Jesus, Networking

Angst Jöken! Jesus, Networking

Jesus, still a young man and idle between gigs as a carpenter, walks down by the wharf and approaches Jacob the fisherman to ask if he might have work. Jesus combs His hair and He asks of the old man: "Have you work for an honest fisherman?" Jacob, a gruff and salty fellow with a big black beard puts down the net he is repairing and gives Him a form, and Jesus dutifully fills out the application parchment.

Jacob,  eyes the form as Jesus looks up hopefully. "It says you spent two years building Samuel of Galilee's new tannery?"

"Yes," replied Jesus.

"And a year apprenticed to Mikal of Damascus cutting stones,"

"Yes," He replied again.

"And what about this, three months as tax assesor for the Romans?"

"I thought to try rendering things," He replied. "It was not my calling."

"Not much for holding a job, are you?" says Jacob, eying the young man doubtfully.

 "No, but perhaps you should check my career objectives." says Jesus.

"I see," says the old fisherman.  "And it's also your references I'm having trouble with."

Knock, Knock. Knock, Knock. Knock. Knock. :(

Knock. Knock. "Who's there?" The simple question was unanticipated, and oddly chilling. Silence falls heavily, as the knocker loses the heart to face real human contact, and walks off to gather what pleasures he might from the small path through the Arboretum.


 



The Long Dark Night at the Door

"Knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
"I no longer know."

The Other, With Suckers

A professor of literary theory is driving his pick-up down a country lane one night, when suddenly the engine stops, a strange wind begins, and the sky is filled with flashing lights. A UFO is landing right in front of him. He turns off his "Derrida-on-tape" and gazes in amazement as a slouchy set of purple and green aliens come down the landing ramp right toward him, squishing forward on their squid-like suckers, wearing berets and smoking Gauloises.

"Take me to the your existentialist leader, please." says one of the aliens, stroking his goatee.

"That's something of a contradiction in terms.  And it presumes a modernist dialectical supremacy which has been widely discredited." says the Professor.

"We are aware of that," says the alien. "Yet the logical tension within the construction of my question is not relevant to choosing to find what we desire. We choose, we ask, you may reply or not."

The Professor thinks for a second. 

"Jean-Paul Sartre is long dead."

"We know that - we wished to pay our respects. We aren't fools you know. You of all people should respect the culture of the Other."  To emphasize this point, one of the most purple aliens whips around it's seventeen arms like a tree in the wind, hooting wildly.

The Professor goes: "How do you know who I am?"

"We read your book at Altair-Seven book club."

"Well, I don't know where he's buried. France, I guess. Can't you just look it up?"

Exasperated, the alien takes a diffident puff and says: "No wonder you were denied tenure."

Within the Unfunny Joke Lurks The Hilarious Despair

There is a Sale at Nordstrom's on Alienation.  A very old Russian man, looking a little disoriented, is buying some new shoes. The saleswoman is a young blond with full breasts and a very low cut sweater, and kindly bends down to help the old fellow change his socks. "Vladmir, Dimitri!, I haven't seen you in years!," he exclaims. " But what happened to your beards?" Offended, the girl walks off in a huff.
     The old man, with a slight smile on his face, waits patiently for his friends and the beautiful girl with the big tits to come back, looking with a hopeful expression at the passing shoppers until the lights are turned off and the store closes, and he is escorted to the street by security.

Fantastic Land Wars in Asia. Napoleon, Alexander the Great and Ghenghis Khan are arguing over who the greatest military leader was, when Bob Dylan comes in, pulls out his guitar and sings Blowin' in the Wind. Just as he puts his mouth on the harmonica,  the great military leaders put their differences and considerable egos, and get up and stab him where he stands.
     But as Bob Dylan dies, the harmonica bleating out his last breath in D minor,  they stand uncertainly, staring at the blood on their hands, facing a shocked and increasingly belligerent audience of several hundred. There was a moment of self-aggrandizing catharsis, and now it has transmuted horribly into a very mundane act of murder. They watch as the crowd, armed with sticks, chairs, and small black boxes, approaches. Napoleon is the first to fall victim to an anonymous Taser.


line15=recycleemotionalstate. Four robots get up at 3AM to go fishing for bass, which they are programmed to not find boring. 

Hope on Pope.  The Pope is touring South Dakota, and stops at a local joint to have a bacon cheeseburger, when a cowboy and a robot walk into the same little diner.  He recognizes them from an embarrassing  previous joke, and tries to hide his face with his hand.  To his great relief, they walk on by, although he is fairly sure they recognized his pope hat and are ignoring him too. He feels a little bit sad- although the robot could be unpleasant, he sort of liked the cowboy.  However, when he turns around, a huge Grizzly Bear sits across from him in the booth, eating the Pope's excellent bacon cheeseburger.  The Pope and Bear stare at each other now, sizing each other up, playing a dangerous contest at which there can only be one winner.  Here is Nature's cold,  mad game of hunger and territory, at which the penalty for failure is death.

