The Funny Button

The universe is gonna kill us all.

Sometimes it seems the universe doesn't care a whit about us little dust specks jumping up and down on planet Earth. Then it sends viruses, cancer, tornadoes, boredom, and deceptively-enticing products like deep fried Oreos. For something that doesn't care about killing humans, the universe sure spends a lot of time and effort on it.

sigh. Let's face it. The universe is a giant pain in the ass. You spend at least half of your energy just trying not to die. Why can't it just get off our backs and let us read our John Grisham novel in peace?

A fitness coach once asked me, "What are your goals for a fitness program?"

I replied, "Not dying would be nice."

It seems simple enough, and yet it's the one thing you cannot do. You have more of a chance running the 2 minute mile than cheating death.

Pretty heavy stuff, but it's been on my mind recently. My father, Gary Riecke, died a couple of months ago of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

Looked at it in a certain way, the universe was a total victor in this whole drama. In the end it got what it wanted. The universe won and my dad lost.

But I was present for this whole mess and I can tell you ... it was not a complete shutout. My father had one gift that kept him in the running.

He had a great sense of humor.

He had it all of his life (or at least for the time I've known him), and all kinds of people remarked on it at his funeral. Gary had a lot of gifts, and was quite generous with them, but his sense of humor is the one that speaks to me these days.

The Trough of Disillusionment

OK, so my father had a schtick. He would repeat jokes.

Let's say he told you the Penguin at the Zoo joke (1). And you laughed because, well the first time it is really funny. A couple of days later, he'd tell the same joke. Still funny. A couple of days later, he'd tell it a third time. Still kind of funny.

After about 50 times, it is getting less funny. At first you wonder, "Maybe he forgot he told it to me ... like 50 times." You test the waters a little. When he starts telling it, you say, "Oh yeah I've heard that one before." No dice - he keeps telling the joke. You finish the punchline, you repeat it with him as if you're in chorus together. You think that 'll keep him from telling it a 51st side? Not a chance.

You think, "This is not funny anymore." You have hit the trough of disillusionment, my friend.

The Trough of Disillusionment is a term that technologists at Gartner have coined to describe feelings of despair after the initial euphoria. A technology comes along and everyone thinks it going to change the world overnight and solve of our problems.

For example ... and here I am picking one totally at random ... let's take Artificial Intelligence. AI comes along and it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. It will do all of our work, leaving us nothing to do but sip Mai Tais on the beach. Everyone is sailing along on the Peak Of Inflated Expectations.

Then reality hits. Hard. You realize the answers you're getting from AI are wrong. 173 wrong answers from your AI engine, and you start thinking "Maybe this AI is a bunch of crap." This is the Trough of Disillusionment.

Back to the Penguin joke. It's really not that funny anymore, but you're gonna hear it. You resign yourself to it. My dad's gonna tell the Penguin joke.

And all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly, it becomes funny again. Maybe the 200th time you chuckle a little. The 250th, you're laughing outright. The 300th, you're busting a gut. Maybe the Penguin joke is funny.

You have now passed from the Trough of Disillusionment to the Slope of Enlightenment. The enlightenment is this: You are now in a land beyond the Penguin Joke. You are laughing because Gary is funny and the situation is funny, not necessarily because the Penguin joke is funny.

He has found your Funny Button. And he is gonna push it over and over again. God help you.

It's the Combination

OK, that explains how my father was funny, but what did he actually find funny? That's a pretty individual thing. I'm not sure what attracts humorous people to certain topics, but my father's thing was combinations.

My father's favorite cartoon was The Far Side. For those of you who do not know The Far Side or don't think it's funny, ... permit me to analyze it for you. Because, as we all know, nothing makes humor funnier than analyzing it to death.

The Far Side specialized in combining things that don't belong together. The now-infamous Cow Tools panel illustrates this point.

If you don't find this funny, then you are just plain wrong. But you are also in good company.

Anyway, if you spent any time around Gary, you heard a stories about certain characters - sometimes himself, and sometimes people he played and worked with. And these characters were forever combining things they shouldn't ... for example, bowling balls and dynamite.

Gary's father worked at a quarry near the tiny town of Alexandria SD. He kept a box of dynamite in the shed out back ... you know, just in case you need some dynamite. It's really no different than taking those paper clips from the office, except you can't blow up stuff with a paper clip.

