The Lowest Form

I am an opponent of the death penalty – I feel aggrieved for those affected by violent crime, but I also don’t think “an eye for an eye” is the way to rid the world of it, especially given the fallibility of law enforcement and the court system (in every country, I mean).There are humans involved. It also doesn’t seem to have fixed anything in the time we’ve been on the planet, except perhaps to give some hollow sense of vengeance for the victims’ relatives.

Now that my cards are on the table as being “soft on crime” (as some will no doubt say) because I’m a “bleeding heart” (fair enough - I agree and I’m proud of my compassion), it’s still hard for me to avoid making jokes about the whole situation. Or indeed most situations.

The Internet and mobile phones have made spreading jokes much easier than it used to be. I had received emails containing jokes about Michael Jackson’s death before I even knew he was dead. That’s how I found out, in fact. This is an exception, of course. Most humour regarding celebrity deaths give a period of grace of at least a day or two before surfacing and making their way around the inboxes.

So what makes MJ any different? Well, the poor guy had become a parody of himself in life, and had been accused (and was therefore guilty in the minds of many) of some pretty heinous crimes against children. His talent notwithstanding, these attributes were apparently enough for any thoughts of a joke amnesty to be abandoned in his case. Elvis Presley had also become a parody of himself, but jokes about him were limited (after a few days, or perhaps years) to his accent, his weight, his diet of fried peanut butter sandwiches and his clothing. All fairly obvious and benign. John Lennon is still off-limits (maybe he’s just not good for material), although there are some unkind gags still being made about his wife (Dennis Leary and Ricky Gervais are two I’ve heard do this), which is hardly the same thing. MJ, in the same stratosphere of superstardom as the other two, was afforded none of the same reverence because he had pushed himself past the point of being lovable for many people, with the notable exceptions of the Philippines’ prison population and some zealots who were queuing out the front of the US embassy in Moscow to lay flowers – weirdness attracts weirdness, I guess.

Several famous people have passed away this year (OK, I hate that expression too. Let’s go even more politically correct and say they’ve become “mortally challenged”), many having to wait for at least 3-4 days before a single joke was told about them. Some didn’t even rate that level of reverence – for instance, I haven’t heard a single Patrick Swayze joke. Let’s try shall we, and see who we can offend? How about “Apparently now Patrick’s been buried he’s still dirty, but no longer dancing” or “Did you hear that Patrick’s using the Stanislavsky method for his role in Ghost 2”? Lame. In fairness to me, he wasn’t a particularly comical character in general and he died of a horrible, painful disease, which hardly makes for rich comic pickings. MJ died as he lived – in strange circumstances, which makes it far easier to poke fun at. Does that mean we should? Why not? Someone will always be offended by something (one only has to read comments below just about any blog, this one included, to know that, but that’s for another column). So why walk on eggshells?

It seems to me that laughter from tragedy is a long-established method of dealing with the uncomfortable. Russians are usually pretty good at this, but then they’ve had their fair share of tough times. Of course, they’re allowed to do it to themselves, but are not fond of others poking fun at them. Who is? Perhaps this is one of the boundaries of black humor: it’s not quite as funny if you’re the one experiencing the tragedy, unless it’s actually you making the joke. Sure, not everyone finds solace in this kind of levity, but for those who do, it can be as cathartic and therapeutic as a visit to a counsellor. Cheaper too.

I once witnessed a guy commit suicide from a bridge, and I subsequently made a police report giving my account of events as I had seen them. The policeman thanked me and acknowledged that this was not a pleasant thing to have observed. His recommendation: “Try to make jokes about it. That’s what we do, and we see some pretty horrific stuff.” I’m not sure if I managed to come up with anything remotely risible regarding the “jumper”, but I did take the police officer’s words on board. Working with the water police can be a drag, after all.

