A old, rich CEO is on his deathbed, and he's invited his old high school
chums, a teacher, a priest and a janitor to his hospital room, and he
tells them: "While I was out building companies and currency trading,
you guys spent your whole lives in those little jobs. Everyone else I
know is a shark, so you are the only three I can trust. So here: they
say you can't take it with you, but I'm going to try. I'm handing you
each a milllion in cash, and at the funeral you're each going to put it
in the coffin with me, to be buried forever. It will comfort me knowing
the fruit of my life's work is there. It is.. my last request..old
friends.." He falls asleep, and that night, passes away.
Later,
the coffin is being lowered into the ground. Only the teacher, the
priest and the janitor are there. The rain soaks the upturned earth.
They look at each other. Spitting a puff of diesel smoke, a backhoe
dumps soil on the sumptuous coffin with a soft thud.
The priest lowers his head: "Adios, Jerk."
Within the Unfunny Joke Lurks The Hilarious Despair
The Angst-Jöken.
It is the joke form which both recognizes and embraces the madness and futility of being. It is the joke where we find that it is precisely by avoiding the joke that we reveal the suffering that is hilarity.
You indeed face the gaping chasm of despair, the total obliteration of meaning. Yet in the horror that underscores your understanding of the very utter blackity emptiness of the universe, you see that the substance of nothingness is but a black chalkboard, upon which you still have a broken piece of wet chalk, to write, screeching:
Behold The Angst-Jöken!
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