Das Angst-Jökens: Fear of a Bear Planet

#16. Fear of a Bear Planet.  One day a hunter goes deep into the Alaskan Bush hunting for bears. Carefully prepared with a high-powered rifle, .44 revolver, a big knife and pepper spray, he confidently scours the landscape looking for an impressive Coastal Brown Bear for a trophy. Losing the trail, he gets tangled in a dense thicket of alders, and getting increasingly panicky, stumbles and drops his gun, falling into a clearing where a huge, ferocious-looking brown bear is reading some papers. The bear, interuppted in the complicated task of  preparing his taxes, looks up angrily. The bear puts his calculator down and moves toward the fallen hunter like a giant furry boulder with 6 inch teeth and giant claws, growling.  The hunter tries to reach for his pistol, but his arm is broken. The knife has jammed in his leg. But he is just able to reach his pepper spray, and sprays the bear, which only irritates him further. The bear shakes his mighty head and keeps coming, raising himself on his hind legs to his towering height of 9 feet.  The hunter manages to reach his cell phone and says: "Please, Mr. Bear, just let me call my wife and say goodbye."  The bear raises his powerful claws and goes: "F---  you and your martyr complex!"

#17. Cultural Transgression.  A carrot and an onion are sitting in bowl waiting to be sliced up and dropped into a big boiling pot of beef stew. The onion turns to the carrot and goes: "I've always loved you."

#18. Styvyk, Ng, and Jones, Attorneys.   A man goes to ask about his terminal disease. He says, "Doc, how long have I got to live?"  Hearing nothing and seeing people staring at him, he asks again. "You can tell me Doc, how long do I have to live?" Silence. Assuming the worst, the man begs and pleads for some kind of answer.  But there is nothing, only more stares.  He leaves, shattered, suffering total fear and dread. The Doctor, wondering where his patient is, realizes he neglected to tell the man that his symptoms include total disorientation.

#19. Cabo San Lucas. A cowboy, the Pope and a robot had been enjoying a vacation together in sunny Mexico.  Then the robot takes the cowboy aside and tells him something with his robot accent.  Horrified, the cowboy turns to the robot and goes: "but why would he protect all those pedophiles?"

#20. Desperate Love. A group of young women are gossiping about a handsome, well-off bachelor who just moved into the neighborhood. "Do you think he likes me?," says one girl, the prettiest of the group. And her friend goes: "Yes, he finds you very attractive. It is his own company he finds to be loathesome and ugly, even repugnant."

Flightless Loathing in Paris

Angst-Jöken #10: The Kindly Ungulate

A guy gets hungry and orders a pizza by text message. He waits and waits. 3 hours later there's a knock on the door, and a Zebra in a Pizza Hut Hat asks him if he ordered two large Canadian Bacon and Pineapple pies. The guy stares in amazment at the talking Zebra. Then the Zebra goes "Oo, sorry man, this is for the dude across the street. Catch ya later!" and leaves. The guy is wracked by confusion, and becomes even hungrier. Later there's another knock on the door. It's the friendly zebra again. "Hey Dude! The guy wasn't home, so here! Have this extra pizza, free! Shaka-Bra!," he says cheerfully, waving his hoof, and drives off into the night. The guy stares at the free pizza, grateful but utterly revolted by Canadian Bacon and Pineapple on pizzas. Blinking twice and setting the pizza on top of the fridge, he spoons a gob of peanut butter and licks it, while watching an episode of Law and Order he has seen three times.




Angst-Jöken #11: The Papal Observation



Three Irishmen are having a wee dram of whiskey with the Pope. One Irishman turns to the Pope and goes, "So I heard you were in the Hitler Youth."




Angst-Jöken #14. Flightless Loathing in Paris



An attractive couple on their honeymoon checks into a nice hotel in Paris. While of modest means, it is the dream of a lifetime, and her father has spared no expense to treat them to a fabulous vacation. As he carries her across the threshold of the sumptuously appointed room, they are both startled to find the place knee deep in penguins. While the bride is slightly charmed at first, the birds rapidly prove smelly, loud and unruly. The groom marches indignantly down to the front desk to complain. "What is going on? Our bridal suite is full of penguins!," he demands of the Manager, a suave little man with pencil moustache. "Ah, most distressing I am sure, Monsieur, I will check for you, immmediatement," says the Manager.

