Depressed Rabbit Attempts Suicide by Tom Attea-NewsLaugh.com

A male rabbit named Furball had lost all hope. The female rabbit he had lived with for an entire year had left him for another rabbit. The owner of the garden he usually dined at had just put a fence around it. A fox had nipped one of his ears. And, at his most depressed, it seemed to him that all life is mere ephemera in the eye of time.

The only thing to do was bring an end to his sorrow, hunger, pain, and inability to find meaning even in a moment. He would take his own life. The question became, how?

The first thing he did is look for a cliff to jump off of, but, alas, he lived on farmland that was pretty flat. He did find one high rock beside the pond the cows waded into each day. Up he scampered.

The challenge was to jump and hit the ground, not the pond. He resolved to end his troubled existence and off he leaped. But when he hit the ground, unfortunately, he landed on his feet. He just stood there, regretting the rock wasn’t higher.

Next, he decided to back up and run at the rock as fast as he could, head first. He hopped back far enough to give himself a good running distance and then headed for the hard immensity. He banged into at full speed and knew nothing else, because the force knocked him out.

As luck would have it, after a while, he woke up, with a thundering headache. He rubbed his aching head with his paw and decided to drown himself. He leapt toward the pond and did a belly smacker. He waited to drown. The terrible thing is, he couldn’t stop swimming. Much as he tried, there was a reflex in him that he couldn’t control. So, filled with regret, along with water that had splashed into his mouth, he paddled out and sat down by the bank to dry off.

He thought about human beings and how many ways they had to commit suicide. Why didn’t rabbits have even one? In fact, why didn’t he ever hear of a rabbit, or any other animal, committing suicide?

No, it seemed that only humans knew how to do that. What was wrong with other animals? he wondered. He signed, realizing there were just no examples in the rabbit world or the entire animal kingdom he could follow.

He felt more miserable than ever and his vision blurred, because tears welled up in his eyes. He tried to wipe them away but his paw was still wet, so the clumpy fur only irritated them and made him blink. Oh, how hopeless his life was! He could see no reason to go on. Nothing good, he was certain, would ever happen to him.

But just then something good did happen. An exceptionally cute female rabbit hopped around the corner of the rock. He saw her and just the site of her made his sullen spirits leap up.

She hopped over to him, and said, “You look very sad. What’s wrong?”

“I want to kill myself but I don’t know how,” he confessed.

“Now, why would a handsome rabbit like you want to kill himself?” she asked.

“Because nothing is going right. My girl friend left me. My favorite garden has been fenced off. A fox bit my ear. And I feel insignificant.”

He leaned forward to show her the bite mark.

“My, oh, my,” she said. “Let me lick it.”

“You’d do that for me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “If a fox bit my ear, I’d want somebody to lick it for me.”

“OK,” he said, “but take it easy. It hurts a lot.”

So the female rabbit licked his ear. He felt good.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Furball.”

“I like that,” she said. “Very cute.”

“What’s yours?” he asked.

“Sweet Thing.”

“Me?” he wanted to know.

“Yes, you’re very sweet,” she told him. “But that’s also my name.”

“Oh,” he said, and tested it with is own lips. “Sweet Thing. I like that.

“Good,” she said. “And I like the way you taste.”

“You do?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Great,” he exclaimed, and continued to enjoy her soothing licks. He couldn’t believe it, but what felt like a new life was swirling all through is body.

“How’s that?” she asked, finishing her TLC of his ear.

“Much better,” he told her.

“You know,” she said, sitting down beside him, “I live by a great garden. There’s no fence, and you’re welcome to come there and eat.”

“I am?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t you have a male rabbit who loves you?”

“No,” she said, “he left me for another rabbit.”

“I’m sorry,” Furball said.

“Don’t worry,” I’ll get over it,” Sweet Thing sort of sighed. “But I wish I could meet another male rabbit, one I really like.”

By now our suicidal rabbit was thinking, Hey, who would have believed it just a few minutes ago? My life just might work out! And, even if life is just ephemera in the eye of time, I might be able to fit in enough happiness to be glad I'm alive.

“How about me?” he asked.

“Well, I like you a lot, but I’m not sure I could be happy with a rabbit who is so depressed he would take his own life.”

“Oh, I’m all over that now,” he told her. “And, if you were my girl friend, I’d be all over it forever.” “You would?”

“Yes,” he said, and snuggled up to her. "I'd have so much to live for!"

“Wow,” she said, “and so would I. Would you like to come to my garden and eat something?”

“Love it,” he told her.

“Great. Then off we go!” she replied.

