Category: Humor

Filing anything under “Humor” just seems like a bad idea. I mean, if you have to tell people it’s a joke…

Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to listen

This entry is part 4 of 39 in the series Manual


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Just as the tail bone is a vestigial tail, the ears are vestigial cabbages.

Wear a hat to ward off ear worms, which if unchecked can turn into ear moths.

Listen with the heart. It’s not really designed for that, but it gets bored just pumping blood all the time.

Listen with your skin: each body hair is an antenna.

Turn on, tune in, drop into a really comfortable couch.

That “still, small voice” is neither God nor conscience but a long-deceased great aunt with a few things still on her mind.

Take notes.

All sound can be heard as music, but not all music can be heard as music.

Your life did, in fact, come with a soundtrack—what have you done with it?

The listener, too, must improvise.

One chord is enough for most purposes—don’t be greedy!

Silence can take four basic forms: pregnant, shocked, utter, and radio.

Pregnant silence is the most tragic, since she always dies giving birth.

Compose in her memory a sonata for the ear trumpet.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to walk

This entry is part 3 of 39 in the series Manual


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Walking is a form of climbing—one extremity should keep hold of the floor or ground at all times to prevent a fall.

(Feet are better for this than hands.)

You can try delegating it to others, but you have to hope they won’t do the same.

Someone must walk or the earth will forget about us and have other bad dreams instead.

Find a tree to coach you—trees spend their whole lives plotting their next step.

Be careful not to take root.

Every corner of terra firma requires a different walk, as well as every hour of the day.

A morning walk should never take the place of an evening or postprandial walk.

Saunter. Shuffle. Swagger. Stride. Plod.

Feet are like oxen bound in harness: they’re paired, but they’re not a couple.

However much they’re fetishized, their first and only mate is the ground.

Muscles are like batteries—simply walk backwards to recharge!

Try not to think about the ten little piggies with their discordant agendas.

Try not to think about those other two-legged animals, the birds.

At birth, you are allotted just so many steps. Choose them carefully.

Keep your eyes on the sidewalk—there are no dropped coins in the sky.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to eat

This entry is part 2 of 39 in the series Manual


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Cultivate an appetite through rigorous exercise of the organs of speech.

Grow root vegetables and, if possible, talons.

Salivation is important, but in most cases it will not be necessary to consume the saliva of other creatures, e.g. in the form of Aerodramus swiftlet nests.

Go to the ocean—primal eater—and watch how it wags its tongue.

Make sure the bread and the soup are singing in the same key.

Beware of the sea cucumber, which turns itself inside-out to avoid becoming a meal.

The best food is the most obvious: a fan never runs out of air to chew.

If the meat is rotten, eat the maggots.

Forks to the left, spoons to the right and a steak knife’s macron over the dish’s O.

Oxidation is too unpredictable. Use gastric acid and fermentation.

Set an extra place at your table for the anthropologist with the most delectable buttocks.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

First “Words on the Street” book now available in print and electronic forms!

Words on the Street cover

It’s been a long time in coming, but I’m very happy to announce that a print and e-book collection of 109 satirical cartoons featuring Via Negativa’s original, imaginary guest-blogger Diogenes is now available from that famous London publishing powerhouse, Bauble Tree Books. (If you caught my announcement at the beginning of December and are wondering why we weren’t able to get it out before Christmas, here are all the gory details.)

Visit the Bauble Tree page for the book. Or save a click and go directly to the source(s):

Print edition at Lulu (£9.99 — $15.30 at current exchange rate)
Paperback, 224 pages

EPUB edition at Lulu (£0.99 — $1.52)
For Nook, iPad, iPhone, etc.

Kindle edition at Amazon.com ($2.99)

Kindle edition at Amazon UK (£2.00)

Amazon’s French site (I’m an “auteur”!), German site, Spanish site, and Italian site (€2.68)

All of the cartoons have been re-done from what I originally published here (which were small GIF files, many of them long since vanished into the ether, presumably due to server failure or retirement by the free image-hosting service I used). A significant number of Diogenes’ signs were re-written, and a couple are brand-new.