The grooms stands at the desk in the beautiful, ornate lobby, tapping his feet. The Manager returns with a strange, troubled expression. "I have spoken the Hotel's owner, and this is most unusual, it seems he himself ordered the room filled with every penguin in Paris!" "But why?," says the Groom. The manager draws in a full breath. "He directed me, at pain of my position, to say directly to you that has a deep hatred of Americans, and wished to humilate you on the most important night of your life, simply for being who you are." The groom stands there for a long time, arms hanging loose at his sides, while the manager looks at him piteously, unsure of what to say or do.


Angst-Jöken #13. Science.


An unscrewed lightbulb is observed, and it is changed by this fact.

Angst-Jöken #14. Lack of Joke. 


Joke #14 does not exist.

The Protestant Ethic in the Spirit of Angst-Jöken

The Protestant Ethic in the Spirit of Angst-Jöken

A man walks into a bar with his pet Orangutan, Klaus. The bartender says "Hey, no monkeys in the bar!" Before the man can explain, Klaus is scared by the bartender's frightful countenance and enormous mustache and runs around to a corner of the room, where he hides behind Albert Einstein. Dr. Einstein says: "Vy, hello zere, Mr. Orangutan!" Klaus sees the kindly brown eyes of the famous physicist, and calms down, offering Einstein a partly eaten head of cabbage. Dr. Einstein accepts the gift, and smiles and pats the creature's head. Meanwhile, the man, seeing their fast friendship, realizes that even though he has owned the orangutan for 30 years, he has never appreciated Klaus for who he really is.

Touching Fielty

A blond walks into a gas station carrying a steering wheel. Tangled, burned wires dangle from the hub. The attendant, who is eating small powdered donuts, looks up at the beautiful girl and what she is carrying, and says "Oh my goodness, Can I help you?" And the blond goes: "This is the last memento I have of my mother."


Doom Loop

Two robots are building another robot for the first time. One robot goes to the other: "An endless cycle begins."

Koo-Koo for Ordinary Human Relationships

Two lawyers are trapped on a deserted island. Although they must work hard to survive, they subsist off of coconuts and sea-life, and it's enough to get by. One day, a box floats up on the beach, and they open it to find that it is full of new satellite phones. One of the lawyers turns to the other one and goes: "I can't bring myself to return to my old practice and just embrace a life of greed and ceaseless deal-making." The other lawyer, who has dialed home, nods solemnly as he waits for the phone to answer, and that knowing who she is, his wife will be gone. She will have remarried. His children will not recognize their father. His clients will be scattered, his expertise fatuous, his friends awkward in their re-embrace as he returns, absurdly, from death. He realizes that his friend will stay, becoming a hermit forever on the island. As the line rings, he wishes that the box had never come.

Arrrngst

A pirate pegs his way into a fancy piano bar, and orders a mojito. Long at sea, he glares longingly with his one good eye at the girl behind the bar, for whom he will always be a mutilated and frightening outcast. A balding man is singing and playing a Barry Manilow song. As she crushes the mint into the ice, a perfect metaphor of the fate of his affections, the Pirate thinks to himself: "I have robbed and killed innocents for this?"

Behold! Das Angst-Jöken!

I now introduce what I shall call the "Angst-Jöken," the jokeless joke of alienation and despair. Take this example:

"What is invisible and smells like carrots? The answer, locked in the next room when you are feverish with hunger and suffering vitamin A deficiency, is 'Carrots."




"A man walks into a bar. When nothing humorous happens, an awkward
disquiet descends on the room like a heavy fog. In a half-hearted
attempt to lighten the mood, he orders a banana daiquiri. When it
arrives, he merely stares at the crushed ice dripping off the rim of the
glass, forced to face his complete failure as a joke protagonist."



"A priest, a rabbi and a imam walk into a bar. Already tense, the priest orders dry white wine. The rabbi orders a beer. The imam orders a Coke. A stunning waitress in a miniskirt brings their drinks, to their collective, silent dismay. Desperate to get some sort of dialogue going, the Rabbi brings up the NFL. The imam says he likes the Packers. The priest, a Cowboys fan, thinks it's better to stay quiet. The rabbi doesn't really like sports. The bartender, an atheist, looks at the group with a kind of enraged pity."



A funeral director walks into a Protagonist's office. The protagonist says " so you're here to help develop my plot?" 

A traveling salesman, needing a place to stay for the night in a remote township, knocks on a farmer's door. The farmer, grateful for company, invites him in for dinner, and his beautiful daughter, once voted Miss Cornflower, joins them and cooks everyone a delicious chicken dinner. Then the farmer's ex-wife knocks on the door. She comes in and belittles the lonely farmer for his legal and financial troubles and his inadequacies as a man. The salesman endures this tirade uncomfortably, glancing briefly at the daughter, who, emotionally defeated, sobs quietly. He excuses himself, checking into a Motel 6, where the remote control fails to function.