Graveyard Humour

Graveyard Humour ©

By Michael Casey

I was musing about what to write about when I thought how about Graveyard Humour, there is so much bad news about in the news that, we could do with some cheering up. About time I cheered you all up. The first thing you’ll all agree with is that it’s about time I stopped using ABOUT. Though I could have chosen other words to over use such as Honesty and Politicians, but I may be accused of being a Main Stream Media person.

I have watched News seriously for 50 years now, so it is a very big part of my life, yes I admit it I am 58 now, though I could have stopped at 56 if the unplanned quadruple heart bypass hadn’t caught me before a big and only one. Yes I do look 28 and women swoon in the street and give me their phone numbers, if I were Sir Tom Jones they’d throw their knickers at me, though the phone number is always the same, I rung it out of curiosity to discover it was a Plastic Surgeon, perhaps they were trying to tell me something. And if you don’t believe me then you are a bunch of Mainstream Media people, I am a Fiction Writer so I never lie, I only lie when I lie down on my bed.

I hear that all people with British accents are going to rounded up, rather like the rat catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or was he called the school inspector, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter if I’m wrong, somebody with a clipboard told me so. Anyway British accents are banned, you will be taken to a facility for re-education, there you will have to watch all the Kojak tv shows back to back until you have a perfect USA accent. Repeat offenders will have to watch all the Cagney and Lacy shows back to back, and as for the very bad cases or is it Caseys, so I am especially afraid you will have to listen to all the David Soul songs until you can lip sync them.

Why is this happening why is USA treating us this way, is it because Daniel Craig refused to wear a Taylor Swift Tshirt, or is it All about Eve. Please help us the under the covers British speakers, Did Jay Z and Beyonce use a British accent or was it an accident under the covers that doubled the pleasure, speak like a Brit and double your… Did the same happen for George Clooney and his girl, speak like a Brit under your covers and you get twins. 

So is this all about Birth Control, the government doesn’t want all these twins, it would use up too many resources, Terminator and Devito were allowed I’ve seen there film Twins, but if everybody walks like an Egyptian and talks like a Brit then Manhattan would be  full of diapers or nappies as proper English speaking say.

Please hide me away from the British accent Police, I don’t want to be forced to speak like a Yank, if I promise to whisper, I love USA and all of you over there, I have cousins in Boston too, and newly discovered relatives in Chicago. But to be hunted down and jailed because of my accent, please please release me for I don’t love to be in jail at all. I only came to try my luck in New York, because Madonna did and I thought If I dressed like Madonna I’d get my Radio break, but look at me now, look at me now.

 I’m being forced to sing I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy just like Jimmy Cagney, I don’t mind being a Dandy I’ve always liked clothes, and I can Doodle too, I’m not ashamed I can Doodle with the best of them.  But being forced to speak like a Yankee, I love you as a people but if the Accent Police backed up by the National Guard is forcing me, MOI to speak in another way it’s too much to bear. 100,000 National Guard mobilised to make me speak English like you do. I can only speak the Queen’s English, and I don’t mind speaking like a Queen, Dame Helen Mirren did, so I could give it a try.

Oh where was I, was I sleeping, was it all a dream or has the Nightmare just begun. If you read Gulliver’s Travels in it they nearly have a War over which end of the egg should an egg be opened. The Price of freedom is a free press, and Mark Zuckerberg you should have a feed to real Press, pick 10 and have their feeds. I’m also available, and guess what I have in common with you Mark? Me a pauper and you a billionaire. We both have Chinese wives, and we would never tell them how to speak.

                                  

       

Spring 2017 Arrives

Thursday, 16 February 2017

Spring 2017 Arrives

I've backed off my stories to may way for new ones. My back door still has loads if you look there.

 http://michaelcaseyfrombirminghamengland.blogspot.co.uk

Spring 2017 Arrives ©

By Michael Casey

Well Spring 2017 is due to arrive, so I’m glad as it means I can park my very heavy Winter coat and wear something lighter. I hope it means I can go walkabout more, this I have to do, I need to do as we are still house-hunting. It really does drive you mad, especially where we live as houses go in a week, so you are perpetually disappointed. Though you can spot really really nice houses, only they are a lottery win away, or a publishing deal away, it’s more likely I die first before either of those things happen. Last night was a Pain Night too…

What else happens in the Spring? You have a tidy up and redo the decorating you did before. This time you really must do it properly, or pay somebody to cover up your mistakes. I can do a bit myself only my body lets me down, and I’m all tired out, and useless for days afterwards. In 2013 I had none of this, first the Arthur got me and then the Heart. I got the Arthur from my mother and the Heart from my dad, so wanting to be like your parents is a great thing, if only you don’t inherit their diseases.

