Humor

None of This Is True

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Even upstate New York gets rainbows. Here (above) is a photo to establish this. There is no rumor afoot that no one has started that some say can be interpreted to claim claims that upstate New York does not get rainbows. Nope. This should quash that bit of business right here and now, even though the photo was taken a couple years ago and does not have a location stamped on it.

Any one with a bit of Google gumption can suss out from the details that are not in the photo that the picture was taken in a side parking lot of an Applebee’s at around dinner time (EST), when the lines are long enough to spend the wait inside one’s car holding a plastic disc that will buzz unpleasantly when a table is said to be available inside. (Darn rumor-mongering plastic disc.)
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Planet Kitty

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The stories about Angel’s supreme being-ness are too many to recount and they bore her anyway. Our entire Planet Earth, all four rooms of it—and, really, that’s three rooms too many but space is needed for all seven billion humans upon it—are here because she willed it through complete indifference.

Without trying, but after a really deep stare at nothingness, there was tuna, and even better, salmon treats, but there was no one to bring these savories to her. She developed opposable thumbs but was bored with the effect and thus willed thumbs onto someone who could use them to bring her platters of tuna, and even better, salmon treats.
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Schadenfreude and Other Tongue-Twisters

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The term schadenfreude literally means damage-joy. When one enjoys the news that a rival is encountering trouble, one is experiencing a sense of schadenfreude. Most of us have experienced this feeling at some point in our lives, but most of us also have been jerks at some point in our lives, and the two sometimes come at the same time.

There is no real-world term for its opposite, so some people have begun to use a made-up word, freudenschade, to describe the distress one feels when a friend or rival is doing well or has had a success.

And then there are some people, I am thinking of the late Gore Vidal here, who appear to take pleasure at others’ distress at one’s success. Vidal confessed to feelings of schadenfreude over other writers’ freudenschade. (That is as hard to type as it is to say.)
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