My struggles with self-expression

I am determined  to finish this post and publish it.

I've been starting and abandoning posts these last few days on the grounds that they sounded stupid and the frustration is growing. I feel like Ram Gopal Verma except that Ram Gopal Verma finishes his movies. Even if it means finishing off his audience. There I go again, writing complete rot.

Anyway, I said so to the missus (about my growing frustration with being unable to write any posts). She patted me on the head reassuringly and told me what the old Hebrew wise man told his king.

"The wise man told the king "Gam Zeh Yaavor"", the missus told me. "It means "This too shall pass"". What context this was said in I have no clue. Possibly the king was constipated and struggling with a particularly unyielding lump. But what the missus was telling me was that I mustn't worry, just keep typing whatever came into my head without thinking.

"If you can do that while speaking, what is the problem typing?"

"You mean, I'm funny when I speak?"

"Er, no, I meant your ability to speak without thinking"

This aforementioned ability is an old skill acquired at business school where I spent two miserable years saying absolute drivel to the accompaniment of a slide projector.

"But I want it to  be funny. I want people to laugh!" I lamented.


"Sweetness", she said in her gentlest voice, "you are funniest when you're not trying"

I eh-what-what-ed.

"You remember the other day when  we were dining at Akhil's place?" she asked. Said Akhil being one of my oldest friends.

"What abut it?"

"Well Akhil was telling this anecdote about someone telling him he looked like Shashi Kapoor. Which he does, by the way. And you said someone told you look like Richard Gere"

"So?"

"Don't you remember how much we laughed. Akhil nearly had tears in his eyes. Sweetness, light of my life, I have seen Richard Gere and I have seen you. There are many differences"

"That was derisive laughter, which furthermore stems from a deep envy because I do look like Richard Gere from certain angles. I want my posts to make people laugh because of the humour"

The missus shrugged in a manner suggesting helplessness. Lost, I turned on my laptop and here I am, like Tristram Shandy, writing about what I am doing,  in the forlorn hope that something in it will turn out to be funny.

Part of the problem stems from my promise to the missus not to write groaners. This robs me of several thousand words a week but the missus tells me that if I do write them, I could face the following action

a) Being hit on the head with a blunt instrument
b) Extra 30 minutes cardio in the gym
c) Divorce
d) All of the above.

Consider for example, my interesting discovery about Tony Blair, former PM of Britain who for some reason always looks to me like an oily character. I'm probably wrong - I'm sure he's Abe Lincoln himself - but Tony has always looked like someone who would sell his wife.

And sure enough, it turned out that he had on one occassion, borrowed heavily from a shady financier, for funding his political ambitions. The said financier insisted on some kind of security for the advance and lacking anything significant in the nature of mortgageable assets, Tony suggested he leave his wife with the financier for the pendency of the loan, to which the financier agreed.

When his friends asked him how he had managed to raise so much cash, he replied that he was merely echoing the words of General Henry Munro who fought the French in 1778, laid seige to one of their Indian outposts and wrested control from them.

"What do you mean?" asked one of Tony's friends, who for the hundredth time wished Tony would use fewer words.

"I have Pawned Cherie"

But I desist from writing things like this  firstly because it is just the kind of thing that will lead the missus to use option 'a' above and secondly because I've already done a Pondicherry joke and to make another one so soon would just be declaring to my discerning audience that I have the imagination of a vegetable.

Still, I've managed to publish this which technically means that I have overcome my writer's block. I hope I find my funny bone soon. Assuming I ever had one.