At one with the world

The traffic in New York City is impatient, and pedestrians are jostling at road junctions. A Buddhist monk had been meditating in Central Park, listening to the song birds and the rhythm of the city. He is now walking serenely down Broadway and starts to feel a little peckish. As he nears Times Square the aroma of fried onions and hotdogs wafts past him. Approaching the hotdog vendor’s cart, he sees that the vendor is reading a newspaper. The monk says to the vendor “Excuse me, could you make me one with everything, please” and smiles to himself at the pun.

The sour-faced vendor, saying nothing, throws a steaming hotdog sausage into a bun, slaps some onions on top, squirts a line each of mustard and tomato sauce, and hands the completed hotdog to the monk. The monk pays with a ten dollar bill, and then waits patiently for his change. The vendor, having returned to reading his newspaper, ignores the monk. After a little while, tomato sauce already dripping onto the sidewalk, the monk asks the vendor, “Excuse me, but where’s my change?” The vendor growls, “Change comes from within.”

On making fun of disability

At the end of the daily electronic newsletter of the BBC's flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, some weeks ago, was printed a 'joke' about Van Gogh having severed his ear. I found the 'joke' to be in very poor taste, for the reasons set out below, and wrote the following in the Newsnight weblog feedback.

I found the Van Gogh 'joke' offensive: it colludes with people who laugh at my uncle as "foot-loose" because his foot was amputated as a result of advanced diabetes; with the people who laugh at injured war veterans being "legless" or "'armless "; with people who mock the spasms associated with cerebral palsy; with people who laugh at the disturbing effects of mental health problems. Making these circumstances into 'jokes' might relieve tension in those not directly impacted by disability, but it also brazenly stigmatises. There is so much in life at which to laugh without any need to descend to stigmatising.

I recently read a report on a BBC news webpage 'Humour comes from testosterone' about some research recently carried out that concluded that much humour is sublimated aggression.