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University Daily Kansan Monday, March 4, 1957
Trend In Humor-
It is said that Americans are developing weird tastes. Along with Americans' apparent delight in Spillane's sexy sadism in literature, vulgarity and violence in rock'n'roll music, promiscuity and more violence in motion pictures, has come a macabre trend in American humor.
Morbid, Macabre Mary Ann
The "Mary Ann" jokes which possibly had the "Little Audrey" jokes of the 20's as ancestors, are spreading like wildfire across the nation's college campuses.
Probably inspired by Charles Addams' macabre cartoons, the "Mary Ann" jokes verbalize similar morbid themes.
We hear much in the U.S. of the censoring of foreign films because of "indecency, indelicacy, promiscuity, starkness, rampant sex," etc., but perhaps few Americans know that many American, including some of our "better" ones, have been censored and even banned in foreign countries because of excessive morbidity and violence.
Plausibly in this time of pressures and threatened outbursts of large-scale violence we are seeking an escape valve—something to grant us release from internal pressures incurred by the times and seasons.
Of what significance is this trend to us as a people?
Our present period of history has been compared with the "Roaring '20's." Parallels between rock'n'roll, the movies of then and now, literature of the "Roaring '20's" and "Flaming '50's," a "loosening of morals" in both periods—and the morbid expressions of sadistic humor are being drawn.
What does this mean to us? we ask. Of course, only history will tell.
But a prudent question is one half of wisdom, a wise man said.
Perhaps some day we will reflect on these times and seasons nostalgically, and smile to ourselves as we recall the "mad things" we thought, said and did.
'If I've Told You Once, I've—'
Jim Tice
Following are representative of the Mary Ann jokes:
"But Mother, I don't like little brother!" "Shut up and eat what's on your plate, Mary Ann!"
"Why do we have to go to church so early, Mother?" "If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times, Mary Ann, you're to be sacrificed today."
"Mother, why do we have a Christmas tree and presents on the Fourth of July?" "Mary Ann, you know you have Leukemia and won't live till Christmas."
"Mother, Mother, why can't I go swimming?" "Mary Ann, if I've told you once I've told you a thousand times it will rust your hooks."
"May I go for a drive, Mother?" "Mary Ann, you know your iron lung won't fit in the Legion."
"What ever happened to ol"
MOM 'n' MARY ANN
Shep, Mother?" "Now be still, and eat your stew, Mary Ann."
.25 Years Ago
March 4.1932
HOPEWELL, N.J. — (UP) — Protection and a $50,000 ransom in cash were promised the kidnappers of baby Charles A. Lindberg Jr., today if only they will return the child to its grieving parents.
that "responsible representatives of military and non-military circles in Japan were planning to seize Far Eastern Soviet possessions."
1 2 3 4 5
MOSCOW — (UF) — The Soviet government admitted for the first time today that it has strengthened military forces on its Eastern frontier. Simultaneously, it was charged
Ad: "Jimmy Jay and his famous Brunswick Recording Orchestra, Friday, March 4 from 10 till 2 at the Union Building."
Ad: "John and Lionel Barrymore in 'Arsene Lupin.'"
“—ENJOY THE PLAY, MRS. LINCOLN?” (An example of the trend toward the macabre in American humor.)
Editor:
In response to your acrimoniously critical article of "The Doctor in Spite of Himself," I would like to interject my interpretation of your article. I hope not to be as superficial as you were.
Seeming as you are one of the hundreds of this campus who rarely attends the fine programs the University offers the student, you should analyze both sides and present each to the reader.
Whenever you manage to support a function it is not for educational reasons, but for social or other motives (as a capacity student support of "One Summer of Happiness").
No doubt from your article you paid no attention to the inner aspects of the play or cast, but only to your most pronounced obsessions of superficial, smeared make up. It appears you most-assuredly wasted your evening looking for bull fights and crap games, missing the hard work done by the cast in presenting the play.
The audience certainly indicated their appreciation of a job welldone and the cast's ability to keep their minds off your enchanting dream world of crap games and bull fights.
George Hubert
New York City
First-year medical student
White pine is the largest of American conifers growing east of the Rocky Mountains. Fullgrown specimens stand from 90 to 150 feet high; some occasionally reach 200 feet.
University of Kansas student newspaper
1904,
triviews, 1908, daily jap, 16, 1913
Daily Hansan
Telephone Viking 0-2736
Extension 251, news room
Extension 276, business office
Telephone VIking 3-2700
Member Inland Daily Press Association.
Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y. News service: United Press. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon and the University year except Saturdays and Sunday Publicity days, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
Kent Thomas ... Managing Editor
John Battin, Felecia Ann Fenberg, Bob Lyle, Betty Jean Stanford, Assistant Managing Editors; Jim Banman, City Editor; Nancy Harmon, LeLoy Zimman, Brian Shilouzaki, Telegraph, Editor; Mary Beth Noyes, Delbert Haley, Assistant Telegraph Editors; Dick Brown, Sports Editor; George Anthan, Assistant Sports Editors; Marilyn Mermils, Society Editor; Pat Swanson, Assistant Editor; John Eaton, Picture Editor
NEWS DEPARTMENT
**ALMÉRIF DEFICIENT**
Jerry Dawson, Editorial Editor
Jerry Thomas, Jim Tice, Associate Edi-
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Alee Bowers...Business Manager
Dave Dickey, Advertising Manager; John Hedley, National Advertising Manager;
Harold Metz, Classified Advertising Manager; Conboy Brown. Circulation Manager
St. Bernard dogs bear the name of St. Bernard de Menton, who in the 11th century founded a hospice that sheltered thousands of travelers caught in Alphine snows.
More than two dozen glaciers cling to Mt. Rainier, in Washington State. Their 40-square-mile expanse constitutes the largest single-peak glacier system in the United States.
FASTER, FASTER!
F F
Pick up your paper every morning and what do you read? "CRISIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION." That's what you read. "ENROLLMENT SPIRALLING UPWARD - DESPERATE NEED FOR MORE CLASSROOMS, MORE TEACHERS." But classrooms, alas, do not spring up like mushrooms, nor teachers like mayflies. So what must we do while we build more classrooms, train more teachers? We must get better use out of the classrooms and teachers we now have. That's what we must do.
This column, normally a vehicle of good-humored foolery, of joy that wrinkled care derides, of laughter holding both his sides, will today forsake levity to examine the crisis in higher education. My sponsors, the makers of Philip Morris Cigarettes, as bonnie a bunch of tycoons as you will see in a month of Sundays, have given cheerful consent to this departure. Oh, splendid chaps they are, the makers of Philip Morris! Oh, darlin' types they are, fond of home, mother, porridge, the Constitution, and country fiddling! Twinkly and engaging they are, jaunty and sociable, roguish and winsome, as full of joy, as packed with pleasure, as brimming with natural goodness, as loaded with felicity as the cigarettes they bring you in two convenient sizes — regular in the handy snap-open pack, and new long-size in a crushproof flip-top box — both available at moderate cost from your favorite tobaccoist. Light one now. Light either end. No filter cigarette can make that statement.
COUNTY OF COLONIALS
Let us then, with the gracious connivance of the makers of Philip Morris — Oh, splendid chaps! Oh, gracious connivers! — take up the terribly vexing question of how we can turn out more graduates with campus facilities as they now exist.
The answer can be given in one word: speedup! Speed up the educational process. Streamline courses. Eliminate frills. Sharpen. Shorten. Quicken.
Following is a list of courses with suggested methods to speed up each one.
PHYSICS - Eliminate slow neutrons.
PSYCH LAB-Tilt the mazes downhill. The white mice will run much faster.
ENGINEERING - Make slide rules half as long.
MUSIC Change all tempo to allegro. (A collateral benefit to be gained from this suggestion is that once you speed up waltz time, campus proms will all be over by 10 p.m. With students going home so early, romance will languish and marriage counselors can be transferred to the buildings and grounds department. Also, housing now used for married students can be returned to the school of animal husbandry.)
ALGEBRA — If "x" always equals 24, much time-consuming computation can be eliminated.
LANGUAGES - Teach all language courses in English.
DENTISTRY - Skip baby teeth. They fall out anyhow.
POETRY - Amalgamate the classics. Like this:
Hail to thee, blithe spirit
Shoot if you must this old gray head
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
You can't nothin' out a hound dog
Smiling the boy fell dead
Smiling the boy fell dead.
You see how simple it is? Perhaps you have some speedup ideas of your own. If so, I'll thank you to keep them to yourselves.
$ \textcircled{c} $Max Shulman, 1957
The makers of Philip Morris have no interest in any speedup. We age our fine tobacco slow and easy. And that's the way it smokes—slow and easy—a natural smoke.