And so off they hopped, to live happily ever after.

Tom Attea, humorist and creator of NewsLaugh.com, has had six shows produced Off-Broadway. Critics have called his writing "delightfully funny," "witty," with "great humor and ebullience" and "good, genuine laughs."

Article Source: Depressed Rabbit Attempts Suicide

Techniques For Connecting With Humor

By Kurt Mortensen

Can you think of a time when you or someone you knew heard a really funny story and then tried to tell it to someone else without evoking a single chuckle? Instead of peals of laughter, you got the old ?Guess you had to be there? response. Why is it that the exact same story is hilarious in one instance and bland in another? It all has to do with the delivery. There are many different elements that factor into making humor work. Timing, gestures and facial expressions, vocal tone and inflection, and the setting are examples of just some of the things that should always be considered when delivering a shot of humor.

Gestures and facial and vocal expression are things you have direct control over and should be amply practiced. If you are willing to exercise the discipline to rehearse in front of a mirror, or even better, in front of a video camera, you can then step back and observe yourself. In so doing, you will reach a greater degree of mastery.

A critical part of your preparation is to know your audience. Often, understanding the basic attributes that your audience members have in common will give you clues as to what sort of humor might work with them. For example, if you are talking to business people, workplace humor may likely strike a chord. If you are talking to moms, on the other hand, you might center your humor on keeping up with all the demands of home and family. Similarly, coaches and athletes would appreciate sports humor. You need to ask yourself, ?What are the commonalities among these individuals that bring them all together to hear the same speech? What would be funny to this particular group of people?? The more you know about your audience, the better you?ll be able to connect with them. And the more you can bring yourself onto their turf, the more apt they will be to identify with you and to respond to your message. As the late Victor Borge once said, ?Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.?

Sometimes humor will come to you off-the-cuff. This element of spontaneity can be very effective, but depending on the situation, it must often be planned for and implemented with care. This advice holds especially true when introducing a topic that you hope will really resonate with your audience by the end of your presentation. Spontaneous humor is an opportunity to gain instant rapport, one that should not be passed up. William Norwood Brigance wrote:

The humorous introduction needs careful handling. Humor is invaluable for establishing friendship with the audience. It also establishes a part of the speaker?s prestige, shows whether he is a sympathetic human being, a dull bore or a stuffed shirt. We might say that, as an operating rule, every speech, excepting on solemn or state occasions, needs humor at the start in order to establish rapport between speaker and audience.

About the Author: Everyone persuades for a living. Whether you?re a sales professional, an entrepreneur, or a stay at home parent, you must convince others to your way of thinking. Find out more at www.PreWealth.com and get my free report '10 Costly Mistakes.'

Source: www.isnare.com
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Kofi Annan, The Middle East Repairman; Can His Handiwork Keep The Peace?

By Tom Attea

Secretary-General Kofi Annan sped to the Middle East with his UN emergency repair kit to do maintenance work on the quick fix the UN implemented between Israel and Hezbollah. Only trouble is, his traveling handiwork doesn?t seem as much like the permanent fix as all the world would like to count on. Even while he was cobbling the warring factions together, his work looked more like duct tape that could unravel as quick as a speeding bullet.

For instance, the dutiful diplomat emerged from his meeting in Lebanon with the powers that may or may not be, maintaining that the nation is sincere in its desire for peace. Why? According to him, Lebanon learned hard lessons from having Israeli bombs drop on it. Such reality therapy seems like a painful way to grasp the obvious. Yet at the same time as he was supposedly throwing ashes of repentance on his forehead, Lebanese President Siniora announced that he had nothing to talk about with Israel as long as the Israeli air and sea blockage remained in effect. It was lifted a few days later. Hooray for Mr. Fixit.

More troubling is the nagging drip, drip, drip that we hear in regard to the Lebanese government?s admission that disarming Hezbollah, a prudent step called for in the UN resolution, would cause a civil war. Did you or did you not just sense that the duct tape might unravel?

Next, the dedicated repairman flew off to meet with Bashar al-Assad, whose favorite form of present bashing is to retail armaments to Hezbollah. Yet Kofi emerged from his quick-fix, Annan-Assad meeting to announce that Mr. Assad understood that the UN resolution called for an end to supplying arms to any element in Lebanon without the approval of the central government. But ? drip, drip, drip ? al-Assad did not appear with him to announce that the fix is in.

