or
All
Those Things About Which We Are No Longer Allowed To Laugh[1]
What's the difference
between light and hard?
You can sleep with a
light on.
*
What do you call a guy
driving a Rolls Royce?
Really. A chauffeur? A driver?
A cabby who doesn't know
when he's got too much of a good thing? A
car thief?
*
For all the
agriculturalists who are interested in cultural trivia:
Why does Dolly Parton
have such a small waist?
Because things don't
grow well in the shade.
No longer able to laugh? My thought is simple. While poorer people in poorer countries are
invariably experiencing cultural upheaval as they are dragged into the
industrial age, affecting even the minutest details of their lives, so too are
we. We do not purchase fuel for our
cars, buy cocoa, think of coconut, drink a fair-trade coffee without thought of
something… oh but we love our coffee. Upheaval
for a moment. Sigh. Political correctness. Exhaustively self-conscious, we rage against
ourselves in the name of utopia.
[1] A volunteer in international development has been almost invariably
someone who chooses to work in a poor country for, say, the financial
equivalent of a local salary, sometimes called a stipend. The dollar amount figure and value of
volunteering is (and is not) irrelevant.
There is full health insurance, travel to and from the country, a
housing allowance, and various other benefits, depending on the program and
organization. Your local national
colleagues have the salary equivalent – minus the benefits + the
kickbacks. Maybe it works out the same.
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