PSA: Please note, this article can be reviewed just for the writing, or for the humor, or both. You decide. If you know a good joke, leave it in the comments. I am always looking for new materials.
If careful calculation is correct, this is the third time I have written about humor, the power, the majesty, and the gut-splitting good times humor provides. Oddly enough, I am a big fan of dad jokes, but not a dad. I prefer humor that is funny for the fun, not the shocking or profane, merely a good laugh. Of the funniest songs I have ever heard, Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown take the top billing with the song, “Make ‘em Laugh.” Cole Porter also tickled my funny bone with a similar song, “Be a Clown.” However, since I detest clowns, I cannot like this song very much. Both songs are linked for your listening and watching pleasure. Do you find clowns creepy in the Stephen King kind of creepy?
One of the truths about humor is embedded in the lyrics of Make ‘em laugh:
Cosmo:
Though the world is so full of a number of things,
I know we should all be as happy as
But are we?
No, definitely no, positively no.
Decidedly no. Mm mm.
Short people have long faces and
Long people have short faces.
Big people have little humor
And little people have no humor at all!
And in the words of that immortal buddy
Samuel J. Snodgrass, as he was about to be lead
To the guillotine:
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Don’t you know everyone wants to laugh?
(Ha ha!)
My dad said, “Be an actor, my son
But be a comical one
They’ll be standing in lines
For those old honky tonk monkeyshines.”
Now you could study Shakespeare and be quite elite
And you can charm the critics and have nothin’ to eat
Just slip on a banana peel
The world’s at your feet
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em…
Make ’em laugh
Don’t you know everyone wants to laugh
My grandpa said go out and tell ’em a joke
But give it plenty of hoke
Make ’em roar
Make ’em scream
Take a fall
But a wall
Split a seam
You start off by pretending
You’re a dancer with grace
You wiggle ‘till they’re
Giggling all over the place
And then you get a great big custard pie in the face
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Don’t you know… all the…wants..?
My dad…
They’ll be standing in lines
For those old honky tonk monkeyshines
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Don’t you know everyone wants to laugh?
Ah ha ha ha ha ha há
Ah ha ha ha ha ha
Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Make ’em laugh, ah ah!
Make ’em laugh, ah ah!
Make ’em laugh, ah ah!
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh!
“Don’t you know that everyone wants to laugh?” There is much truth in this line, but laughing is a choice. We choose what to laugh at, decide when to laugh, and choose, with the resulting consequences, what is found humorous. The first time I saw the movie “Singing in the Rain,” from whence the song “Make ‘em laugh” originated, I thought this song was ridiculous. Recently I saw the movie again, and this song was hilariously funny and laughed so hard I cried. What changed; certainly wasn’t the movie which was made in 1952; the acting had not changed, the actors are dead; I changed. The first time I saw this movie, I was exhausted after prepping for a holiday meal, I was strung out from too much work, and nothing was funny. This last time, I had changed mentally and physically, which made all the difference.
What is the lie in the song “Make ‘em Laugh?” Simply put, nobody can make you emote if you choose not to, a powerful lesson indeed. I grew up in a big family, and there are seven of us kids; my uncle brought his four and then had a couple more, aunts, uncles, cousins, and more if you took the Salisbury family, those still living could still essentially fill a couple of venues. My older brother was always trying to “make you laugh.” He failed for many reasons; the first was I never thought he was funny.
My older brother could take a joke I laughed at and kill the joke in the retelling. I never met another person so anxious to make people laugh and like him, who failed so completely and miserably. Take the funniest joke you know, put that joke in my older brother’s mouth, and that joke will fall flat, and you will wonder why it was funnier previously. It never ceases to amaze me how this person can kill a joke, especially when he is such a joke himself.
Long have I maintained the following formula:
[(Dark Humor + Intelligent Humor + a Warped sense of Humor) (Shaken not stirred)] = Me laughing hysterically!
I like to laugh. I need to laugh, or the depression and anxiety become too great and I am angry. This last week has been no picnic with the continuing crush from the VA-OIG, add the IRS and several state departments of revenue, and I needed to find humor. Combined with the ongoing dissertation pains and the need for a good chuckle was mandatory! Without further ado, here are things that leave me laughing in the aisles. If repeats are found from previous posts, you have my apologies!
May you choose to enjoy!
© Copyright 2022 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
Last night, during one of my frequent periods of wakefulness, a headline blew my mind, “There is no difference between blood and blood – Horowitz removes restrictions on gay men donating blood,” as reported by the 
Now, we return to the crux of the argument. If “Blood is blood,” then being vaccinated does not matter because blood is blood and public health and safety are not issues where communicable or infectious diseases are concerned. If this is correct, why do we still have COVID restrictions? If blood is not blood, why bow to political pressure on something that is definitely not a political but a medical safety issue? Politicians and those who cling to the government for an answer to every single problem cannot have this issue both ways. Either blood integrity and safety is a medical issue where common sense practices trump individual rights for the common good and safety of donating life-giving fluids, or life requires taking risks, and we can shut down the regulatory boards and panels, reducing the costs of medicine. I am all for reducing the size and cost of government; while I might not argue fully for making all those cuts in medicine regulation, a choice needs to be made and then supported. Choose wisely!