Anyway Gary and his buddies were sitting at the lone bar in Alexandria SD, pondering the universe and what-not. One asked, "I wonder what would happen if you lit a stick of dynamite under a bowling ball?"

A very legitimate question. And no matter how long you might speculate on it, some things you need to try for yourself.

Fortunately my dad's dad had a box of dynamite in the shed, and one of the other guys had a bowling ball. So they drove out to the one of the fields around Alexandria, dug a hole a few feet deep, packed a half stick of dynamite and placed the bowling ball on top. My dad stuck a blasting cap, lit the fuse and ran off with his buddies to a respectable distance.

"BOOM!" the bowling ball took off like a comet into the sky.

They waited for the report back to earth - for a glimpse of it, or a thump on the ground.

They waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally, bored of the whole affair, they went home.

Six months later, it was harvest time and Gary and his buddies were back at the bar. A farmer comes in and sits at the bar across from them. "Damndest thing," he tells the bartender. "I'm out with my combine and I hit this solid thing out in the middle of the field. I get out to the take a look at it ... and it's a bowling ball! Can you believe that?"

My dad and his buddies look at each other. His field is half a mile away from where they lit the dynamite.

OK, I admit ... my father would sometimes embellish the truth for comedic effect. But if you think about it, it is the combination of bowling ball and dynamite that's the real punchline.

I'm a computer scientist, so I look at things from a combinatorial perspective. Take all the things in the world, then pair each up with every other thing. You can then separate these pairs into three groups:

• Things that go together - i.e. dynamite and a mountain
• Things that don't go together that aren't funny - i.e. dynamite and an electrocardigram
• Things that don't go together that ARE funny - i.e. dynamite and a bowling ball

The trick for the funny person is to comb the universe for that third group, and they are rare as dinosaur fossils.

The Universe Gets You

But back to the original argument. If you have a good sense of humor, how does even help you in a universe bent on your destruction?

My family and I watched Gary die of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. It had been latent - there were signs of it for the past 3 years, but once diagnosed, it took only 2 months for his body to spiral downwards. Part of it was the disease itself, part of it was the other medical conditions (kidney and heart problems) and part of it was chemotherapy ... the very definition of body disruption.

There's one thing I noticed: Chemotherapy is the most Catholic of all medications. How so? Catholics know that if a medicine tastes good, boosts your spirits or makes you feel good in any way ... it cannot possibly be effective. Chemotherapy's Scorched Earth policy was designed from the ground up for maximum displeasure.

Anyway chemotherapy chased new symptoms out of the woodwork every day. We literally couldn't keep up. One of the symptoms was ... well, it looked like confusion, but it wasn't dementia. It was more like this nether world. It wasn't "I know where I am" and it wasn't "I know where I am (but it is not where I actually am.)". It was more like "I have this vague idea where I am, but I can't place it right now."

Gary would sit on the edge of the bed, with all of us - the doctor, my mother, the nurses - all firing questions at him. He would begin to speak. The words would come out garbled or non-sensical or (I think) just not the words he intended.

After minutes and minutes of trying to form words, he would start chuckling.

And I'm thinking WTF? Why is he laughing?

I mean, this is tragic, right? This man has been forming words for the last 81 years, getting his point across to all humans who cross his path, and now he has lost that ability. His loved ones are trying desperately to find out what he wants, and he knows this.

Yet, looked at a certain way ... it's also funny.

• It's funny in the way that you get a shot of novacaine and the doctor asks you a question and you respond, "Hguwa guwaya."
• It's funny that everyone is trying so damn hard and it's not working - like a bunch of keystone cops falling off the wagon, running and bumping into each other.
• It's funny that something as basic as speaking is in truth tremendously complicated and we have forgotten this - like the rocket scientist having trouble tying their shoelaces.

I started laughing too. I mean, what else could I do? My father had punched my funny button, like he had done a thousand times before. In that way, it was just another day at the ranch.

Dying is a big deal. It is painful for the one involved, and the ones that love them. Death has an incredible amount of power, and causes an awful lot of fear and misery.

To laugh at death, if even for a moment, is not just appropriate ... it's the right thing to do. Death might have a lot of power, but it shouldn't have all of it. Not all of the time.

I learned a lot of things from my dad, but that was one of the most important.