The joke’s on you

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I actually went to Wikipedia to look up the origins of April Fool’s Day. I know, right? Me, doing research for a blog? One story of how the “holiday” started came from The Canterbury Tales. The day is set “Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two.” That Chaucer couldn’t fpell for beanf, which is probably why I never read thif fnooze feft.

Random picture that has nothing to do with this blog.

Random picture that has nothing to do with this blog.

I figured if I was going to write something about jokes and classic literature, I should instead check out Dante’s Divine Comedy. It has “comedy” in the name, people. Just as I suspected, the third ring of hell involves living next to my neighbor. I’m hoping that the fourth ring isn’t reserved for people who leave a bag of flaming dog poop on their neighbor’s doorstep.

Perhaps most disturbing is how I woke up to 10 spam messages on my website today. I consider this a pretty crappy (and totally overdone) April Fool’s joke. Just thought I’d share a little classic literature on the subject, in keeping with the barely discernible theme of this blog.

Quatrain 37.2

And there shall be a great wind from the east, blowing garbage up the asses of those who would entertain and inform via fiber optic cables and satellite communication. Burma shave.

That Nostradamus was a total genius. How could he possibly have predicted that I would be receiving comments from Penile Pustules and Anal Adventures? I’m too old and far-sighted to read captchas, which demand that your commenters decipher squiggly letters that spell out globfarts (since no machine could ever anticipate such an ambiguous code).

OK, I totally called that one in, since I borrowed the last example from an earlier blog. So sue me.

I could give you dozens of other examples of bad jokes in classic literature, if I could think of any off the top of my head (since I’ve sworn off research).

Suffice it to say, there’s a reason why people avoid the classical literature aisle at Barnes & Noble as if it were ground zero for a dirty bomb. Comedy in the classics is all about political humor on people and events that nobody cares about anymore. So let me leave you with this thought, I just pranked you by making you read through the most boring subject devised by evil high school English teachers.

April Fool’s.

15 thoughts on “The joke’s on you”

  1. Excellent post! I could send you my Master’s Thesis on Dante’s Inferno. It’s a cure for insomnia.

  2. Twain once said that the classics were those books everyone meant to read and which no one has read….

    • I’ve seen people on Goodreads put Canterbury Tales among their favorites. The fifth ring of hell is set aside for these incorrigible liars.

  3. Thank goodness I’ve already read most of that crap. Now I just lie awake at night wondering what my friend Karla is going to write next. Trust me, it’s a lot better than Chaucer but those Spam guys have been known to be somewhat entertaining.

    • Most of the spam I get is like reading through all the begats in the Bible. The book of Numbers is a real page turner.

      (Geez, did I just write a bad review for God? Now I’m definitely heading for the fourth ring of hell.)

  6. The mere fact that I had to look up half of the stuff you mentioned above tells me I’m way behind in my reading. How did I come to that conclusion? Well, I had to read it three times before I realized I had no idea why it was an April Fools. I’m still not sure. I did laugh my ass off though. Thanks for that. I will now return to the self-help book I’m currently reading, “Fifty Shades of Cat Poop – How to Analyze your Cat’s Health Without Paying all Those Vet Bills”.
    Don’t judge. It may be a classic some day.

  7. I found your great blog through the WLC Blog Follows on the World Literary Cafe! Great to connect! By the way, I am no liar except when I write fiction, and I loved Chaucer. Fo there.

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