“What’s the funniest joke you told in 2020?”

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

“What is a banana?”

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

“What’s your preference in laundry scent?”

I have no preference in laundry that anyone would likely categorize as a scent, other than “clean.” I use regular Tide detergent when I do laundry and I notice that whatever it was afflicting my clothes to make them smell “off” is gone and has been replaced by a glowing warmth that my nostrils choose to interpret as a smell. I describe these scents as I do because my olfactory sense has, much to my chagrin, been notoriously dull for most of my life. It picked up in sensitivity once I started eating meat again, but I don’t suspect I’m half as good at smelling as a normal human being.

That’s only part of the story, though. Do you want to know why I think I tolerated (note the past tense) any hint of offense or reek in my clothes for as long as I did? When I was a child, I was taught how to do laundry and then got paid to do it when I got the hang of it. At first it was a simple transaction: I would do the laundry and then my parents would pay me. After a few weeks of this, I did the laundry and I got an IOU once or twice. That was still fine by me. Time passed and the payments got more infrequent until finally I had done it enough times to rack up a rather substantial bill and I inquired about it. Upon being informed that no payment was coming, I stopped. I don’t remember doing laundry again until I was much older and I still think of it as a nuisance of a chore and I get no pleasure out of doing it. I think everyone feels that way, but I think I might feel it just 5-10% more.

It’s a good thing I’m interested in maintaining my good hygiene.

With care,

~ Grigori

I will make real progress this year toward getting out a record, a novel, and a poetry collection.

The notion of writing and recording original music has been on my mind since I was 14. The interest I had in heavy music meant that I was going to seek out a band and my lack of personal confidence and knowledge of how to manage my introversion properly meant that I would gravitate toward a role in said band that was usually relegated to the background: the bass guitar. My years of classical training, along with my familiarity with music theory and my background in cello, made the move seem natural. I did it well, to boot. I played a few shows, earned some money, even recorded professionally in a studio—I’m still proud that I did my parts in just one take because it made me feel like a natural.

One problem with bands is that they’re often highly volatile and tend toward breaking up before any important events like going on tour or recording their original music happen. This is of course what happened to mine. My focus then turned more toward academia and my general success there (along with steady and continued practice on my guitar) slowly increased my self-confidence to the bare minimum I needed to convince myself I was capable not only of writing music I liked but that it would be worth listening to, as well. Writing four guitar pieces I considered worth writing and worth listening to was no easy task and I could say the same for all the rewrites. Still, I got it done and will get more done toward completing these pieces, toward getting them recorded and making my musical presence known to the world after having hidden it away for what now amounts to most of my life.

What does real progress look like here? Complete the aforementioned pieces and ready them to be demoed. Demoing can expose ways in which I might improve the songs and reveal more about the path leading me to making my debut record.

Out of all the creative pursuits on my mind right now, I think poetry probably came to me earliest. I remember writing a poem about an out-of-body experience at my own funeral for a homework assignment sometime in early grade school. That was back when I knew nothing about what I was doing or the structure of poetry. I knew I liked when some words rhymed and when the rhythm felt “right” in my head. Shakespeare and his use of iambic pentameter probably had something to do with that. What poetry I wrote after that was often emotional vomit expressed with an imagistic vocabulary. Later, after I discovered Plath and Bukowski and Frost and whoever else, I started noticing the ways reading seriously good poetry affected me and realized more concretely why structure mattered and had the effect on me that it did. Finally, I read Martin Heidegger’s piece “What are Poets for?” and latched onto an interpretation of what it means to be a poet that I’ve held onto since.

Lots of the poetry I wrote was bad and I can say that because I was the one who wrote it. That isn’t to say it’s beyond salvageable; much of what I wrote can be reworked or reinterpreted to reveal a framing of whatever moment it was I was experiencing at the time that might lend itself to artful consideration—whatever that means. I admit that phrasing is partially self-deprecating because it sounds pretentious, but seriously good poetry does lend itself to consideration of the human condition the reader hasn’t encountered before and often provokes novel thought. I can’t promise myself to get every piece I have to such a level, but I do know quite a bit more about what I’m doing now and revisiting some of my earliest pieces did already give me some insight as to where I was trying to go and where I might want to take them.

Again, what does real progress look like here? First, obviously: rework the poetry! Get some poems polished and recite a few of them on Instagram or YouTube or other social media sites. If I get some attention going for my work, I can let the opportunities come.