I know what you’re thinking, not another article on controlling emotions and feelings – well, yes. However, I wanted to approach this subject from a different tack. I discuss this topic so often because of the dearth witnessed in choosing proper emotional responses or not choosing an emotional response to the improvement of the environmental conditions in a situation. Across the globe, we find daily, even hourly, instances where emotional diatribes are ruling common sense, destroying logic, and creating hordes of emotionally charged people hell-bent on destroying. If I can help just one person understand this cycle of emotional abuse and then choose to correct their behavior, even if that person is only me, I consider these articles successful
Today’s title comes from Charles W. Penrose (n.d.), who penned the following poem, which has been set to music; the poem is based upon Proverbs 16:32, “One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and one whose temper is controlled than one who captures a city.”
As a kid, if my parents did not like another child’s behavior, I was refused the opportunity to play with that child for fear the child’s emotional behaviors would rub off on me, and I would begin to act like a nincompoop! Yet, as an adult, I can witness rampant emotionally charged conduct, and I have to tolerate nonsense due to helicopter parents, political choices, and the media; I think not! I firmly support 
Thus, on this Memorial Weekend, let us firmly recommit to 
Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write and is the competence of knowledge in a specific area. The links between literacy and freedom continue to be hotly debated among scholars, especially those scholars who choose to be revisionist historians. One of the essential distinctions in scholars is those centered around revisionists. No matter the flavor of a scholar, revisionist scholars always support a policy of revision or modification, or worse, advocate for the same. Revisionist scholars are always looking to revise a topic’s history to fit a political bend for personal gain and political profit.
The most egregious example of this is found in the revisionist historians who derive from journals or other documents the sexuality of a historical figure, based upon the scholar’s agenda, political flavor, and the understanding of today’s culture. During the summer of 2020, America saw many revisionists trying to rewrite history where statues and historical reasoning for erecting those statues were concerned was blatantly attacked by ignorant savages! By changing history, the culture shifts ever so slightly, and it is only a few degrees of separation across time that can eradicate truth and leave myths instead of fact.
The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-Day Saints reveres “The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ” as scripture. In that book, there are two accounts of people who did not have records to teach reading and writing in their respective populations, which, when taught reading and writing, gained economically, financially, and developed new thinking and acting methods. One of the first points in “The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ” the point is made that without written records, people’s memories cannot be passed down, historical lessons are lost, and art, culture, craft, industry, and so much more stem from the ability to read and write and records are critical to human understanding and growth. While I am not here to debate religion, the historical underpinnings of needing to read and write as social customs with power are well established. Consider the Old Testament and the Jewish culture and society, and the same pattern is discovered, when the people know how to read and write, they are different from those who do not know how to read and write.
Mark Twain is also quoted as, “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” These quotes point to the specific problem facing America. In every society globally, literacy has been purposefully designed to be worth less to people by conspiring leaders who want and need drones instead of people. The world is poised on the knife blade’s edge of history, pushed there by those conspirators, and every person is now faced with a choice, stand and learn, or remain ignorant and fall. If we fall, we will fall an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle, and our graves will be cursed by those who come after us.
Let the scholars argue about how to measure literacy in a person and a population, but for us, let us measure literacy by how often we read a full book, paper, or eBook and write. Not just emails for work, but journals, blogs, our histories, and family histories. The aim is not to get readers as much as it is to exercise the power of writing.
Jim Croce wrote a song asking a simple question, “Which way are you going?” I know my direction; I am headed to a library, a bookstore, and then a computer to record my thoughts, for I desire more literacy. Join me and let us make a “Liberty FIRST Culture” where literacy is cherished as the source of our collective mental batteries!
© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
Jim Croce is responsible for the title of this article; he sings 
We have a fraudulent president, a congress that refuses to listen to the American people; we have legislatures, governors, mayors, and so much more working against the citizenry for political power and personal gain. Well, America, which way are you going? Will we step up and resist, or will we sit and lose?
Do you understand the complex truth hidden in this stanza?
Hold one; why not shift the paradigm and change the questions?
I am done with both the Republicans and the Democrats; neither party is aware nor even listening to the citizens. The extreme elements in the Democratic Party, the environmentalists, the LGBTQ+ community, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, etc., all have made their choices and must live with the consequences. However, this does not mean the rest of the country has to take the same path to death and destruction.
DNC-Consulting 