George Mackay Brown Pipe Poem #3: Gray's Pier

Gray's Pier

I lay on Gray's pier, a boy
And I caught a score of sillocks one morning

I laboured there, all one summer
And we built the Swan

A June day I brought to my door
Jessie-Ann, she in white

I sang the Barleycorn ballad
Between a Hogmanay star and New Year snow

The Swan haddock-heavy from the west--
Women, cats, gulls!

I saw from the sea window
The March fires on Orphir

I followed, me in black
Jessie-Ann to the kirkyard

I smoke my pipe on Gray's pier now
And listen to the Atlantic

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George Mackay Brown Pipe Poem #2: Stone and Star

Stone and Star

The stone that sinks a creel
The stone that whets a scythe
The stone
That locks a bridge over the burn
The stone that keeps milk cold
The ordered stones that stand between hearth and a winter storm
The carved stone over the next of skulls
The stone that children
Enchant to flower, ship, castle
The stone sea-vested twice a day
The stone the beachcomber
Strikes a match on to light his pipe
Between a crag and a stormfall,
A tall stone in a field
Strayed reveller from the circling Brodgar dance,
The seapink stone
The stone the Ice Giant dragged out of Norway
The stone, Hesper,
That kisses a darkling ebbtide stone.

Principles of Humor Delivery

These are but a few of the principles of humor delivery I try to live by. This list is by no means comprehensive. It is, in fact, an attempt to organize what has heretofore been a largely organic exercise, so that your feedback will be most welcome.

1. When assaulting a person's dignity, do it in a fraternal fashion. This suggests that while you may be stupid, or clumsy, or slow, it's something we can both laugh about together, because I also am stupid, or clumsy, or slow. You stupid oaf. See, you're laughing at yourself already. This congenial fraternity is the most polite way for one man who has witnessed the embarrassment of another to defuse the situation.
2. Embrace understatement, but be not too subtle. Telling a joke so that only one person in a crowd gets it is not telling a joke, it's mockery. I try, as much as possible, to mock the overly subtle. The key to this is rephrasing what the precious one has said in the crudest fashion possible.



"No one in history has ever done anything this clever!"

3. Make frequent fun of self. I like to think that this works, but it might not. I consider it a way to gain credit which I can later spend on making fun of others. I am particularly blessed in this area, having both an over-the-top personality and an extreme physical type.
4. Know your place. Know who you're talking to. Sex, age, relation, familiarity. I like to push the boundaries of this stuff, but I only feel comfortable doing it because I know what the boundaries are. That's what makes me hilarious. 



From TheMaveSite.

5. Use your body. Yet not in a slapstick way, thou buffoon. Use it to shape your jibe: soften it with a finger waggle, sharpen it with a cocked eyebrow. 
6. Be crude in the right way. That is, know the power of pronouns. No need to be obscene or dirty when you can be earthy and crass instead. (I just felt another post idea kick.) If a co-worker tells you, oh, for example, "That's what my grandmother used to say, 'I'll take the gilded lily.'", what could be easier than saying "I'll take your gilded lily", or even better, "I'd like to give you my gilded lily."



"Sure, baby, sure. I'd love to give you my gilded lily. Or wait, do I take your gilded lily? What are we talking about again?"

7. The body is sacred. That is to say, you could set off an entire thread on socialanxietysupport.com by  putting a firecracker in someone's butt, and that would only be mean, and not at all funny. Well, the firecracker wouldn't be funny, but the thread would be. Maybe that was the plan all along. Saying to yourself "the body is sacred" will guide you through the minefield of practical joking, so that cellophaning a toilet is funny (friend late-night pees on feet and has to clean up spill) while tipping over a porta-potty is verboten.

There are probably a few more floating through the aether This post will require a sequel, "How To Take A Joke". Expect it.

Moustache Protection Spoon!

This, apparently, is real. Was real. In a bygone golden age. Observe how neatly the moustache is kept out of the soup. The engineering ingenuity we apply to folding strollers the men of that age applied to tableware.

George Mackay Brown Pipe Poem #1: Weather Forecasts

Weather Forecasts

Seven old fishermen
Sit on the sea wall in the sun.
A storm, a week away,
Frets their blood.
They smoke pipes. They reckon
A few baskets of cod between now
And the purple chasms westward.

I sit in my rocker
Watching 'the fronts' on a glimmering screen.

I'm Willing To Drink Light Beer Now

I would like to be drafted into an old-timey bare knuckle boxing match. I've even hunted for boxing gyms in the area...the only thing I can find is fitness boxing, you know, the kind that women take. And I've looked for judo dojos...all I can find is MMA and faddish taekwondo. Alas.

If I'm not likely to bare knuckle box, I can tell you what I'm likely to do now that I've seen this video: drink Heineken Light.