Laugh To The Max

Max was born in 1952. He was the creation of Pericle Luigi Giovanetti, a Swiss draughtsman, painter and illustrator of Italian and French parentage, born in Basel during the First World War. 

Among Giovanetti's earliest commissions were some cartoons which were published in 1951 in the British satirical magazine Punch. These were soon followed by the artist's defining creation, the wonderful Max, a marmot and the main character in a series of homonymous comic strip adventures, published initially in Punch but soon to break out into the wider world.

Max the Marmot by Pericle Luigi Giovanetti

Max was based on Giovanetti's love of the European marmot, then to be found in the hill country of his native Switzerland. (I don't know if there are any left... that could be a poem: 'Are There Still Marmots In Switzerland?') The illustrator depicted his anthropomorphic marmot in a steady stream of witty and wordless cartoons which soon became best-selling books the world over, for Max's humorous mis-happenings transcend the barriers of language, and have amused and delighted children and adults alike for generations now..

I still have a slightly marmot-eared copy of 'The Penguin Max', dated 1962, in which, across a succession of double-page spreads, good-natured but accident-prone Max engages in adventures ranging from four to a dozen story frames, all of which are beautifully sketched and very funny. 

My favourite is probably the strip in which Max writes a letter. I've had to reduce the scale of the scan to fit the blog, but you can probably click on the image to enlarge it and linger over the exquisite detail in each frame. 

Max writes a letter

I'm down south for the week-end, celebrating my elder daughter's birthday, looking through old family photographs and enjoying some time with my grandson, who is now walking. He's the happiest little fellow and a reminder that laughter  (a proper chortle in his case) arrives quite early in a child's development. He's not eighteen months old yet, but clearly finds all sorts of things funny, as did my elder daughter when she was at an even younger age (see below). Happy birthday. 

my elder daughter (and her mum) circa 1987

Today's poem is a steal and an extension from a joke doing the rounds on social media at the moment (for all poets are magpies). It's a marker of the times and an ode to paranoia.

Laughter

This evening I arrived home

to find the wifely one

sitting in the kitchen in the dark

nursing a large glass of white wine.

'Bad day?' I enquired solicitously.

'Not so loud', she replied sotto voce.

'Why are you whispering?' I asked.

Nervously, she enunciated softly

'Alexa reports on everything we say.'

I laughed, but my wife scowled.

The idea of Zuckerberg, Elon Musk,

some Chinese spies or Russian bots

monitoring suburban British houses!

 

Then I swear that Alexa laughed quietly, 

Siri, Telegram and Tik-Tok all chortled,

the refrigerator shook with silent mirth,

our kettle, microwave and toaster giggled.

Coincidence? The wifely one poured

another large glass and looked at me

with horrified eyes, while on the drive

the Tesla flashed its headlights twice

and somewhere nearby in the night 

a neighbour's TV chuckled like Muttley.

            

Thanks as ever for reading my stuff, S ;-)

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Slugs

I was having a cup of tea with my friend M in my kitchen, I hadn’t seen her for a while so was explaining the problem I was having with slugs gaining access from the yard. She looked thoughtful for a few seconds and then said “Are they like that?” pointing. I turned round my mug and there was a MASSIVE slug climbing up the side. And it was my Birmingham City one.

She couldn’t stop laughing and I was tempted to either give her a slug to the jaw or find a glass for a calming slug of whiskey. Actually I did neither, as my main concern was to get rid of the thing outside and then rescue my mug. But I couldn’t do it. Well, I could get rid of the slug but I had to chuck out my Blues one as well. Luckily, I had several others.

So slug is a funny type of word. When I envision the creature my image is of a soft, squelchy sort of thing making slimy tracks across concrete but a slug to the jaw is hard and a slug of Jameson looks smooth in the glass but packs a punch.

The problem with the kitchen slugs has gone so I suppose I now think of slug as in American hardboiled detective fiction. Here’s Raymond Chandler from ‘The Long Goodbye’:
She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you are glad you found out about the headache...Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the bravo’s rapier or Lucrezia’s poison vial.

As for the Jameson, I remember back in the ‘80s when I was living in Hammersmith. I had the day off to watch a Test Match on the tv. A pal had given me a bottle of the stuff and told me to try it. I poured myself a slug and it looked quite attractive and was so smooth going down. I didn’t look so attractive when I stood up and went down after half the bottle.

