The history of writing funny stuff stretches back into the earliest times. Humor comes in certain time honored forms: slapstick, exaggeration (a/k/a hyperbole), sarcasm, irony, and puns. Most any humorous work relies on one or more of these techniques. Until recent times, that is. Now, vulgarity seems to have overtaken all of these.
Hubby and I have been watching an HBO show called Veep and, while there are a couple of decent running gags, I have not been laughing much. After subjecting ourselves to four episodes, neither of us is sure if we want to continue. I’m not so easily offended, but this show doesn’t strike me as funny, and it is clearly supposed to be a comedy. The actors seem to be working very hard at maintaining a frantic pace, which may indeed be how things are in the White House, but there is no slapstick, little irony, few plays on words, and less sarcasm than one might expect in a political drama.
Oh, I do like the bit with the staffer who has an imaginary dog. That’s funny and a bit ironic. Also amusing is the main character (Selina Meyer) hoping that the president will actually need her (thus far he hasn’t.) The character (Tony?) who doesn’t even bother whispering a brief description of everyone the VP meets and does not actually know is a bit of exaggeration and his remarks sometimes make me smile. And, the pace seems so fast that perhaps the intent is hyperbole, but it is more intense than humorous.
So, what’s left? Lots and lots of cussing, and at least fifty percent of it is a verb/expletive that might be labeled as “for unusual carnal knowledge.” Not funny. It just isn’t. I guess the writers are lazy or haven’t ever seen anything funny.
It’s sad really. A re-run of I Love Lucy can still make me laugh, but Veep doesn’t.
Sometimes, we forget what we could have had for free. I just talked to a business associate who lost her semester-long research writing due to a computer hard drive issue. Even the Geek Squad couldn’t retrieve her data. And, like many of us, she had access to cloud storage at school, included in her fees. Had she merely saved it a few times along the way, she wouldn’t have to start from scratch. Sad….
As one of my Works in Progress is a text on motorcycling, for spring I am sharing a cool 
Here in the south roofing tends to fail long before the “thirty…fifty” year supposed lifespan of the shingles. Our house has developed some leaks, so it is time for a new roof. And, as roofing is expensive, and the house is big, I talked with some friends and family about the roof before calling the first roofer. Everyone we talked to said that prices vary widely, so we should get multiple quotes, and we settled on trying to get three. That has been difficult.
A friend who knows of my love of science fiction in general, and Star Trek in particular, mentioned hearing a 
This is a bit of wishful thinking, actually. Here in northeastern Georgia, we are going to have some “normal” weekend weather after having a couple of days of school closings and tricky driving due to an inch or two of snow. But, I saw a local farm’s Facebook post stating that they were 100 days away from harvesting strawberries, hence the picture of some luscious berries. Yep, according to our local producers, in just about three months, we can once again delight in that most delicate of all tastes fresh strawberries!