The record and the poetry have been covered, but what about the novel? I have probably made the least amount of progress there. I got into the habit many months ago of writing 300 words on any day off I had. What you’re reading now is being typed on a laptop that has probably around a dozen starts to stories of varied length. The exercise at that point was to remind myself that I could make something up without a problem. I did that. I was successful! I didn’t finish any of the stories, but I did make things up. I already knew I could do that because I’ve had some short stories published along with a novella. I declared once that I would write a novel by “this time next year.” That didn’t pan out, but I did get out a good 8,000 words or so before I stopped knowing where to go with it. One encouraging thought is that I went back to a short story I had written after having attended UC Berkeley and, having acquired an entirely new appreciation and understanding for the way language functioned, discovered just how much of that story I hadn’t written! That story became my novella. Who’s to say something can’t be done now with the novel-that-was-to-be?

At the same time, I’m taking a cue from Ernest Hemingway: start out writing one true sentence. If at the end of the day the rest of what I’ve written is trash, I will still have that foundational one true sentence. Keeping this in mind, I’ve been taking the time lately to write one true sentence per day. I won’t yet say what it’s about, but these sentences are seeding something that could easily conjure at least 300 pages from my fingers. I won’t dare speak for other aspiring novelists, but knowing beforehand that I already have so much material is a Hell of a comfort. The question is: do I work on the already-established 8,000 words or do I work a bit more furiously at the potential goldmine? I suppose I’ll make that decision after I revisit the 8,000 words and see whether or not I’m immediately inspired to continue. If not, the decision will be easy.

Once more, what does real progress look like here? Well, considering a novel is typically about 100,000 words (NaNoWriMo apparently requires exactly half of that), this will be my biggest challenge simply because I have the least to work with here. If I’m lucky, I imagine maybe I’ll have a solid first draft by year’s end. Faulkner claimed to have written As I Lay Dying in six weeks and I don’t dare expect that level of expediency or efficiency, but it’s nice to know that it can be done. I suppose it depends on which novel I choose to write. I’ll shoot for 100,000 words of raw material.

Well, let’s get the year going right.

With care,

~ Grigori

This Wretched Year

Everything about the holidays this year is wrong.

The holiday season begins with my birthday—mid-September—runs through Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and ends abruptly at midnight when New Year’s Day becomes January 2nd. Each day is celebrated according to its traditions and has all the appropriate and unique emotions associated with it. It begins with the joy of pleasures known or unknown and familiar faces and the thrill of new adventures. The holiday ride takes me through thrilling taboos and profound gratitude and the quiet-but-impossibly-pure ecstasy of loving embraces through winter’s sublime chill. How else could it all come to an end but an all-night burst of relief ushering in a fresh start?

“Relief’s a funny word for it,” you say with some confusion. I of course must agree. Relief is the kind of release that comes from escaping the slowly-tightening stranglehold of tension and mounting anxiety. Why, then, does it seem perfectly intuitive to use it in such a positive context? Well, there’s no getting around it: along with the joys and crackling moments of peace by the fireplace and reminders of sincere love and the warming glow of mirth come the stresses of making sure every little thing is in place, of doing the best we can to take everyone into consideration, of pleading silently to no one in particular that those members of the family won’t try to tear each other apart this year. We are tense because we want as many things as possible to go well and we’re afraid they won’t. New Year’s Eve brings along that sweet relief because it almost invariably does go so well. Those few hiccups here and there don’t even matter because the food was just savory enough—maybe just a little bit too sweet, too, but no one was going to complain about food being more to their liking—and the gifts thoughtful enough and the clothes enticing enough for it all to be worth the effort.

Just for a moment, forget all that. Forget the stresses, forget the joys, forget all of it. What I like most about the holidays is the warmth in my chest. I’m a sentimental man and the temptation to focus this warmth on my heart is great, but to do so would be saccharine and dishonest. The gifts and the joviality and the familial intimacy are all so wonderful they make my heart ache and they may well be the cause of that warmth, but the warmth itself is what imbues my holidays with a soft and glorious glow. Enamored though I am of the cold weather, I can withstand winter’s sublime chill only because that warmth is there, allowing the frigid winds to bite at my face but guarding forever against the cold’s callous intrusion into my core

I say again: everything about the holidays this year is wrong. I walk around and feel winter’s cold sting everywhere. Furnaces and fires may make valiant attempts at thawing me, but it is only on the outside I am so affected. My chest is filled with icicles and melancholia and I have not yet discovered any remedy. This wretched year has put my life on hold in ways that not even those favorite films of mine that are overflowing with the Christmas spirit (I’ll let you guess so long as you don’t guess It’s a Wonderful Life) are only coaxing tears from my eyes. While I do have other grievances, they seem petty and almost insignificant in comparison to this. For example, the food has been perfectly tasty even if it is broken up because it was stuck to the pan. That wouldn’t matter if my chest weren’t frozen on the inside, but here the minor frustration is made to feel like an outright disaster.

