February 2021 – Grigori T. Cross

Jokes are wonderful and joyous things that imbue my spirit with mirth. I love hearing jokes, but I regret to inform you that I am certain I told none of them in 2020. Tempting though it is to add drama to my words and claim said lack of levity was due to the nature of the year and all its woes, I am overwhelmed by a greater urge, namely: to tell you the truth. What is the truth? The truth is that I am not much of a joke-teller. So that I might reassure I am not making any attempt to weasel out of putting in the effort of recalling a memory, allow me to offer an anecdote to demonstrate my consistency.

Satanism is a carnal and liberating religion full of all the life-affirming glory imaginable. Anton Szandor LaVey codified it in The Satanic Bible and the same Church of Satan he founded is the only organization to this day that has consistently and with efficiency provided clarity of Satanic thought in response to public inquiry for over 50 years. Applying for active membership in the church means paying a lifetime membership fee and then answering a series of questions demonstrating not only the applicant’s understanding of Satanism but his application of its principles to his life in the pursuit of manifesting his desires. Among the questions in the application is: Tell one of your favorite jokes. Careful not to offer a false impression of myself, I admitted I didn’t have any; the way I made people laugh was through witty retorts, ridiculous turns of phrase, and so on.

The Church of Satan accepted me as an active member in 2016 and I’m grateful for all the times I’ve made my dearest friends laugh during the year that tried (and ultimately failed) to break me.

With care,

~ Grigori

The banana is a fruit, typically ~9” long and ~2” thick, gently curved, wrapped in a peel that is bright yellow when ripe—a green color indicates it’s not yet ripe and brown-to-black means it’s overripe. The fruit itself is often a pale yellow or even white and sometimes has darker spots where the fruit has become overripe. Bananas are eaten by some herbivores and some humans, either by itself or as an ingredient in something else, like banana bread. Because the inside of the peel can be quite slippery, its use as a comic gag in cartoons as a tool to make someone slip and fall by stepping on it has become the stuff of legend. Its phallic shape has also made it useful in sex education for the purpose of demonstrating how to wear a condom and in general for the mimicry of sexual acts like fellatio and penetration. It is also one of Ron Swanson’s greatest frenemies.

With care,

~ Grigori