My small daughter has hopes of being an interior designer is that Mary Stewart you had in USA? This is a good idea so long as my daughter doesn’t end up in Jail like Mary Stewart, she didn’t mismatch a colour scheme and got 30 years or whatever it was. Liking colours and matching this to that is fun when you have money to do so. However when you don’t have any money you have to improvise, buy the last pot of paint in a strange colour and use it to paint your bedroom, that’ll impress your boyfriend.

I can remember at the turn of the 1969/70 my brother painted everything in the room white. The wardrobe, the chest of drawers, the chair, the bed frame and the skirting board. I can’t remember what colour the wallpaper was, I do remember him telling me to shut up and go to sleep as he read a very large book, we were sharing the double bed at the time. When he wasn’t practicing to be a furniture painter he was at Oxford.  Our mother thought it very strange, this was decades before John Lennon’s Imagine video in the all white room.

In Spring you plant your spring flowers, or strawberries and rhubarb in my mother’s case. The cat used to love sitting in the shade of the rhubarb leaves, even if Jean our black cat never ate any of it, but she was no doubt a witch’s cat because she could always tell when it was Sunday as she always had the giblets from our Sunday roast. My mother had green fingers as far as her elbows and my brother the painter has inherited those from her.

In the Spring we might decorate a room in our house or in our lodging house next door. The air would go Blue as mum and dad decorated and I sometimes helped out when I was older. Then mum would go and put the spuds on the gas and get the dinner going while dad continued. This would be on a Saturday as dad was always working excessive hours during the week at the Steelworks. I can remember being sent around to the Off Licence to get a pint in a jug from the rather fat lady who used to run it, she sold sweets and pop too. Then at dinner mum and dad would praise themselves and dad had his pint of Mild, this is 40 years ago.

Spring now means watching my own children grow up, though for me Autumn approaches though the sudden curtain that is Death could have got me if the QE and City Hospitals hadn’t done their magic a couple of years ago. Pain is part of my life, in varying random amounts, just like the weather, sometimes we have 4 seasons in one day, sometimes it’s night time, sometimes the dark seems to last forever. But as Chancy Gardiner said in the Spring there will be growth. So all of us, not just me, we need to remember Spring always comes   and enjoy the spring scents and flowers.

How do you make a joke?

How do you make a Joke? ©

By Michael Casey

I was hanging out the washing today, I am a Hausfrau now after all, and I thought what shall I write about today, then I thought perhaps I should explain jokes to you all. Robin my former colleague at the hotel was sometimes surprised when I managed to get serious people to laugh. He started on Reception back in 2002 now 2017 he is a General Manager at the newest of Birmingham’s hotels. Me I’m a home bird thanks to my weaknesses, but at least I’ve 1,000,000 words to leave to my family, no money but lots and lots of words. If ever you are in Birmingham and you see a Robin feel free to ask are you Michael’s old friend, if he blushes then that’s the right Robin.

Now I must apologise to Sir Ken Dodd, who is a newly knighted comedian, we knight comedians and politicians in UK, how do we tell them apart? The comedians are millionaires and drive better cars than the politicians.                Sir Ken or Doddy as we all love him looks like Tiny Tim and speaks as if he is on acid, his mind certainly is. He has never taken any substances, but that’s just by way of explanation. Now he is way past 80 now and his shows always overrun by at least 2 or 3 hours, his style is like an avalanche, you can run but you will be smothered with laughter.

Now why am I mentioning Sir Ken, because he did a three hour show explaining comedy, it was all in a documentary about him recently, so I have that thought in the back f my mind as I talk to you. Before I continue I need to mention one thing, Doddy was taken to Court by the Inland Revenue or IRS in USA language, for not paying tax.

It was a three week Court case, HE WON. His Barrister asked Doddy where do you keep your cash, the answer was, in a shoebox in the cupboard under the stairs. And how much money was in the shoe box, £20,000 was the Reply. And Mr Dodd, and he was still a Mr then, where do you keep your Love Letters, in a secure bank vault was the reply.

This proves Sir Ken Dodd has got his priorities right, I believe his accountant was to blame. I saw builders applauding Sir Ken in the street, and I heard Sir Ken do 15 mins on accountants as part of his act.

So to today’s theme, what makes people laugh? Politics is one easy answer, especially in today’s world. If it’s the Blue party then you make jokes about the Red party, and everybody makes jokes about the Green party.  These colours have been chosen randomly so that wherever you are in the world reading this you can connect to the story. Yellows are better than everybody else perhaps the Pope says, as yellow is the papal colour.