Is there anything from this wretched year worth salvaging? I dare not speak it, lest it be taken away from me somehow in the week leading up to the new year. I’ll just contemplate and hide away whatever I can find—protect it from this year’s surely-toxic death rattle. In the meantime, I’ll do—no, overdo—what little I can in the hopes that it will burn away some of this frost. Excuse me now while I indulge myself with a tricorne hat and a fur coat and indulge others in the name of Santa Claus.

With care,

~ Grigori

“Lunch with George Carlin. What would you have and how would you begin the conversation?”

There is a restaurant near where I live called The Prado. It’s a bit fancy, but in a nice and unpretentious way that doesn’t make me feel on edge or out of place when I order food. Shortly after the dozen-or-so-year vegetarian chapter of my life came to an end, I found myself dining there and ordered the pork chop. I was confident in my choice of cuisine before I ordered it, but there was no special that day and the waiter recommended that same dish and so my confidence was bolstered considerably. I remember that first bite as if it were yesterday: full of flavor without being overwhelming, the meat cooked to just the right tenderness and texture, basically everything I could possibly want in a dish literally called a pork chop. It went into my top 5 meals so readily I had to make sure that I centered my next birthday’s activities around having that meal again, and it was just as good the second time. Were I to have lunch with George Carlin, I’d take him to The Prado and order the pork chop.

How would I begin a conversation with George Carlin? Better yet, how do I begin a conversation? I keep to myself so much of the time I don’t always remember how etiquette dictates such matters should go. In fact, I usually let others who wish to converse come to me. I have enough insecurities about boring people or leaving them with some horrid impression of me that I don’t initiate contact unless I know I have something to say, and even that doesn’t always totally negate the risk involved. If I’m the one starting a conversation, it says a great deal about my level of comfort with the other party and small talk is just about guaranteed not to be happening.

What you just read is how I skillfully avoid answering the question.

When I imagine I’m eating at The Prado with George Carlin, I see myself well-rested and being sharper than I’ve been in years. That helps me feel less intimidated by the presence of a man I referred to as a comic genius just a few entries ago. He was sharp as a razor ‘til he died, so I ask him for his favorite kinds of music, film, and literature and he rattles off his answers to me like he’s been thinking about how to answer for 20 years. We bond over generic favorites and bits and stories about his comic career make their way organically into the conversation. I try rather stupidly to impress him by injecting bits and pieces of my philosophy studies into my side of the same conversation, and of course I must ask him about Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure at some point. Wherever we go from there, I’ll be wondering about the impression I left on him by the time we leave and my stomach will be full of pork and butterflies.

With care,

~ Grigori

“Do you know where your phalanges are at?”

My phalanges are right here, helping me type out these words.

In answering this question, I third-guessed myself. Second-guessing is bad enough a phenomenon, but I suspect it takes some deep and serious insecurities to go further—especially when you discover you were right the first time! Second-guessing myself took me to everyone’s favorite search engine and misinterpreting skeletal diagrams because I didn’t allow my imagination to remind me where the fleshy center of my hand would be. Third-guessing meant writing out an entire answer that detailed my journey from my original answer to the “correct” answer, then re-studying those same diagrams because something didn’t seem right and feeling more than a little bit ridiculous when my imagination at last turned on.

Yes, as it turns out, what I’d learned during my course on physical anthropology was correct: phalanges is the scientific word for fingers.

With care,

~ Grigori

“What’s the longest you’ve gone without a shower?”

For a time so long I’m too embarrassed to disclose it fully, I thought baths and baths alone were for washing my entire body and showers were for washing (mostly) my hair. Once it was supposed that I had outgrown baths as the default method of washing, trouble ensued; I did not take to showers the way other children evidently did. There were times I was literally bent over backward to wash my hair when there was no other option but to shower. It was perhaps because of discomforts like these that I grew to hate showers and basically stopped using shampoo for many years. My hair was short then, so it didn’t matter. As I grew it out, shampoo reappeared—though not every time. I would often take a shower from outside the shower, keeping the curtain mostly closed but sticking my head into the stream of water to get it nice and soaking wet for the sake of appearances.

