What If It’s Funny?

The Comfort of Comical Causation

ABOVE: God, if we’re lucky.

I was in a violently self-destructive mood the other day, looking for a way to pain myself, to stop myself from having any hope or experiencing any joy at all, to snuff out all light in the universe and turn it to terrible darkness, so I decided to read the news.

I’m all about efficiency.

But something miraculous happened, something I never expected. I read one article, and I found hope.

I found joy.

Stay with me.

The article wasn’t designed to give me hope and joy; like most news reports, it was designed to scare the shit out of me. This was the headline:

“Picking your nose is a 'significant risk factor' for ALZHEIMER'S, research suggests (scare caps theirs).”

Which is, of course, hilarious.

Now before you go hurrying down to Cancel Headquarters to file papers against me for saying Alzheimer’s is hilarious, you should know two things:

1: It often is.

2: I lost two grandmothers to Alzheimer’s, so fuck off.

But oh, how that news filled me with joy! How it raised my downtrodden spirits!

Could it really be, I wondered? Could the cause of one of the most destructive, heart-breaking diseases to plague mankind be utterly hilarious?

My mind whirled. What if it wasn’t just Alzheimer’s? What if, I began to wonder, all diseases had hilarious causes?

What if emphysema isn’t caused by smoking or pollution? What if they discover next week that it’s caused by smelling your own farts?

What if cirrhosis isn’t caused by booze - but by picking your bellybutton in public when you thought nobody was looking?

What if researchers announce tomorrow that prostate cancer is caused by not having penetrative anal sex? Just imagine: all those religious fundamentalists warning us for centuries against committing abominations -- abominations which actually turn out to prevent the second-most common cancer among men? What if it turns out, according to a new report from the Mayo Clinic, that the doorway to long life… is our backdoor? “Why the fuck do you think I made it feel good?” God shouts. “I was trying to help!” It might not make prostate cancer funny, but it would go a long way towards making existence funny.

I suppose that’s what it comes down to for me: I can deal with tragedy if there’s some comedy attached to it. I have no patience for the tragic world view. I’m no optimist, I just refuse to wallow. Pessimists might be right, but you don’t want to go to parties with them. When I was a teenager, I read something somewhere about Vonnegut, whom the author described as looking into the abyss… and laughing.

Then, as now, I can’t think of a more noble way to spend one’s life.

If the arts insist on exalting tragedy, fuck the arts. Sit around at writer’s conferences, scratch your heads and wonder why bookstores are empty, but leave me out of it. Not because I don’t care about the future of books. But because there’s a chance, maybe, possibly, that one of mankind’s most devastating progressive neurodegenerative brain diseases… is caused by digging.

By boogers.

And that gives me hope.

Obviously, when my day comes and the doctor says, “It’s cancer,” I’m not going to be laughing. I will fall to her exam room floor in a disconsolate heap. But if I should ask, “What kind?” and she should say, “Testicular,” and I should inquire, “How did I get testicular cancer?” and should she reply, “Well, according to the latest research, it’s from putting your hand down your pants while watching nationally televised sports,” I do think that will soften the blow somewhat.

I lost a close friend last year to a mysterious ailment. It was sudden, and agonizing, and terrifying, and when the news came that he had died, I broke into a thousand jagged pieces I am still struggling to put back together. But when I heard, some weeks afterwards, that the doctors suggested it might have been connected to his fucking bridgework, I laughed. Really? I thought. His teeth? Craig got new teeth to get laid… and it killed him?

That’s fucking hilarious.

And I know for certain Craig would have thought so, too.

None of this is to suggest you should read the news. Please do not. The entire industry is rotten to the core, and it is a plague upon our minds and souls.

But it might mean that God, despite all we’ve been told by his dour followers, is funny.

And that would be a relief of sorts, too.

Yours in the Fetal Position,

S.

illustrations by orli auslander