving individuals who are brain dead and can only function when a piece of electronic gadgetry tells you when and how. And thus the need to find computer software that can tell jokes.
Let’s face it. Jokes aren’t funny anymore. They are outrageous in that the person telling them more times than not has to resort to filthy, disgusting and over the top language in order to attempt to make people laugh. I tell you. I don’t get no respect!
Embroiled in this modern context that lacks creative thought beyond what can be found on a display screen, is the failure of human interaction. Witness two people sitting side by side texting each other. I am beyond the days of job interviews but I’m wondering if it is done via texting while sitting feet apart?
Laughing is healthy they say and adds years to your life. If all that is left of our society is the creation of computer software to cause laughter, when no other means will work, then perhaps it would behoove us to cut the defense budget in half and move it over toward more humor research.
So, anyway! The farmer told the traveling salesman that he could sleep in the barn that night so long as he stayed away from his daughter…………
Tom Remington
