# 316, April 7, 2004
COLUMBUS: Connecticut today is the basketball capital of the country. When your college boys whip everyone from the Pacific to the Atlantic Coast, and then the next night your coeds finish the sweep, well it gives you the right to crow. The U Conn celebration included that new trend for college revelry, burning a few cars in the street. I guess some nut figured, if it’s done in Fallujah, why not in Storrs.
And you’ve got to give Sports Illustrated some applause. We’re always rubbing it in about the SI cover jinx, but this time they had it right, way back in November.
This is National Humor Month. Nobody but a humorist would claim a month with April 15 in the middle of it as the ideal time for comedy, mirth and glee. Sure, April can be National Humor Month, but start it on the 16th. Make it Humor Half-Month.
I read where a professor at Johns Hopkins University found that Humor “reduces stress, anxiety, tension, depression and anger”. Yes, April 16 is definitely the day it’s needed most. Ron Berk also says humor will “improve your mood, increase self-esteem, and promote a sense of empowerment.” Now after you empty your pockets to pay your taxes, under penalty of prison, why, you may still have a “mood”, and maybe some “esteem”. But any “sense of empowerment” will be pert near squashed.
I hope to have more for you on Humor Month before the month ends.
I kid the IRS, but if there’s another country where you’d rather pay your taxes, your export can probably be arranged. Tax time can be disheartening…, even if we all pay what we owe we’ll still be short $400 Billion.
Happy Easter. (I think the Supreme Court will still let me say that.) Whatever religious day you want to celebrate will get no argument from me. Or even no religion, go ahead and celebrate. Just so it doesn’t involve burning a car.
Historic quotes from Will Rogers:
“Of all the cockeyed things we got in this country at the present time, it’s some of our judges, and courts, and justices.” DT #1374, Dec. 18, 1930
“I believe I discovered a way to aid preachers in getting people to church. Publish their pictures in the papers every Monday, instead of just on the day after Easter. There is no reason why people should have to wait from one Easter to another.” DT #836, April 1, 1929
“I bet any Sunday could be made as popular at church as Easter is if you made `em fashion shows, too. The audience is so busy looking at each other that the preacher just as well recite Gunga Din. We will do anything, if you just in some way turn it into a show.” DT #2718, April 22, 1935