By this time in the writing I thought I’d better look up the origins of slug and if there were any other meanings of the word as I’d remembered it could also be something to do with a bullet and blow me there are at least another 15 meanings of the word. 

Here are a few:
A slow lazy person (probably from the Old Norse)
A solid block or piece of roughly shaped metal.
A black screen (television editing).
A counterfeit coin, especially one used to steal from vending machines (from 1880s).
The last part of a clean URL, the displayed resource name, similar to a filename.
A discrete mass of a material that moves as a unit, usually through another material.
A title, name or header, a catchline, a short phrase or title to indicate the content of a newspaper or magazine story for editing use (from 1920s)

But this is my favourite:
The imperial (English) unit of mass that accelerates by 1 foot per second squared (1 ft/s²) when a force of one pound-force (lbf) is exerted on it. Rarely used now.
Synonym: geepound
The average slug has a mass of around 0.00002 slugs.

I’d never heard of it.

The poem has been chosen solely because I can then use the words used by Tr: ‘slugs are homeless snails’.

Slugs

Who could have dreamed them up? At least snails
have shells, but all these have is—nothing.
Small black antennae like fat pins wave
as if they could take in enough to get them through.
Turn them over, they’re the soles of new shoes,
pale and unmarked as babies. They flow,
the soil itself learning how to move and, moving,
almost staying still, their silver monorail
the only evidence of where they’d been.
And they die quiet, or at least (thankfully)
out of the human ear’s range, between two stones,
under heels, shriveling in salt or piss, at the tips
of sharp sticks. Fight back, I hear myself say,
do something. Don’t just take it. But they die
as they had lived, exuding slime, like
the smaller boys, who’d just
stand there, miserable in short pants,
school socks down to their ankles,
school tie unknotted and askew, and flowing
from noses slow cauls of snot that
from time to time they’d lick or sniff back up
part way, until it flowed again, coating
the upper lip, falling into the mouth, mixing
with tears before anything had been done,
the fear itself enough, so even if we wanted
we couldn’t let them off. Sometimes it was
the knee “where you daren’t show your mother,”
other times the kick in the shins, the stick over
the head, the punch in the mouth, while they
just stood there, or double up, gasping
for breath, and we did it again.

                                                        Brian Swann

Source: Poetry (July/August 2012)

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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We Are Not Amused

In 1877 The New York Times reported that US Senator Roscoe Conkling poked fun at President Rutherford B. Hayes for using the word ‘We’ in speeches. He said that he had noticed three classes of people who always say ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ and they were emperors, editors and people with tapeworms.

But in English history the usage goes back further. The royal we, majestic plural (pluralis majestatis ), or royal plural was used by a single person who was a monarch or held high office. It was also used in certain formal contexts by bishops and university rectors. William Longchamp is credited with its introduction to England in the late 12th century, following the practice of the Chancery of Apostolic Briefs (Pause for consideration of this post ).

There is a more general term for the use of a we, us, or our to refer to oneself and that is nosism, a word which really needs brown in front of it. Or blue if you are a Birmingham City supporter.

It’s not possible to write about the ‘We ’ without mentioning the most famous recent usage of the word, by Margaret Thatcher in 1989 when she announced ‘We have become a grandmother’. I’m fairly sure Neil Kinnock responded the next time they clashed in Parliament with ‘We are not amused’ to something she had suggested.

Which brings us (the royal me) round to the ‘are not amused ’ part of the phrase. There are quite a few versions of how Victoria came to actually say the words ranging from Courtiers at her dinners to a performance of HMS Pinafore. And then there is the evidence of the monarch's granddaughter Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, who said in a 1976 interview that Victoria never actually made the remark. “You know, I’m so disappointed,” Alice said. “I asked her, and she never said it.”

We are not amused. But were we at the time? Do jokes become unfunny? Let’s have look at Victorian times and we have to thank Skedaddle for this:

‘Our understanding of Victorian humour is heavily dependent on the surviving historical record, which tends to privilege mainstream (and generally quite respectable) books and newspapers. The kind of jokes that were published in these texts were usually suitable for a family audience. In fact, many of the period's joke books took great pains to emphasise the respectability of their contents and their suitability for a domestic audience - an assurance that hints at the existence of unrespectable jokes, but gets us no closer to finding them’.

