The World is a Funny Place

"The world is a funny place .........so why am I not laughing." Somebody said that. I mean it is an often quoted quote but I can't remember who it was. It does not really matter who said it but I fully agree with him today. In the last two days I have seen and experienced a number of things which made me one to say just this.

To be fair, when we say the "world is a funny place", perhaps we need to qualify it further. There is always the "funny- haha" but there could also be "funny peculiar" or "funny -alarming".

Let's start with "funny-peculiar". Today, I was at a shopping mall and there was this escalator between the first and second floors. The escalator going up was working but the one that was meant to go down was stopped and obviously not working. As I was waiting for someone for lunch, I casually looked out across the atrium and saw this very well dressed lady in her thirties approach the top of the elevator. When she got there, she saw that the downward escalator was not working. I expected her to just walk down the stopped escalator but that was not what she did.

First, she looked to the right and to the left. Then she turned around and walked away, as if she was uncertain what to do. She came back to the escalator and examined it more closely. She went off to look for a security guard or mall officer but not finding one, she came back again. She even gave the escalator a kick. In all she was there for about five minutes. Finally after seeing someone else walk down the escalator, she too walked down. Now that is funny-peculiar.

For funny-haha, I give you the bizzare story of the impeachment of the Prime Minister of Thailand. Before becoming Prime Minister, Mr. Samak Sundaravej was the host of a popular TV cooking show. He apparently was involved in four episodes after he became Prime Minister. This would seem to contradict the Thai Constitution which states that the Prime Minister must have no other job. So Mr. Samak who has been linked to several bribery and corruption scandals finally is removed from office because he was cooking on TV. The story does not end there because his party is re-nominating him as prime Minister and if his coalition allies support that nomination, he may be returned to that post again. Wow, think about what Clinton got away with during his presidency while the Thai's don't want their PM cooking anything!

Finally, I watched the animated movie "Barnyard" last night. There is something seriously wrong with the animals in the movie, especially the cows. What's wrong? There are no cows and bulls. There are only male cows and female cows. That's right. All the bovine characters have udders which make them all cows but some were clearly male cows and others with ribbons around their ears were clearly girl cows. Where did all those involved with that movie get their education? This is funny-alarming.