Tasteless Jokes by Blache Knott – I have a note on the subject at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/07/tasteless-jokes-by-blanche-knott-6-out.html where I have hundreds of other reviews - 7 out of 10

 

Tasteless Jokes by Blache Knott – I have a note on the subject at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/07/tasteless-jokes-by-blanche-knott-6-out.html where I have hundreds of other reviews

 

7 out of 10

 

The definition of tasteless jokes is important here, well, to use a word, one has to know its significance, albeit we understand different things when using the same mot juste, as Thomas Mann has explained https://realini.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-magic-mountain-is-classic-that.html in one of his short stories, looking at love

 

There are people who declare with pomposity that ‘their love is beyond words, nothing can explain, describe their glorious feeling’, nevertheless, in that short story, one personage is of the opinion that you can find love only in art, literature, for when you test the feeling in real life, you find that it was just some attraction or temporary infatuation

Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis https://realini.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-kings-english-guide-to-modern-usage.html has also looked at the way the significance of words has changed, and gives the example of infamous, which could not be used any more, since it had started losing the original meaning, based on infamy

 

I would say that what is tasteless for one, can be amusing for another, and it also depends on the context, we have a ‘dry joke here’, which is something like: Stephen the Great to his soldiers, on one of the battlefields, Vaslui, ‘my men, get on the horses’, and then they reply ‘your majesty, we have none’, so the prince says ‘goodbye then’

But that is pure nonsense for a foreigner, only in the local tongue, you have the essential ‘pe’, used both in on horses and for goodbye, see you soon, ‘on another day then’, if you will, still, it is not the most hilarious, vivacious piece of humor, that is why I put it here with tasteless, along with another, here you are

 

A question goes ‘how much?’ and the answer is five, and then there is another query, ‘what five’, and so the retort now is ‘what how much’, something like that, pure tasteless humor, but overall, we lived here in a communist society, and even worse, the tyrant was one Ceausescu, the absolute tasteless joke, a cynical one indeed

The man was funny, in an absurd way, and if anybody would be predisposed, in the mood to laugh, for you had the nomenclature, apparatchiks, who benefited and were afraid to lose the privileges, and the privileges normal folks or what you find in Animal Farm https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/01/animal-farm-by-george-orwell-magnum.html

Just like in George Orwell ‘some animals were more equal than others’ – incidentally, Orwell, Kingsley Amis have been communists in their youth, there was a saying or joke with ‘who is not a commie when young, has no heart, who is still a communist when older, has no brain’ - and those in power were ludicrous

 

Nicolae Ceausescu was cunning, although I would not call him ‘intelligent’, in spite of the rise to power, with so few skills, practically no education, which would make some say ‘oh, native intelligence’, it is mostly explained through the perversion of the system, doctrine, it comes down to the Soviets imposing that shit on us

The dictator would address the crowds – made to stand there for hours, not because they loved the leader, as the slogans went, they called him the Beloved Conducator – but he would have these horrible distortions, could not say friends properly, he would say ‘preteni’, like missing the d in friends maybe, he was a jackass

 

So, you could see that for a detached observer, it could be amusing, Orange Jesus comes to mind, and the manner in which he spoke to another ghoul, Musk, on X recently, when the ‘very stable genius’, sounded as if he had just placed his fake teeth in the mouth, and what he said was preposterous, as always, this is the paradigm of the stupid

We had to survive with jokes, again, just like the way to find out the newest monstrosity – not the miracles his hoi polloi, the deplorables - Hilary was absolutely correct in saying it, however counterproductive it might have been - expect – committed by Orange Jesus would be by watching late night shows, Seth Meyers is my favorite

 

The jokes, tasteless sometimes, had a way of explain what happens, when I was in the hospitality business, I would welcome my guests to the country – bruhim abaim le Romania, if they were from Israel, and most of them were – with some blagues, to show them the way things were, and to make it more palatable

I would play Chili Palmer from Get Shorty https://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/get-shorty-by-elmore-leonard-aka.html with his line ‘I am the one telling you the way it is’ and then say some truth about the commie ways, to attenuate the shock, because these visitors would be travelling in time, they returned to the past

 

So, I would quickly say let me explain – like Chili Palmer – and here is the joke – Ceausescu, Brezhnev and Reagan – whoever was then in power, more likely Gorbachev – come on television, the American says ‘it is the end of the world, we take space ships and leave, the Russian says much the same thing, while Ceausescu has a different line

‘Do not worry, we are anyway one hundred years behind’, you see, it is tasteless, one has to be looking at that grim picture, which showed that it was a genuine time machine they were in, for the streets, buildings, people, everything was grey and form another age…

 

 Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”