Let me tell you a joke

One of these days I am gonna get in trouble for all this . . .

Anyhow, for the simple sake of not letting thje archive be ridiculously thin, I will post a passing thought.

Maximum Kuo of uncurated.bogspot.com has put up a word of the week. This week it is quisling. A quizzical choice, not perhaps very quixotic, but mixed with quanine-crap it had to be a "q" word.

My word of the week is dour, as in dour demeanour, or more recently, dour Scotsman (Shout out to Brownie). Why dour? Well, I was originally planning on doing a post entitled "The five most important dudes in the Middle East." Top of my list was to be Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah, a man who has been called both a menace to the west and the smartest man in the region. For those who haven't seen pictures of Nasrallah, he is a pudgy, sort of rolli-polli lebanese with a turban and beard. In fact, he looks a little like my father. Point is, that the turbaned beards are supposed to be these fiery, baneful and yes, dour mullahs. Not so with Nasrallah. Albert Brooks would have done well to stop in Beirut in his search for comedy in the Muslim world. Nasrallah tells jokes!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M0-0iRqIdyA

Ok, he's no Larry David. Hard to be funny when you are giving shout outs to Hamas in the middle of your joke. In the end, Nasrallah is in the position he is in now because he breaks the mold. Its not just this one joke, but this is indicative of his abilities as an orator, his ability to command a crowd and appear self-deprecrating and humble, while still being able to light a serious fire under the ass of his very disciplined and seemingly uncorruptable rank and file. The power of laughter I guess.