Next, Annan, who now seemed more like a miracle man, hurried off to Tehran, where he met with the belligerent president of the magnificent mullahdom, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Once again, the amazingly capable UN handyman emerged to announce, one, that Ahmadinejad had agreed with the no-no about providing Hezbollah with anymore weapons and, two, that Iran was open to negotiations about its nuclear program. Yet ? drip, drip, drip ? the head knucklehead did not appear at the press conference when Annan made his seemingly miraculous pronouncements. Instead, he found occasion to remind the trembling world that his nation would not give up its right to the peaceful uses of the A-bomb.

Yet, just as sanctions loomed, the malicious mullahs allowed their chief nuclear negotiator, Alibi Larijani, to say Iran might consider suspension for two months; that is, he provided just enough seeming flexibility to make unrealistic hope spring anew in the vacillating minds of Western negotiators, who are attempting to duke out the nuke issue without raising a glove.

Finally, Annan found a party to the peace who would at least appear in public with him for a photo op: Ehud Olmert, who recently bestrode the world?s stage as Israel?s warrior Hamlet. Yet ? drip, drip, drip ? while Annan was once again enthusiastic about the prospects for peace through duct tape, Olmert insisted, at the time, that Israel?s air and sea blockades of Lebanon would not be lifted until 5,000 UN peacekeepers were on the ground in Lebanon and he reiterated Israel?s right to, of all things, defend itself. Thankfully, a few days after the confident repairman?s pronouncements, Israel did lift the blockade.

Sorrowfully, Annan?s tape job was also punctuated by the drip, drip, drip of more Israeli and Lebanese deaths due to violations of the ceasefire and the drip, drip, drip due to the persistent realization that none of the two soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah who served as the breakdown that led to war have been released. In another area of the suspect diplomatic basement, there was also the drip, drip, drip of the kidnapped Israeli soldier who has still not been returned by Hamas.

Now, Annan has agreed to help mediate the release of all three soldiers. Let?s hope he can find more in his toolkit than duct tape. He?ll need them to make any progress with the reason-proof twosome of Hez and Ham.

While we gratefully salute whatever fixes Mr. Annan, the repairman, was able to make, we do wish that his urgent handiwork provided evidence of more than the patchwork in which we already hear disappointment?s telltale drip.

About the Author: Tom Attea, humorist and creator of http://NewsLaugh.com, has had six shows produced Off-Broadway. Critics have called his writing 'delightfully funny,' 'witty,' with 'great humor and ebullience' and 'good, genuine laughs.'

Source: www.isnare.com
Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=84890&ca=Humor

How A Head Cold Got Me Married

By Karen Peralta

Now that I?m really settled down for bad or good, I can?t help but reflect on my lengthy past as a happy-go-lucky single. How can I forget the many bizarre, crazy, and benighted times I?ve misled myself into a man?s twin loving arms, and how very much I miss loving every minute of it? How?

Why, I squirm as if caught in a velvet trap?well, I could, but my husband is standing right behind me and might ask me what I?m sitting on.

Yes, it?s been nothing but high misadventure for me, especially since I lost my extremely brave and sincere first husband, a wonderful Austrian-American Jew, to combined MS and cancer on February 23, 1985.

I loved him so much?even after more than a dozen intensive, fascinating, and downright roller-coaster relationships before then, my first real commitment, he was still the only man I ever truly loved (Remigio, stop looking at this over my shoulder!)

Anyway, several eventful years and as many nerve-wracking, tumultuous, and sanity-defying relationships later, I landed in the plastic schoolroom seat in front of Remigio, my future second husband, in a five-week Certified Nurse Aide class held at a nursing home near Northgate in Seattle, next to a merrily perking and brewing coffee pot. Innocent and unknowing, I was headed for yet another high-pitched roller coaster ride.

All my relationships, especially as an adult, have been crazy ones. My first husband thought he lucked out marrying his sexy young attendant. In his early thirties, Gary was dying horribly, often in great pain, and I was forced to fall deeply in love with his stubborn courage and what was ebbing away of his once trim and athletic youthful body. He was the first person who truly needed, wanted, and loved me. His courage lasted completely, until the very end. Oh, how I have missed his loving, gentle arms.

After he died, I had several wild, bitter and tragically brief affairs. If I ever write about everything that happened, it would make three or four excellent trashy novels. Whatever, it was fun being single again, a vast relief from the hours of watching over Gary?s dying and emaciated form.

But Remigio stopped my new single life cold simply by kicking the frail back of my chair in CNA class?HARD! He received all my undivided attention, distracting me from talking to a fellow classmate, a middle-aged black lady. He caught me in the middle of accidentally sniffing at her. I apparently was coming down with a major head cold.