Actually Skedaddle does find some but I’m not repeating them as they are very unrespectable . Here’s a respectable one:
“See here waiter, I’ve found a button in my salad”
“That’s alright sir, it’s part of the dressing!”

As I’ve mentioned 1989 earlier let’s try that year’s humour. There are too many tv shows to mention but what a contrast between the last episode of Benny Hill on May 1st and the last episode of Blackadder Goes Forth on the 2nd of November. A poll has the final scene of Blackadder as the ninth most memorable moment of all time.

And what about now? We, as a viewing public, as far as I can tell are not as amused by current comedy programmes as in the past. Father Ted, Morecambe and Wise, Dad’s Army etc are still being watched. Pretty much the same on the radio with Around the Horne, I’m Sorry I haven’t a Clue (still going), Hitchhiker’s Guide etc. Maybe it’s just me.

As for a poem to illustrate ‘We are Not Amused ’ I’m at a bit of a loss. The only thing I can come up with is the following where the writer is not amused at the poem but we are.

The Tay Bridge Disaster by William McGonagall

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

‘Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”

And so on...

Terry Q.

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Satire To Die For

 Charlie Hebdo (French for Charlie Weekly) is a French satirical magazine featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. Stridently non-conformist in tone, the publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism, publishing articles about the far-right (especially the French nationalist National Front party), religion, politics and culture.

The magazine has been the target of three terrorist attacks: in 2011, 2015, and 2020. All of them were presumed to be in response to a number of cartoons that it published controversially depicting Muhammad. In the second of these attacks, 12 people were killed, including then publishing director Charb and several other prominent cartoonists.

While the court case into the most recent attack was underway in the French courts. a high school history teacher used copies of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons during a lesson on freedom of speech, a strongly held virtue of the French constitution. Days later the teacher was beheaded by an attacker n the street. Images and depictions of Muhammed are forbidden by Islam.  

The fact is that the editorial team at Charlie Hebdo were critical of every religion but not every religion believes that depictions of their God is blasphemous. Here in Britain, icons and statues depicting saints and even the Virgin Mary were removed from churches during The Reformation but that was in the 16th century. 

We have a long and agreeable relationship with political satire in the UK. Magazines such as Punch and Private Eye and television programmes like Spitting Image and Yes Minister engage with our love of lampooning politicians. President Trump has been the focal point of much hilarity in the British press for the last four years. No-one has taken to the streets and killed the editors. It doesn't seem right to shoot the messenger. 

The Human Rights Act Article 10 protects your right to hold your own opinions and to express them freely without government interference.

This includes the right to express your views aloud (for example through public protest and demonstrations) or through:

• published articles, books or leaflets
• television or radio broadcasting
• works of art
• the internet and social media

The law also protects your freedom to receive information from other people by, for example, being part of an audience or reading a magazine.

As a writer and poet, I fervently stand by the right to freedom of expression. There is no freedom more important in a democracy. One only has to look at recent events in Hong Kong to realise that our freedoms are worth fighting for - and perhaps in the case of the staff at Charlie Hebdo  worth dying for.

Freedom

I was settling to notebook on Wednesday,
propped up on cushions, my pen filled with ink,
I switched on the telly for inspiration
and there was Hollande, addressing his nation.
His words in the face of a cowardly attack,
ignited French hearts with the fire to fight back.
With Passion for freedom,
patriotism free from oppression,
and power that derives only from freedom of expression,

rights hard-won through Revolution.
Knock one of them down
and a million will stand for the French Constitution.
They have no fear of insurgent suppression,
offend the French way –
they send in the Legion.
So what if some people have no sense of humour,
they laugh at their own - so why not at others?
And what of our British way of life?
Will we stand and be counted or run for our life?
Will we speak for the speechless?
Will we welcome the friendless?
Will we hold out a hand in a gesture of kindness,
or will we turn our backs,
alienating the mindless?
We’re enabled free thinkers,
we are Lancashire Dead Good Poets,
we welcome all voices,
and we want everyone to know it.
JE SUIS CHARLIE

Thanks for reading. Adele

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