Laughter is the Sun that drives winter
from the human face.
-Victor Hugo
-Victor Hugo
Preface
Zen Koan:
"Show me your original face before you were born."
That's your Pre-face.
Preface is an apropos term because I want to share the origins and roots of this book. Forgive me, but I like to reminisce with people I don’t know… But this story will hopefully warm your heart and inspire you to start laughing as I did that night back in 1997.
It was a crisp, very crisp Autumn night (aka Winter in Northern Michigan) and I was feeling especially good after an evening group Meditation at Song of the Morning Ranch (a spiritual retreat center in Northern Michigan). I was a full time staff member at the time in the midst of my quest to become spiritually enlightened and achieve that highest state of bliss.
It’s a fascinating tale, how I went from a premed/aspiring doctor to physicist/recluse to a monk/yogi determined to find God. And that is definitely another story for another time.
But this twisted, fateful, fun and painful journey has led me to writing this hopefully humorful and laughter inspiring book you now behold!
This book is the warped confluence of space and time, a patchwork of 5 seemingly unrelated events, yet related seamlessly to inspire, move and impel me forward with this book. I suffered from spiritual laryngitis (that's when you lose your inner voice) for a while, but now I can hear myself again.
These teachings and experiences will unfold in the book's five acts, but in this preface, I want to share with you the night it began, that cold Autumn night…
Ok, so back to that cold, I mean really cold Autumn night (we are talking about Northern Michigan just outside the artic circle - or at least it seemed that way).
It was a cold Autumn night and I had this Deja Vu experience… Sometime was happening that felt like it had happened before. Oh wait, never mind, that's just the last sentence.
My late and at the time best friend and fellow staff member at Song of the Morning, Victor Steinman, and I were talking, joking around after our nightly meditation and he was telling me a few new jokes. It seemed Victor always had a joke or two that he would "test out" on all the staff members, myself included. It was this night, that I cornered him and said directly, "where do you get all your jokes?" Victor replied that he had been collecting jokes for years… He showed me to his small 4 by 4 foot room and pulled out a folder with pages and pages of notes. Seeing this, I immediately said, I want to learn all these jokes, and record the funniest ones… Reluctantly he agreed.
Little aside on Victor:
Taxi Driver
Loved People
Loved Telling Jokes
One of the best Scrabble Players in the U.S. (he placed in competitions nationally).
A top Master at Chess
Loved words and puzzles, but nothing more than jokes.
He would come do work - study retreats for extended periods at song of the morning and was a full time staff member for a while like myself.
I remember his room was a small cubicle type room with, and he had pages and pages of notes, mostly jokes, but other information as well.
So we went downstairs and he took his notes and we sat downstairs in the cold staff breakroom with noone to disturb us.
"Show me your original face before you were born."
That's your Pre-face.
Preface is an apropos term because I want to share the origins and roots of this book. Forgive me, but I like to reminisce with people I don’t know… But this story will hopefully warm your heart and inspire you to start laughing as I did that night back in 1997.
It was a crisp, very crisp Autumn night (aka Winter in Northern Michigan) and I was feeling especially good after an evening group Meditation at Song of the Morning Ranch (a spiritual retreat center in Northern Michigan). I was a full time staff member at the time in the midst of my quest to become spiritually enlightened and achieve that highest state of bliss.
It’s a fascinating tale, how I went from a premed/aspiring doctor to physicist/recluse to a monk/yogi determined to find God. And that is definitely another story for another time.
But this twisted, fateful, fun and painful journey has led me to writing this hopefully humorful and laughter inspiring book you now behold!
This book is the warped confluence of space and time, a patchwork of 5 seemingly unrelated events, yet related seamlessly to inspire, move and impel me forward with this book. I suffered from spiritual laryngitis (that's when you lose your inner voice) for a while, but now I can hear myself again.
These teachings and experiences will unfold in the book's five acts, but in this preface, I want to share with you the night it began, that cold Autumn night…
Ok, so back to that cold, I mean really cold Autumn night (we are talking about Northern Michigan just outside the artic circle - or at least it seemed that way).
It was a cold Autumn night and I had this Deja Vu experience… Sometime was happening that felt like it had happened before. Oh wait, never mind, that's just the last sentence.
My late and at the time best friend and fellow staff member at Song of the Morning, Victor Steinman, and I were talking, joking around after our nightly meditation and he was telling me a few new jokes. It seemed Victor always had a joke or two that he would "test out" on all the staff members, myself included. It was this night, that I cornered him and said directly, "where do you get all your jokes?" Victor replied that he had been collecting jokes for years… He showed me to his small 4 by 4 foot room and pulled out a folder with pages and pages of notes. Seeing this, I immediately said, I want to learn all these jokes, and record the funniest ones… Reluctantly he agreed.
Little aside on Victor:
Taxi Driver
Loved People
Loved Telling Jokes
One of the best Scrabble Players in the U.S. (he placed in competitions nationally).
A top Master at Chess
Loved words and puzzles, but nothing more than jokes.
He would come do work - study retreats for extended periods at song of the morning and was a full time staff member for a while like myself.