Really, I would like to think ?twas because he preferred the pretty, teasingly mid-calf length crisp white skirt I was wearing for the first time in class to the pretty much bulkily pantaloned, overweight, and married other female denizens of our class. Well, Grace, the middle-aged black lady, was only sitting pat. A hard worker of several years standing, she was being ?grandfathered in? as a CNA, but still had to take the class.

Remigio may have been trying to protect her from me, as I?d been sniffling at her for the last three or four sessions?such was vengeance from Karen the Terrible. SNIFF !!

Grace was sitting to the right front, I was seated to the rear left, and as I?d recently had an extremely weird experience involving three black men and a basketball, I was fitfully ?taking it out? on Grace. I was casting her sidelong glances, and sniffing loudly, intermittently and guiltily considering fetching her a hot cup of coffee as the pot was brewing closer to me than her. It would have been hard for her to squeeze between the seats and fetch herself a hot, fresh cup. I began getting her some coffee.

Sometimes I added creamer. I even stirred it with the little red plastic stir sticks. She finally asked me to add a sugar packet, please.

She liked the coffee, but our distantly commiserative relationship as two ladies of nursing was rudely interrupted by the rapid-fire entrance of Remigio?s sneakered foot through the reverberating back of my nearly shattering cheap plastic chair. I?ve lovingly saved the black marks on the back of my white nursing jacket for years.

Turning around, right after the ?kick-off,? I astonishingly faced a middle-aged, awfully hate-ridden, and flatly Hispanic cold stare. This angry face, however, reminded me of a similar nut-brown countenance, a Middle-Eastern teacher I?d been attracted to ?way back at Ohio University in 1978. Said chap always mispronounced the word ?equilibrium? in a characteristic accent that could shatter a glass retort. He explained the rules of physical science to us neophyte med students in as high of a pitch as he could muster, but it was musical and alluring somehow?and this kicky guy behind me looked a lot like him.

Remigio turned out to be a quite engaging and multi-talented Philippino/Hawaiian import, a seventh-degree black belt martial arts expert, a fabulous chef of all regional cuisines and one heck of a lip-locking rugged kisser, in approximately that order. I was an artist and writer of long standing who needed some work 'on the side,' so I'd decided to take a Certified Nursing training course and move in with a little old lady I knew who needed the help. It was a great free way to continue with my career without interference. But now this new guy had shown up in my life. What can you do when they come at you from behind like that? I tried out assuming there was something nice about him.

He gradually broke down in his enmity towards me, merrily chasing me to the bus stop in his beat-up old blue and white pickup truck. He soon followed me home, and Mommy said I could keep him. Actually, ?Mommy? was that little old lady, Carrie, a disabled, fellow 'freckly' dwarf (you could spot her) I was working for and living with at the time. She needed extensive in-home care, and Remigio went right to work helping us move into a larger apartment, even cooking and cleaning for us. I scarcely had to lift a finger; Remigio was simply everywhere, driving us to church and generally relieving me of my cares and woes until Carrie abruptly died, peacefully in her sleep. Well, possibly those Catholic nurses gave her a lethal injection. She may have been wandering around at night and screaming her lungs out. She had a very bad knee problem, and had kept me awake nights frequently with it. Again, what can you do?

We married a week and a day after Cinquo de Mayo, 1991. We?re still madly in love, and near Christmas day of 1994 we were blessed by a Pinay from Heaven, our little princess Angela, nut-brown as her Daddy and sporting my chipmunk cheekbones. Yes, Remigio is crazy about me now. We should be okay, as long as they don?t use the nets.

This incident may be the only time in history that a cold-stricken gal every attracted a lonely, jealously protective guy through being an apparently obvious, blatant and coffee-fetching sniffing presumed bigot. Bigots and non-bigots alike, take note.

I guess I?d suggest that more single white ladies, and any other intrigued parties, try sniffling (or sniffing) at nearby black people to see whose attention they furtively attract. Of course, you may inadvertently attract a black person, which might work out quite well for you, especially if they happen to be an excellent cook -- as the husband of a friend of mine (who used this method) turned out to be. Hope that he or she has a sense of humor. Or, believe in whatever powers that may be.

If so, it helps a lot if you fetch them some coffee. It soothes their tired, ruffled feathers. Seems some folks are more descendants of birds than lizards.

Be sure and add some cream and sugar.

About the Author: RAINBOW WRITING, INC. -- We offer inexpensive freelance writing, copy editing, ghost writing, graphics and CAD, Internet marketing, publishing help, search engine optimization, professional free services and supercheap dedicated web hosting and site development. Copyright ? 2005 by Karen Cole-Peralta

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