Monday, August 20, 2012

like, cool cats, man






From The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
The role of Maynard G Krebbs was played by Bob Denver, who went on to become even more famous as Gilligan.

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Some people enjoy junk mail, but to me it’s just junk. Whenever I take it out of the box and drop it straight in the recycle bin, I tell myself that delivering junk mail provides someone with pocket money and exercise, and keeps Australian printers busy. But I do wish they wouldn’t clog up the mail part of the mail box, or push the junk mail that’s already there further in to make space for theirs, because it just falls into the garden in a spot that’s hard to get at.

The mail mail is usually junk too. Mainly it’s just bills, or threat threat letters from Senna Link. Sometimes I just look at the envelope and dump it on my desk for later, it’s all so ho hum.

But what can top the excitement of receiving an unexpected letter or parcel in the mail?

For years, one of my cousins and I were pen pals. She’s a few years older than me, but we’ve always been firm friends, and she still sends me letters – always hand written – occasionally.

More than 50 years ago I was spending some school holidays at my grandmother’s house in Wonthaggi. I can’t remember why I was the only kid there at that time, but as much as I loved my grandmother, sitting around with older people can be a tad boring. One of Z’s letters arrived from Melbourne and I read it so many times that to this day I can still remember it was full of her latest riddles:

Q. What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill?
A. Here come the elephants.

Q. What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill wearing sunglasses?
A. Nothing – he didn’t recognize them.

Q. What’s small and black and tears around a bowl of custard at 60 miles an hour?
A. A prune with an outboard motor.

Q. Why do elephants wear ripple-soled desert boots?
A. To give the ants a 50 / 50 chance.

Ripple-soled desert boots were pretty cool, and so was Z. She desperately wanted to be a beatnik when she was old enough to do her own thing. In the meantime, she just drove her family crazy banging away on a set of bongo drums.


14 comments:

  1. Maynard G. Krebbs was definitely a cool cat. The prune joke gets my vote.

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    1. The prune joke was the coolest of the lot, Windsmoke.

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  2. Ahhh I remember the days of pen pals. I miss those days. I loved writing actual letters.

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    1. There was a sense of excitement about being on the receiving end of something totally personal, I think, and hoping whoever we were writing to would be waiting to hear from us.

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  3. I like the desert boot joke. Am I weird for liking Bob Denver in this show? Not so much in Gilligan's Island.

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    1. Maynard was a two dimensional character, whereas Gilligan seems to be a one dimensional version of Maynard. Not weird at all.
      Don't know how I dragged the desert boot joke from the depths of my memory, most of the time I don't know what year it is.

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  4. Q What do you give a sick lemon?
    A Lemonade

    Told to me by a young chap many years ago, for some reason it still makes me laugh.

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    1. Thanks, Big Dog, this is a joke I can use. I'm more likely to encounter a lemon in the future than a desert boot. [All I have to do now is remember it.]

      With thousands of these 'kids-aged' riddles available, I guess the ones we like and remember are associated with the original teller somehow. Which is nice.

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  5. WE bought one of those signs"No junk mail" and stuck it on our letter box. It works. I loved the elephant jokes when the kids at school used to tell for morning session.

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    1. I was surprised to find there's a whole entry dedicated to elephant jokes on Wikipedia. There's a nice logic to them which was a good thing, because I never feel more stupid than when I don't "get" a joke.

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  6. Hi Fruitcake, thanks for joining up..I feel like I know you 'little' bit already from reading your comments on Andrew's blog!! As far as the junk mail goes, I do the same thing, straight into the bin, I do feel a 'guilty pang' for the trees that are cut down to produce them, but it is the recycling bin!

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    1. Hi Grace, it took me a while to work out how to sign up... and TY too. I love your sense of humour!

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  7. I like the first joke.

    I disagree about junk mail. I love it. I read every bit; and save it.

    Just kidding.

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    1. So, if you only like the first joke, Dina, does this mean the rest are 'junk mail'?

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