Also adding value to the book is a short preface by my friend Kaspalita, a UK-based Pureland Buddhist priest and blogger. Now you may be wondering, “Why a Buddhist? Why would you not ask a graphic artist to introduce a book of graphic ‘art’?” But Words on the Street, as an inaction comic, is all about sitting, and who knows more about sitting than a Buddhist priest? We could argue about the difference between mindful repetition of the nembutsu and humorous repetition of the same drawing with different words, but never mind. Here’s some of what Kaspa said:

Anne Bogart described great art as something that stops you in your tracks and won’t let you move beyond it. Dave Bonta’s few words provoke a similar arrest. His placards draw forth a wry smile and, as good satire should, leads us into a critique of the many questionable aspects of our society.

Bonta’s words are given another layer of meaning by their fixed context, the unchanging homeless character whose placard they grace. “Friend Me” takes on a completely different significance seen here, as opposed to on one’s favorite social networking site.

Each page I flick to raises a smile and then asks me to come back to it and think, and then to think again. In this book Dave moves towards cementing his reputation as satirist and as an important contemporary gadfly.

Hear that? “An important contemporary gadfly”! If anyone not as fully trustworthy as an ordained priest said that, I’ll bet you’d be inclined to raise an eyebrow, wouldn’t you?

Needless to say, reviews would be very welcome. I’m told some review copies of the digital version may be available — contact the publisher.

Keep in mind that all of my royalities from the sale of this book and ebook will go toward supporting the Via Negativa blog network, including the production (and hopefully much more reliable hosting!) of brand new Words on the Street cartoons. So think of it as a sponsorship for something you’d like to see continue. (Well, of course, you can also think of it as a fabulous Valentine’s Day gift if you like.)

Also in that vein, if you like Words in the Street and/or want to support Via Negativa, don’t forget to visit my storefront at CafePress. Send me photos or videos of Via Negativa t-shirts, mugs, etc. “in the wild” and I’ll be happy to post them with a link back to your blog, if you have one. (No need to include your face if you’re shy.) Ditto for photos of the book being read in unlikely places.

In fact, let me conclude this post with some shots of Cynthia Cox modeling a t-shirt with my personal favorite Words on the Street cartoon. Cynthia is an award-winning poet based in the Houston, Texas area whose work I first came to know years ago at a blog called the twitching line; she now shares poems, videos and other fun and wonderful things at mareymercy. Herewith her riffs on “Clichéd — please help” (click to embiggen):

Cynthia Cox cliche 1

Cynthia Cox cliche 2

Cynthia Cox cliche 3

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Framed

headlines 2

A freshly laundered pillowcase makes headlines. I wake to the bad press.

Without glasses I feel vulnerable but look a little scary. Which makes sense: so often it is the most frightened people who say and do the most frightening things, especially when you get them into large groups: lynching, caucusing, you name it.

Glasses allow me to keep my distance from the world. A couple weeks before Christmas, the frame snapped on my old pair and I had to get new ones. I went to one of these places that offer two for the price of one: great, I thought, I can go twice as long before I have to get another eye exam, by which time I will probably need bifocals. But that’s another story.

A friend with more fashion sense than me showed up to help me pick the two pairs: one a light wire frame similar to what I had before, and the other a hipper style: thick, dark green plastic rectangles around each eye that say I AM WEARING GLASSES. My friend assures me they make me look like an urban architect, but I’ve decided they make me look like someone I’d like to punch in the face. They are, however, made of 100% recycled plastic, so they are figuratively as well as literally green.

So great, I can make a political statement with my choice of eyewear. But the other frames — the ones that do their best to be invisible — make a kind of statement as well. You can bend them completely in half and they won’t break! That’s the kind of politics that actually gets you places in this country. Eventually, of course, they will break, but then I’ll just don the other pair, which by then should be completely out of fashion. Which means I won’t have to spend long hours in front of the mirror practicing an air of urbanity and trying to avoid punching myself in the face.

The optometrist told me I have the eyes of a teenager, whatever that means. I guess it means there’s no medical marijuana in my future.

Hey! I should’ve held out for frames made entirely of hemp.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Words on the Street

Homeless guy with sign: "unoccupied"

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One of my New Year’s resolutions for Via Negativa was to bring back Words on the Street as a regular feature (I’ll try for weekly), in part as a way of commenting on, or at least acknowledging, the current global economic crisis (which I don’t expect to end in my lifetime, only worsen). Also, in recent years I fear Via Negativa has skewed a bit too far yin-ward on the yin-yang continuum. More satire might help restore the balance.

Incidentally, for some good, incisive yet non-preachy “poetry and prose for hard times,” check out the new online journal Cur.ren.cy (and consider submitting).