I remember his room was a small cubicle type room with, and he had pages and pages of notes, mostly jokes, but other information as well.
So we went downstairs and he took his notes and we sat downstairs in the cold staff breakroom with noone to disturb us.
Exhibit B
I brought down a piece of Song of the Morning watermarked paper and listened and took notes. Believe it or not, I found that piece of paper (front side shown below – but there was a back too) and as you can see it is filled with shorthand notes front and back, the dictation and distillation of probably over a several hundred jokes.
Figure 1: Front side of the Notes (What you see is mainly punchlines, I would write the full jokes later).
Even though I had been interested in jokes and laughter ever since I was a kid, it was this night that I began actively recording jokes, and studying humor.
I mean, who doesn’t want to be funny? If you saw all those notes, you would have probably asked to hear them all too. Think about it, consider someone who had gone to the library and checked out every joke book, and recorded only the funniest jokes?
Perhaps you don't have a friend like Victor who has distilled dozens of joke books into the funniest ones and recorded those funny ones, but that is the purpose of this book.
You see Victor Steinman passed away from cancer in 2001, but his spirit remains strong as a seedling to this book. I have continued the labor of searching and finding the best "CLEAN" jokes on the planet that are low risk, funny, un-offensive, politically correct and certified Dolphin safe.
I challenge you to begin your own joke and humor journal … Start with what you consider to be the funniest jokes in this book. Steal and plagiarize away, I did. But I made many of these jokes my own uniquely adapting them to my experiences in life (more on this later in the book). And I challenge you to incorporate humor into your life more and more and even write a book yourself one day.
Here is a random sample of 21 of the jokes in those notes I took from Victor : Let the Laughter Begin right now in the Preface! How's that for delivering and we are not even to the intro yet.
Figure 2 (Below): Back side of the Notes (What you see is mainly punchlines, I would write the full jokes later).
Figure 1: Front side of the Notes (What you see is mainly punchlines, I would write the full jokes later).
Even though I had been interested in jokes and laughter ever since I was a kid, it was this night that I began actively recording jokes, and studying humor.
I mean, who doesn’t want to be funny? If you saw all those notes, you would have probably asked to hear them all too. Think about it, consider someone who had gone to the library and checked out every joke book, and recorded only the funniest jokes?
Perhaps you don't have a friend like Victor who has distilled dozens of joke books into the funniest ones and recorded those funny ones, but that is the purpose of this book.
You see Victor Steinman passed away from cancer in 2001, but his spirit remains strong as a seedling to this book. I have continued the labor of searching and finding the best "CLEAN" jokes on the planet that are low risk, funny, un-offensive, politically correct and certified Dolphin safe.
I challenge you to begin your own joke and humor journal … Start with what you consider to be the funniest jokes in this book. Steal and plagiarize away, I did. But I made many of these jokes my own uniquely adapting them to my experiences in life (more on this later in the book). And I challenge you to incorporate humor into your life more and more and even write a book yourself one day.
Here is a random sample of 21 of the jokes in those notes I took from Victor : Let the Laughter Begin right now in the Preface! How's that for delivering and we are not even to the intro yet.
Figure 2 (Below): Back side of the Notes (What you see is mainly punchlines, I would write the full jokes later).
Exhibit M
Other Influences and Ways I have used Humor in my Life
After siting down with Victor I compiled my first joke book "HA!" which you can find nowhere (not Now Here) but don't worry, all the best jokes are in this current book (and MANY more). After writing that book, I started humorizing my life and added humor to more and more situations and circumstances.
SHOW PICTURE OF HA! and how many jokes compared to NEW Book.
This book is all about H-U-M-O-R and how to humorize your life by incorporating humor into the main areas which I will introduce in the next chapter. This book is personalized to my own experiences and provides many examples, but ultimately you'll want to tailor fit it to your own life by getting your own material. Remember, we live in a material world to get more material. If you're a tailor, you have a lot of material, so you have an advantage.
In this book you are going to be a first hand witness to the example and power that humor can play in your life by sharing how its impacted mine.
This is not just another joke book, though it contains 400 jokes, and it is not just a dry research book on the researched benefits of humor and laughter, though it has that too (and boy it can get really dry and boring at times, so don’t say I didn’t warn you).
Ok, I hope that I wasn't too FOREWORD with you here, but let me start now with an Intro-DUCK-Shun.
SHOW PICTURE OF HA! and how many jokes compared to NEW Book.
This book is all about H-U-M-O-R and how to humorize your life by incorporating humor into the main areas which I will introduce in the next chapter. This book is personalized to my own experiences and provides many examples, but ultimately you'll want to tailor fit it to your own life by getting your own material. Remember, we live in a material world to get more material. If you're a tailor, you have a lot of material, so you have an advantage.
In this book you are going to be a first hand witness to the example and power that humor can play in your life by sharing how its impacted mine.
This is not just another joke book, though it contains 400 jokes, and it is not just a dry research book on the researched benefits of humor and laughter, though it has that too (and boy it can get really dry and boring at times, so don’t say I didn’t warn you).
Ok, I hope that I wasn't too FOREWORD with you here, but let me start now with an Intro-DUCK-Shun.
