I don't know nothin' about no Mexico.

A day or two ago. Our car sounds like an idling jet engine chewing up sand and chalk. I drove it up to the University anyway, hoping to get some face time on a computer, betting on the quality of our crystallized conversation. I would net it, like a digital butterfly and "email it to myself". It would pass through the ether and be waiting at home should I find more time or the need to continue.

Campus was as near deserted as I'd ever seen it. I parked in a random spot I wasn't sure I was supposed to. Seeing the Union closed I damned its eyes, but noticed the cloud work up and to the north, mostly hidden by the Union and the new Multicultural Resource Center. The parking garage was all but empty so I found a spot to sit and watch the array of colors and shapes that filled the sky. My mind raced for words to describe it immediately, but I knew it was in vain. Who could relay such information?

To the west a broad thunderhead was fanning out at mind-altering hights. The sun as it set shone through its curling silver lining (or set it on fire - it looked high enough), just enough so as to throw a stark golden spray on the main event: a line of developing thunder heads cummulo nimbi or some such thing, that stretched out to the north west, above the Kaw Valley, swooping just close and low enough to brush the north face of Mt. Oread, to acculmulate in an odd dark-blue stasis just over downtown Lawrence. The clouds there swept down in coudal-arch patterns, scrapping tree tops and buildings. Further north the rain was dripping from the flat undersides of the clouds, and I could tell it was falling on highway 24, Perry and the power plant. Names and places synonymous with my life. The backside of the line of clouds was the real breath taker. There is no way to imagine the pinks and blues and oranges, how high the contrast could be and gentle the shades, how clear their outline could form, how immovable and liquid it seemed.

It was almost perfectly still down on the ground. The birds were still singing, the slightest of cool breezes blew now and again. Silent lightning feathered out sporadically on the cloud's underbelly, spreading like fire on a ceiling and then disappearing.

Funny.

I've written my share of jokes. If by my share I mean no one has ever either asked or commissioned me to do it. And those who have heard the finished product have asked me never to utter another word under the heading "A Joke I Wrote" again.

My jokes have the profound ability to make everyone who comes near them feel intensely awful about humanity and long for something as pleasant as shame or embarrassment to feel.

So in order to both not be and be cruel, here are the only two completed jokes I've ever written.

Joke #1

When I was a teenager I was trying to change the oil in my car for the first time. The only thing was: I had no funnel. My dad, seeing what was going on told me to hold on and he'd show me a trick. Emerging from the garage with a piece of paper he fashioned it into a funnel-esque shape.

"Aw Dad." I said. "That's no FUN-nel!"

(I can feel you dying.)

Joke #2

What do you call a raccoon with pincers on his front paws and six legs?

"Crab Raccoon."

Wow.

The only other one I have I've only written half of, that is, the setting and the punchline. It happens at an archeological dig in Egypt and at the end of it, a guy says:

"Well, at least we have Toots-n-common."

Of course it's a fart joke. I think the joke will actually turn out to be the whole explanation of trying to write the joke and then springing the punchline on my listeners because it seems to be funny enough on its own.

I used to have a theory of hierarchy of funny involving elements like whether or not the joke involves rhyming, is dirty, is a pun, etc. But besides being ridiculously subjective, I really don't care anymore. It was probably those jokes.