Monday, March 14, 2011
The best medicine
A Russian doctor has opened a clinic specialising in laughter therapy. His theory is that regular chortling is an effective treatment for a multitude of maladies ranging from high blood pressure to cancer. I can verify from personal experience that it works for constipation.
Although my current jungle diet makes my shit flow like a mudslide, I wasn’t able to follow it back in my circus days. I once got a concrete feeling in my colon after eating too many cream crackers, so I went to the bog and tried to empty my bowels by reading The Henry Root Letters. Believe me, there is nothing on Earth that feels like laughing out a turd – a mixture of agony, hilarity and relief in one big dump. My hooting and hollering caused people outside to wonder whether sadomasochist practices were going on. Fortunately they were too scared to intervene, which would have definitely resulted in an ugly incident.
Of course this doesn’t mean the clinic is bound to be a success, because there’s a big difference between gorillas and Russians. Laughter is a habit we have acquired from a carefree jungle lifestyle involving dancing, swinging and the spanking of baboons. The Russians, by contrast, have had very few opportunities for mirth in their grim and tragic history, bedevilled with notorious despots such as Ivan the Terrible and Igor the Horrible. I seriously doubt whether many of them even enjoy laughing.
When Solzenitsyn came to the West, the first thing he noticed was people smiling in the streets, which he found irksome.
“Their gossip, nonsense and vain talk belie an emptiness of the soul,” he pompously declared.
Silly old fart. Little did he realise, in his profound ignorance, that gossip, nonsense and vain talk have underpinned the greatest achievements of Western civilisation, including parliamentary democracy, the moon landings and talk radio. That’s what happens to a writer who shoots to fame as a chronicler of misery and oppression – he loses the ability to see past his nose.
Maybe the new Russia is different, though. Communism has been dead for 20 years and Boris Yeltsin could certainly act like a buffoon, albeit not a particularly funny one. Vladimir Putin still has the old KGB poker face, but the younger generation have invented some clever practical jokes, such as the mail-order bride who steals money from desperate fat men.
A very promising attempt at humour was recently made in St Petersburg by some up-and-coming artists, who drew a giant phallus on one of the city’s bridges. They called their creation “A Penis in KGB Captivity” to draw attention to heavy-handed police tactics during an international conference. There was talk of short-listing the graffiti for an art prize, but the authorities ordered the fire brigade to obliterate it with their hoses. They wouldn’t even let it stand proudly for the duration of the conference.
My question for the Russians is this: If you can’t laugh at a big willy, what can you laugh at?
Labels: laughter, penis, Russia, Solzenitsyn
Friday, April 27, 2007
The Penis Monologues
Whatever happened to that Australian duo who did on-stage origami with their willies? Their act was quite big in its day, but now seems to have shrivelled into obscurity. Apparently, their rubbery appendages could be twisted into most shapes with some dextrous handwork. I always wondered about the off-stage attention they got from their mostly female fans. How does having a celebrity penis affect a man’s sex life? Were girls thrilled at the prospect of being serviced by a famous dick? Or were they repelled by the idea of accommodating an organ they’d just seen impersonate Telly Savalas? I’m damned if I can guess how the sight of a man manipulating his member affects a woman’s libido.
The problem with acts like this is that they depend entirely on their novelty value. However much you dress it up, a penis will never be as versatile as a well-trained seal. It cannot slap its flippers together and bark, nor can it gulp down pieces of raw fish. Balancing a ball on its nose is fiendishly difficult. The public will eventually twig that a stick of rhubarb wearing a false beard could do it just as well.
When someone compared their act unfavourably with The Vagina Monologues, the Australian snake-handlers reacted scornfully.
"It's typical!” one of them sneered. “Women feel the need to talk about it and men just want to play with it!”
It’s a fair point. Unlike Vanessa Vagina, Peter Penis will never be admired for his conversational skills. He’s really a lot like a dog: arguably man’s best friend and certainly eager to please, but prone to overexcitement without proper training. There are said to be women who can make him stand to attention purely with their voices, but they never seem to boast about it. They’re too modest, if you ask me.
Of course, it’s easy to be negative and slate an act without suggesting a better alternative. As a former circus ape, I will admit to enjoying my work with midgets. I bounced them off trampolines, juggled them with my hands and feet, and hurled them at clowns. I loved to see them get the better of the clowns by running between their legs and head-butting their arses. The midgets and I got along like a house on fire, but woe betide any normal-sized human who treated those little terriers with disrespect!
In those days, the world’s number one midget was the Philippino film star Weng Weng. He used to play a spoof James Bond character in movies complete with ravishing women and low-flying actions stunts. His favourite tactic for dealing with the bad guys was to stamp on their feet and shoot them while they were rubbing their toes. As for the ladies, they would surrender to his cruel lust whenever he gazed darkly into their navels. Being three feet in height, he never needed to go down on a woman because he was already there.
A lot of people worry about midgets being exploited for cheap laughs, but in human society it’s generally those with the healthiest bank balances who laugh loudest. I’d certainly rather watch Weng Weng bite a few ankles than a pair of deformed dongs from Down Under. If I’m going to be entertained by a little prick, I’ll take the one that can do his own dialogue. A montage of Weng Weng’s work is linked here.
The problem with acts like this is that they depend entirely on their novelty value. However much you dress it up, a penis will never be as versatile as a well-trained seal. It cannot slap its flippers together and bark, nor can it gulp down pieces of raw fish. Balancing a ball on its nose is fiendishly difficult. The public will eventually twig that a stick of rhubarb wearing a false beard could do it just as well.
When someone compared their act unfavourably with The Vagina Monologues, the Australian snake-handlers reacted scornfully.
"It's typical!” one of them sneered. “Women feel the need to talk about it and men just want to play with it!”
It’s a fair point. Unlike Vanessa Vagina, Peter Penis will never be admired for his conversational skills. He’s really a lot like a dog: arguably man’s best friend and certainly eager to please, but prone to overexcitement without proper training. There are said to be women who can make him stand to attention purely with their voices, but they never seem to boast about it. They’re too modest, if you ask me.
Of course, it’s easy to be negative and slate an act without suggesting a better alternative. As a former circus ape, I will admit to enjoying my work with midgets. I bounced them off trampolines, juggled them with my hands and feet, and hurled them at clowns. I loved to see them get the better of the clowns by running between their legs and head-butting their arses. The midgets and I got along like a house on fire, but woe betide any normal-sized human who treated those little terriers with disrespect!
In those days, the world’s number one midget was the Philippino film star Weng Weng. He used to play a spoof James Bond character in movies complete with ravishing women and low-flying actions stunts. His favourite tactic for dealing with the bad guys was to stamp on their feet and shoot them while they were rubbing their toes. As for the ladies, they would surrender to his cruel lust whenever he gazed darkly into their navels. Being three feet in height, he never needed to go down on a woman because he was already there.
A lot of people worry about midgets being exploited for cheap laughs, but in human society it’s generally those with the healthiest bank balances who laugh loudest. I’d certainly rather watch Weng Weng bite a few ankles than a pair of deformed dongs from Down Under. If I’m going to be entertained by a little prick, I’ll take the one that can do his own dialogue. A montage of Weng Weng’s work is linked here.
Labels: midgets, penis, Weng Weng