The plethora of jokes regarding the death of the Princess of Wales, in 1997, was a classic example of the sheer shock at the event and the subsequent outpouring of grief finding an outlet. Or perhaps an antidote. To those not entirely enamoured with the late-Princess, the extent of the mourning by some was a bit overwhelming and, some would say, over-the-top. My personal favourite was, “Did you hear that seven paparazzi have been killed in a Paris tunnel? They were being chased by Dannii Minogue.” This captured the argument about the right to privacy and played on the event itself without making direct reference to those who died. Dannii’s also been annoying me since she was a child star on an Australian variety show, so I could relate to the paparazzi in the joke – she’s hard to escape.

One of the pitfalls of the genre is, of course, the number of comedians and radio and television hosts who have a vested interest in creating throwaway lines about the misfortunes of others. Usually there is a sense of self-censorship in this task – not in the creative or brainstorming process, rather in what actually makes it into their routines. However, even these lines are occasionally blurred by those somewhat removed from the tragedy and, moreover, from their audience's sensibilities.

Whatever the “period of grace” is between a tragedy occurring and the creation of jokes about it, it should be noted that any group of words on the subject could be considered a death sentence. I guess it’s all in the execution.

So far, since my last column, I have begun - and got a fair way into planning and writing – no fewer than five “my next ones”. There’s something about a deadline, though, that is tantalizing and gives my “mature-aged” psyche a sense of living on the edge.

At school, I was always prone to turning essays in that had only been completed that morning on the bus. Of course, the handwriting was a bit scratchy (this was before laptops, but after papyrus), but I invariably managed to scrape over the line. As the saying goes, 50 per cent is a pass, 51 per cent’s a waste of time.

Sadly, this tendency had vanished little by the time I made it to university – something which I actually did defer until my early thirties. I had, by this time, become slightly more organized. Working fulltime and studying fulltime doesn’t allow much room for mayhem, so I found myself planning things ahead. My fellow students - full of the haughtiness that home-cooked meals and having your clothes washed and your house cleaned for you can do little to diminish – would ridicule me at the beginning of semester as I doggedly wrote down the due dates for assignments in my diary. This actually did help me, but I felt no small resentment when these same whippersnappers would beg for, and be granted, extensions on the basis that their cousin’s wedding had been on the weekend before, or that book regarding the influence of Laurence Sterne on Gogol’s writing had already been checked from the library under the name of “Higgs”, and was now overdue. No sympathy! No excuses!

As the saying goes, if you want something done, give it to someone who’s busy. Or, as my father used to say (it’s only fair that I quote him, having already given my mother’s wisdom a run), inertia breeds inertia. I have another take on it, which is that time is rather like a liquid: it will occupy the space afforded to it, or perhaps it is the reverse. Imagine that whatever it is you have to do is represented by one liter of fluid. If the container you are pouring it into is wide and flat, the liquid will occupy the allocated space. If, however, the container is narrow and tall, the liquid will also occupy this space. Hence, I always try, however vainly, to aim for a narrow and tall receptacle.

Then again, this theory has emerged from the same mind that says life (also time) appears to be twice as fast as it was when I was 20 because one year now represents one-fortieth of my life, whereas then it only represented one twentieth. Who could trust such logic? And why are you still reading this?

Whatever good habits I developed at university have largely been eroded by my time in Russia. This is a place in which it actually pays to do things at the last moment. I once met a Swedish expat here who claimed that having more than one administrative goal per day was folly in Moscow. He maintained that, if he achieved that one thing, he would be satisfied. Harboring any loftier goals is the path to disappointment, in his view. I wouldn’t go that far, but I have had my organizational efforts tested on several occasions. For example, it’s useless to try and plan a railway holiday more than 40 days in advance. The tickets simply are not on sale until then. Not only that, but you can’t get a price or a schedule beyond that timeframe.

One of the by-products of this notorious difficulty to get anything done is that supposedly noblest of virtues: patience. I’m not saying I’ve perfected it yet, but I’ve come a long way.