And on it goes, when we have the Blues our friends will try and cheer us up, and that in essence the purpose of jokes, to banish the Blues, Clapton  & Co don’t like jokes because it banishes the Blues. Jazz makes you want to dance and as for Country and Western that makes you vote Republican, though 50% of the entire population don’t even bother to vote as they are busy listening to House music in their Garage.

Politics was invented by the king as a way of dividing people, divide and conquer as they say. William the Conqueror knew the magic meaning of 1066, he was a mathematician after all, go ask your local maths wiz what 1066 really means, you’ll find him behind the bar pulling pints. 1066 is the magic number in Political Calculus after all, if you kill 10 leaders the other 66 will soon fall into line, or is it the other way around, kill 66 and the final 10 won’t be any trouble. It’s complicated I think I need a pint of Stella Artois, though back in 1066 cider must have been amazing.

Where was I, yes how do you make a joke? It’s like a cake really, you just need the right ingredients and you mix them together and put them in the oven. Though having a bun in the oven means something else entirely, and is far more fun than baking but does involving maths as you are multiplying.

Like baking everything depends on timing, if there is a straight man, PAUSE, you are already making up your own joke. What I am saying is that the straight man feeds the lines to the funny man, Abbot and Costello if you are in USA or Morecambe and Wise if you are in UK. If there is no straight man, PAUSE, you are again making up your own jokes, I’ll be redundant at this rate, if there is no straight man, and sometimes you can’t  find one for love nor money. PAUSE, I decided to slip that one in before you lot did. 

Catch our breath with a new paragraph, or if you heard this on Radio that was the sound of me sipping my Stella, PAUSE, Stella Artois my pint, Stella doesn’t work here anymore you are such a naughty audience, I may have to spank you. You really really are a bad audience, I’m on the Radio and I could hear all you scream, YES PLEASE.

Where was I, I’m a little relieved, I just had to rub some pain killer on my shoulders, my Arthur, stop it straight away, Arthur is my Arthritis, what were you all thinking. If anybody would rub my shoulders it would be a Stella not an Arthur. And Stella doesn’t work here anymore, she left, the real reason being she kept on banging her head on the inside of my DAB radio, it gets really crowed in here, 1,000,000 words and a fat silver haired guy sitting in his chair talking, all from the inside of a radio.

Well I didn’t really explain about how to make a joke, but to be honest if you can then you do, if you cannot just listen and don’t step all over the punchline. I have to go and buy some Polish bread now, yes really it’s no joke if you run out of bread or rice in our house. Though Patrick the baker in The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker he has far more misadventures than me but that’s 600 pages of stories so you’ll have to go buy the book, its full of jokes.

If I were a Right-Wing Agitator

If I were a Right-Wing Agitator ©

By Michael Casey

I was reading the newspapers before going to bed and I was bored to read about the British guy making so much news in USA. Let’s see if he can guess I’m talking about him, but of course he can, he must follow his press avidly. He has a “strange” name, to be honest he sounds like a chip shop owner in Birmingham. He also happens to be gay, but that is as unremarkable as the colour of his eyes.

What is remarkable is that people allow him to annoy them he should be locked in a cupboard and ignored while people enjoy a party without him. That wasn’t a bad joke about coming out of the closet either, in Brad Pitt war films people are bundled into closets, hence that idea.

So people invite him to speak somewhere and there is a major demo against him, which is good for his ego and he is adding it to his book as we speak, in an attempt to make it more interesting. If he was a pop star, then that’d be interesting, if he could actually sing or do magic tricks and pull rabbits from underneath his scalp, there must be plenty of space, as he lacks any brains.

This person should just be ignored, have a silent demonstration and turn your backs on him, or moon at him, but he’d use that as a book cover so on second thoughts just turn your backs. But you could all have You are Unoriginal printed on the back of your Tshirts. It’s like the punk look that you sometimes see nowadays in 2017, I remember it 40 years ago so really that is UNORIGINAL just like the man himself.

People who crave all this fame and have so little talent or none in his case should just be IGNORED and backs should be turned on him, don’t engage in conversation. Give him vouchers for a tanning centre at the North Pole and maybe he’ll go there and never come back. Though Santa may be livid, so make sure is for-warned and he can go to his holiday home at the South Pole.

I am an Altruist more than anything else, and I’ll probably die unnoticed but I hope I leave a few laughs behind. I even have a party trick, where I set fire to my behind.  BRIGHT FART I call it. 

*****

I bet he'll think this a Valentine request, massaging his ego, oh no its not, boys and girls, oh no its not