The way I “showered” would contribute to my belief that I was allergic to water. Aside from my wretched lack of comfort, another reason I hated showers was the itching that (almost) always came afterward. It would plague me about 10 minutes after I got dressed, last anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour, and fade away so slowly as not to be noticed. The itching was confined to my chest, my arms, and my legs—the same areas of my body I couldn’t avoid getting wet when I showered more properly. I let this fester and continue for a length of time I can’t possibly recall, and I’m glad I did. If I hadn’t, I might not have rediscovered soap.

What prompted me to start using soap in the shower, I cannot say. I know that the itching stopped once I used soap to shed the invisible layers of caked dirt on my body. I know that the itching stopped once there was no more moisture trapped between my body and dead skin. I know that the itching stopped when I dried myself off properly and didn’t give my skin the chance to be irritated. I know that I have felt relief from the itching only for a few months as of this writing.

So, the longest I’ve gone without a shower? Depending on your perspective, the answer ranges anywhere from a few days to a week to 33 long and miserable years.

With care,

~ Grigori

“What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen flamingo?”

“What do you mean? An American or African flamingo?”

The three stages of answering this question were:

I: Laughing

Monty Python and the Holy Grail has long been one of my favorite films, so of course a reference to it is going to elicit delight from me. I’ve come close to dying from laughter every time I’ve seen it.

II: Examination

Taking the time to answer this question finally afforded me the opportunity to understand what it was the Bridgekeeper was asking. For the longest time it had been my assumption that Arthur, King of the Britons had sidestepped quite the complicated question by asking whether the swallow was supposed to be African or European. I laughed all those times I’d watched it because the question itself had sounded funny and because the phrasing tricked me into thinking the information the Bridgekeeper had requested required equations relegated to advanced trigonometrical black magic if Arthur, King of the Britons had actually been in need of the answer. Not so! All Arthur, King of the Britons had been asked was how fast a swallow goes when it’s flying freely.

So:

How fast does a flamingo go when flying freely?

III: Research/Discovery

“Do flamingos fly?”

I had no idea.

A few moments spent on everyone’s favorite search engine told me not only that flamingos fly, but that their average speed when they do is ~35mph and that they can fly up to 375 miles in just one night.

Amazing.

With care,

~ Grigori

“How many humorous do you have?”

ANSWER TO INTERPRETATION I, in which “humorous” is a humorous spelling for the plurality of the humerus:

I have two exactly. I have thus far been fortunate enough to avoid losing one in some horrific accident and I have not as of yet been exposed to enough nuclear radiation to encourage, prompt, or otherwise promote the growth of a third.

ANSWER TO INTERPRETATION II, in which I am being asked about my sense of humor and how many comedic styles I find funny:

A quick perusal of Wikipedia’s page on comedic genres tells me I have an affinity for approximately 21 of the 26 styles listed. They are, in order of appearance:

Anecdotal comedy
Anti-humor
Black/dark comedy
Blue comedy
Character comedy
Cringe comedy
Deadpan comedy
Improvisational comedy
Insult comedy
Mockumentary
Comedy music
Observational comedy
One-line joke
Physical comedy
Shock humor
Sitcom
Sketch
Spoof/Parody
Surreal comedy
Topical comedy/Satire
Wit/Word play

I included only those styles the examples of which were more known and liked by me than known and disliked. Jerry Seinfeld’s observational humor falls flat for me, but George Carlin and Louis C.K. are comedic geniuses. Rodney Dangerfield’s jokes seem loud and obnoxious, but Mitch Hedberg and Groucho Marx have brought me the best medicine during some of my darkest hours. Music’s role in my life has been so consistently to inspire awe that I seldom appreciate comedy’s value within it, but “Weird Al” Yankovic is a national treasure and Ninja Sex Party will forever have a special place in my heart because I’ve invested so much time in enjoying the Game Grumps. Topical comedy can be uproariously funny because we need to have some levity about such matters lest we die of embarrassment, but it also all too often falls short. I chose to single out these styles because they’re just a few of the many that are often hit-or-miss for me, as opposed to black/dark comedy, which almost always works.

Good comedy is always a good-faith engagement with the topic at hand. Even insult comedy assumes in its audience an understanding that the comic is offering good-natured ribbing more than he is condescension. Good comedy comes from a place of respect. Murder is most often a reprehensible act, but a perspective that understands and respects the devastation inherent in the act can find something morbidly absurd in dread chaos to use as fuel for humor so it doesn’t lose itself to insanity. Good comedy frames even the most familiar and comforting of topics in unexpected ways. Predictability is the death of comedy.

That’s how many humorous I have.

With care,

~ Grigori