So what if I don’t manage to finish the four or five stories I started? Will anything catastrophic happen? I seriously doubt it. Will I get in trouble as a result? Highly unlikely. Will I disappoint my reader? Possibly, although I did send some nice flowers for her birthday. You never know, I may get around to the other stories sometime. And at least I have a couple in the pipeline for when that deadline rolls around again.

Until next time, then. Unless, of course, I’ve managed to put you off too.

If I had been asked the same question (and I do have quite a bit of food service experience), I’m quite sure I would’ve replied with a simple “yes” or “no”, and probably followed it up with exactly what it was that the customer was pointing at. Then again, that’s me.

If my Russian was fluent, I may have phrased the question in a different way, but would certainly have been prepared for what the answer might be. I tend to limit my questions in Russian, as there always seems to be some obstacle precluding me from attaining whatever goal I was hoping for. I may get the question out OK, but if I don’t get the desired outcome, I can be all at sea. Like the time I decided to start swimming for exercise.

Finding a conveniently-located pool was the first step. I was then forced to see a doctor to obtain a medical certificate testifying that I was fit to swim. The fact that this is valid for 6 months gave me newfound respect for the foresight of Russian physicians – they can predict that I won’t get sick for half a year! Truly inspirational. Actually, that part’s not true: I didn’t go to the doctor. I bought the “spravka” (certificate) from a forger via the Internet for 300 rubles, but it was just as effective. It declared me “fit” for six months and got me into the water. Having finally got to the stage of diving in, I was confronted by the lifeguard after my first lap, alerting me to the fact that I was required to wear a bathing cap in the pool. I pointed out to him that I am almost completely bald, but it didn’t make any difference. I asked him if I should also be wearing stockings, as I have more hair on my legs than my head, but I was given the all-clear on that score. The point of this story came at what turned out to be the last straw for me: when I was told I couldn’t swim on my second visit as it was “pensioner day” (I thought my baldness might count for something here too, but it refuses to pay off for me). No signs: you just had to know.

This is clearly not a matter of linguistic differences. Rather there are cultural differences coming into play. Russians don’t see the need to save themselves from future aggravated customers by posting a sign that will save these people two hours out of their day, and may even give them some residual goodwill towards the business.

If you think I’m being unkind towards Russians, you’re right, but I’m not saying that this doesn’t happen elsewhere in the world. And this is my main point.

The very fact that I had to qualify that my attitude to this issue is not exclusively directed towards Russians is indicative of my wariness about being misinterpreted. It’s also representative of the ability for native speakers of the same language completely to misunderstand one another.

Of course there are seemingly-limitless opportunities for regional varieties of English, for example, to cause all sorts of problems. I recall, when in the United States many years ago, a couple of American guys asking me if the term “wanker” was a positive or negative one, having recently been called that by a young Australian woman. I, of course, claimed it was one of the most flattering monikers in Australian (and British) vernacular. The girl was right, by the way.

On one of my rare visits to the pub, I recently voiced the personal opinion that a certain actor is, whilst very talented, very ugly. My audience of three or four fellow water-drinkers immediately rounded on me, saying things like, “We can’t all be Adonis” and other comments to that effect. The impression I got of their perception of what I had said was that I must, in voicing this opinion, think I am handsome. Nothing could be further from the truth (the thinking, I mean), and I still don’t understand how, in making a subjective judgment of someone else’s looks, it somehow relates to a comparison with mine. If I said, “Oh such and such is so handsome,” would it mean that I’m not – or think I’m not - or is this only applicable in the reverse? (This is what’s known as a rhetorical question, so please don’t feel the need to respond in the comments section with an appraisal of my photograph.)

We constantly misread people’s intentions in saying certain things, and it’s often based on our preconceptions, our cultural and social responses to certain issues and stimuli, and simply what kind of mood we’re in at the time. Clearly, this is an extension of my last column, but I’m referring more specifically to misinterpretations of issues between friends, family members and even partners. The old “male versus female” chestnut falls squarely into this category, but I shall leave it as fodder for other commentators. I haven’t the stomach for that, as I think I got a shrimp in my salad.