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If we don’t laugh we all will die
Though we’ll all die anyhow
It’s not a question of if or why
It’s just not yet or now
So laugh we should and laugh we must
Laugh at everything
For no matter what too soon we’re dust
So let the laughter ring.

A German, Paul Wüst, declined an offer of a post as jester with the sort of brazen dismissiveness that explains why he was asked. When Duke Eberhard the Bearded of Würtemburg (1445-96) invited him to be his jester he replied, “My father sired his own fool; if you want one too, then go and sire one for yourself” (“Mein Vater hat einen Narren für sich gezeugt, willst du aber einen Narren haben, so zeuge dir auch einen”). [Fools are Everywhere, Beatrice K. Otto]

Sweas, did you draw that? It’s fabulous.

No, Felix, as usual it’s a bodge. The jester is from an old print. I just weaseled it up a bit.

But I, despite expert advice,
Keep doing things I think are nice,
And though to good I never come —
Inseparable my nose and thumb!

— Dorothy Parker

Relax. Now that the culture elites have brought ebola to the US, it’ll soon be as trivial as the common cold!

Ah, yes. The late, great Dorothy Parker. A woman so brilliant–in a perverse way–that I would have considered it an honor to have been insulted by her.

On her honeymoon, her editor wired her about an article for which she was overdue. She replied as closely as I can remember, “Not now, I’m too f**king busy–or maybe it’s the other way around.”

Stoaty,

Does this make YOU a Futile Jester?

If she didn’t say that, she should have!

Isis and Ebola sounds like a Shake-speare comedy.

The other day I purchased a new edition of The Portable Dorothy Parker. Dottie had something, all right. Why else would her work still be in print almost 50 years after she died?

Have a look at the indie movie from the ’90s, “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle,” with Jennifer Jason Leigh as DP. Extraordinarily well done, like history come to life — and as depressing as the real Mrs. Parker’s life.

“If all the girls who went to that Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

and

(About a female acquaintance who had recently returned from England, and who was limping at a party:) “I think she injured herself sliding down a barrister.”

Every one of her biographers repeats this story: That, when her friends (ca. 1930) were worried about her drinking, she went to an AA meeting and returned full of praise for the organization. “So are you going to join?” asked pal Robert Benchley.

“Certainly not,” said Dottie. “They want me to stop now!”

Very funny, and apt — but AA wasn’t founded until 1935. As someone said above, if she didn’t say it, she should have.

Animal House, wasn’t it? “This calls for a stupid and feudal jester on somebody’s part”?

No?