Can you be sure that others have not come before you and destroyed the pristine state of the native myth? Can you be sure that the natives are not humoring you or pulling your leg? Bronislaw Malinowski thought he had discovered a people in the Trobriant Islands who had not worked out the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. When asked how children were conceived, they supplied him with an elaborate mythic structure prominently featuring celestial intervention. Amazed, Malinowski objected that was not how it was done at all, and supplied them instead with the version so popular in the West today – including a nine-month gestation period. “Impossible,” replied the Melanesians. “Do you not see that woman over there with her six-month-old child? Her husband has been on an extended voyage to another island for two years.” Is it more likely that the Melanesians were ignorant of the begetting of children or that they were gently chiding Malinowski? If some peculiar-looking stranger came into my town and asked ME where babies came from, I’d certainly be tempted to tell him about storks and cabbages. Prescientific people are people. Individually they are as clever as we are.

Where are you going?""To get my Bible.""Right now? You can't get your Bible out right now! I'm, I'm, we're just about to..."She'd never be able to go through with this if he got out his Bible. She wiped all humor from her face."I believe you. Proverbs 5:18. Rejoice, relish, and romp with your husband."He chuckled. "I'm serious, Connie, and I won't have you feeling ashamed or unclean over anything we do in that bed, tonight or any other night.""I won't. I feel unashamed and very clean. I promise. But please don't get out that Bible.""What? Think you that God can't see us right now?"Groaning, she slid off his lap and covered her face with her hands. He sunk to his knees in front of her, drawing her hands down."I love you. You love me. We are man and wife. God is watching, Connie, and He is very, very pleased.

If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the "form of funny," which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness.

There spoke the race!" he said; "always ready to claim what it hasn't got, and mistake its ounce of brass filings for a ton of gold-dust. You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things--broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them--and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon--laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution-- these can lift at a colossal humbug--push it a little--weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage.

The time came to put Iris Duarte back on the plane.It was a morning flight which made it difficult. I wasused to rising at noon; it was a fine cure for hangoversand would add 5 years to my life. I felt no sadnesswhile driving her to L.A. International. The sex hadbeen fine; there had been laughter. I could hardlyremember a more civilized time, neither of us makingany demands, yet there had been warmth, it had notbeen without feeling, dead meat coupled with deadmeat. I detested that type of swinging, the LosAngeles, Hollywood, Bel Air, Malibu, Laguna Beachkind of sex. Strangers when you meet, strangers whenyou part—a gymnasium of bodies namelesslymasturbating each other. People with no morals oftenconsidered themselves more free, but mostly theylacked the ability to feel or to love. So they becameswingers. The dead fucking the dead. There was nogamble or humor in their game—it was corpsefucking corpse. Morals were restrictive, but they weregrounded on human experience down through thecenturies. Some morals tended to keep peopleslaves in factories, in churches and true to the State.Other morals simply made good sense. It was like agarden filled with poisoned fruit and good fruit. Youhad to know which to pick and eat, which to leavealone.

What if one were to want to hunt for these hidden presences? You can’t just rummage around like you’re at a yard sale. You have to listen. You have to pay attention. There are certain things you can’t look at directly. You need to trick them into revealing themselves. That’s what we’re doing with Walter, Jaz. We’re juxtaposing things, listening for echoes. It’s not some silly cybernetic dream of command and control, modeling the whole world so you can predict the outcome. It’s certainly not a theory of everything. I don’t have a theory of any kind. What I have is far more profound.’‘What’s that?’‘A sense of humor.’Jaz looked at him, trying to find a clue in his gaunt face, in the clear gray eyes watching him with such - what? Amusement? Condescension? There was something about the man which brought on a sort of hermeneutic despair. He was a forest of signs.‘We’re hunting for jokes.’ Bachman spoke slowly, as if to a child. ‘Parapraxes. Cosmic slips of the tongue. They’re the key to the locked door. They’ll help us discover it.’‘Discover what?’‘The face of God. What else would we be looking for?

So why bother investing in one’s memory in an age of externalized memories? The best answer I can give is the one I received unwittingly from EP, whose memory had been so completely lost that he could not place himself in time or space, or relative to other people. That is: How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memories. No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least. Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character.

We have been together for 40 years, married for 36. There have been three times in our relationship when we were unable to resolve an issue on our own. We used all the skill that we have and yet it was still unresolved. In those three times we sought professional help because there was a blind spot for each of us. The therapist was able to listen to both of us and help us come to a place of resolution that we both felt good about. I feel very grateful for that help. Most times we have been able to work things through on our own. Sometimes we can clear the issue in a matter of a few minutes, sometimes an hour and sometimes it can take several days. But we still keep working on it until we both say that we feel complete, we understand our own part and responsibility in the issue rather than simply blaming each other, are willing to go on, and there is an even deeper connection and sometimes even humor to the situation. In working each issue through to completion we have been able to retain a beautiful lightness in our relationship that we both cherish.

Until death," Jem replied gently. "Those are the words of the oath. 'Until aught but death part thee and me.' Someday, Will, I will go where none can follow me, and I think it will be sooner rather than later. Have you ever asked yourself why I agreed to be your parabatai?""No better offers forthcoming?" Will tried for humor, but his voice cracked like glass."I thought you needed me," Jem said. "There is a wall you have built about yourself, Will, and I have never asked you why. But no one should shoulder every burden alone. I thought you would let me inside if I became your parabatai, and then you would have at least someone to lean upon. I did wonder what my death would mean for you. I used to fear it, for your sake. I feared you would be left alone inside that wall. But now... something has changed. I do not know why. But I know that it is true.""That what is true?" Will's fingers were still digging into Jem's wrist. "That the wall is coming down.

Can we get back to work now?" Haley asked, sounding innocent, but Zoe didn't miss the woman's lips twitchingor the humor sparkling in her eyes. Something told her that this woman truly enjoyed torturing her husband."For god sake's, my little grasshopper, you love the Yankees more than I do! What the hell is going on?" He turned accusing eyes on Zoe. "How dare you brainwash my wife?" he hissed."A re you going to leave so that we can get some work done?" Haley demanded, turning her attention to the computer."No," he said stubbornly, folding his arms over his chest, glaring at them."Buttercream frosting," Haley said softly, never taking her eyes away from her computer screen.Jason licked his lips as he looked his pregnant wife over hungrily. "Tonight?" he croaked out."If you're good," Haley said, with a small shrug. "But you have to leave-""Bye," Jason said quickly, cutting her off and rushing out of the trailer just as fast as he came.