SICK HUMOR

SICK HUMOR

i should probably explain, i am 61 now and i have been SICK for a looong time.
i had double pneumonia about age 4 or 5 and near death experiences as a bonus,all this cost me the use of one lung,years of crippling asthma attacks and the social leprosy that goes with being a black non-athelete in Harlem.
humor was/is a survival skill.just look at John Stewart (Daily Show).
i have always had a Smart Mouth which became SMARTASS as i got older.lucky for me i could draw,(my crip toon samples will one day be linked to this blog) mostly superheros and TV monsters. at age 9 my father died of pneumonia and WWII,plus a touch of family alcoholism.
i spent a lot of time in the principal's office for my mouth and physical punishment was still legal in the 60s,so i got whipped and slapped a lot.
did that stop me? of course not.
i had almost died! what was a lil more physical pain to me?

when i was 21 and new to L.A. a Buick T -boned the tiny Corvair i was in and i lost 5 inches of height.more physical pain.
then in 1993 i went to get up from watching the TV news and years of yoga and back exercises failed totally.my warranty ran out,i tell folks.
so what has kept me alive thru all this and resaonably (?) sane?

SICK HUMOR and i do mean Callahan style sick ( famous crip cartoonist).
when i was younger and read Playboy i LOVED the cartoons esp.Gahan Wilson ( i have two collections of his toons).two that come to mind, a woman has a playsuited child on a short leash of some sort when around the corner comes a tiny werewolf in a playsuit on a stout chain.
another is a tourist in Egypt being offered a mummified hand with a huge ring from a dark alley, the caption is "How much for just the ring?" his first collection has a Dorian Grey painting with a decrepit hulk at the easel and it's called "I Paint What I See". Priceless.

sarcasm,wit,irony,crudeness,you name it and i've done it.i once worked at a job in Frisco and a stout woman coworker came up to complain that i didn't like her becaue i didn't insult like everyone else. she thought it was because she was a transsexual, i said no-i just thought she was boring. soon she was telling me the filthiest jokes imaginable and we got along fine. me and my gay friends...maybe another time.i lost a lot of good friends to AIDS.

anyway, this semi explains why i added the Colette quote today. the crips i see who are bitter and disillusioned are the ones who take themselves much too seriously.i once had a Vietnam Vet roomie once who was gloomy and ill humored until one day he came in bitching about something the VA was neglecting to do (in his warped opinion) i qupped "What are you worried about? Agent Orange will have killed you long before then." it took a few minutes but he did burst out laughing and things were better after that. i see some people like this as a challenge,but not everyone is going to like you because of age,race,sex,gender, ethnicity or disability.so just roll with the punches,okay?

FATE is the cards that God (sic) dealt you.
FREE WILL is way you play your hand.
i play my hand with a crooked smile and a cane by my side. having a crip soul mate within reach is also a great help...
enuff of me.
namaste
mega