We need more humor.
It is hard keeping paper money dry when you live in the water. That is why I always kept my lari¹ in coins. Coins don’t get soggy. I think that is why American sturgeons switched to credit cards and then many got themselves into so problems with debt. Get too much debt, and then you start acting irrationally. At least that is what my mother taught me. I will admit fish don’t have pockets, so it a little hard to swim around with coins when you have fins. (If you are wondering how we do it, we use the urogenital aperture. Yes, it is where the expression comes from – filthy lucre, (money) – you humans are not very original; you copy everyone).
Certainly, if you look at America to-day, you will see that it is at war with itself. They are not a happy people. Which perhaps is why they like starting wars around the world. Having money makes you greedy for more money, which makes you seek power and control. You are never going to be happy if you want power and control – you are nervous you might lose what you have to someone else!
Look at the Rome. When I was a fry, we were taught Rome fell as Romans never learnt how to swim. Jealous, and bored, they built roads to have something else to do. Then the sun and the cold alternatively cooked and froze their heads. No wonder they had to wear helmets and clothes. Romans were not happy people either – look how few comics they had, too. Their famous one, Catullus, could only make jokes about sex. Well, of course, it is easy to make fun of humans having sex. What a silly business they have made it. While we are talking of Ancients, Homer, of course, wrote his epic about the ANGER of Achilles. It isn’t about Illium (Troy), you know, it is about the absence of humour – that vanity of men – PRIDE! Menelaus, after all, didn’t want to lose his asset, his bedroom toy, his pretty wife Helen.
It hasn’t changed. It is time to think why Russia is doing well these days – despite all the predictions. There was a time when the Soviets ran Russia, and things were bad. How do you cope when the Bolsheviks destroyed your country? You laugh. And if you were to laugh, you would be better for it. When the Soviet Union was flailing helplessly, many jokes such as ones like this were common:
An American, on holiday, visits the Kremlin and sees an old man sitting on a wall
doing nothing. He asks him what he is doing. He says, “I am paid 2,000 rubles a
year to sit here and wait for the dawn of the Great Socialist Day.” The American
says, “That is nonsense. Come and sit on the steps of the Capitol in Washington
and I’ll pay you $50,000 per annum to wait for the collapse of the American
Dream.” The old man replies, “Not interested. My job will last a lifetime.”
It is funny as it there is a twist about who and what is being teased. The best humour comes when it is not all explained for you; a moment’s reflection is required. It’s not pride and greed here. The poor Russians KNEW that they were screwed by the Bolsheviks. It was acceptance for them. And they shook their heads and laughed. Americans need to laugh that FEMA has no money to give the deplorables as it all went for bombs to kill Ukrainians! And Americans still lost this war, too! Speaking of irony!
That’s why I have included two pictures by James Gillray, the father of caricature. The first one, Fashionable Contrasts, (at the top of the page), created a stir in 1792. Back then, things looked gloomy, with the Storming of the Bastille a few years earlier, heads rolling in the street during the September Massacres, the mob attacking the Tuileries and the French Royal Family imprisoned. (Remember, the French couldn’t swim either). Distractions are good to escape from reality. A fad is a distraction, and one that developed in England was for the dainty feet of the Duchess of York, Frederica Charlotte. She had just married Frederick the Duke of York and Albany, and now the public could hope for a peaceful hereditary succession as one of the King’s sons was married. Maybe the sordid tales of mistresses and gambling debts were past. So, since humans are the unthinking sheep that they are, they all wanted small feet, and the talk of the town night and day was small feet. Something like fads of our times, (like ‘black lives matter’, what pronouns you use, etc.), Gillray was annoyed, and drew his picture. I have always suspected Gillray wishes he were born a sturgeon, (or that, at least, he could swim), since it is obvious he thought ‘feet’ looked ridiculous and ungainly. (There is nothing as provocatively seductive as a fish moving gracefully in the water with its gorgeous dorsal, pelvic and caudal fins! And we don’t have to worry about shoes – let alone making sure shoes and clothes match!)
Just like the Soviet joke, the picture’s effectiveness lies in what is not said. The shoes’ position clearly indicate the Duke and Duchess are copulating. My! What an effect this naughty suggestion of the Royals had on the insane love for tiny feet at the time. The fad of worshipping tiny feet died quickly.
The second picture of Gillray’s, below, will bring back memories of your recent Covid pandemic. Inoculation was a new thing in Gillray’s time, with some suspecting that cox-pox inoculation, instead of mitigating the effects of the small-pox if you were infected with it, might cause cows to start growing from your appendages…
Of course it is funny. This is why we need humour. More humour. We all need to relax, to be in less of a hurry, a little less judgemental, a little less sure of the efficacy of ‘the flavour of the day’, to just spend more time floating in water….and swimming!
’ Lari is the currency of Georgia, where Zarinaya, an elderly Ossetian sturgeon, lives in a retirement home for fish great-great-great-great-great grandmothers in Batumi.
Contributed by Zarinaya Hagana
