Visiting a Lymphoma site, I came across a link for cancer humor, and that led me to a bunch of other sites, so I thought I'd share. I know cancer humor isn't everyone's cup of tea (or everyone's bag of chemo treatment), so I'm only posting the less-offensive stuff; you can click on the links and dig around a little to see the other stuff. (Hint: it's the kind of stuff that, say, 12-year old boys would find funny if they found colorectal cancer to be funny.)
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Here is a Washington Post article from 2006, "Humor, Rhymes with Tumor". It focuses primarily on one cartoonist (see below), but it does talk about cancer and humor in general.
That cartoonist is Miriam Engleburg, whose comic strips are called Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person. Here's a sample. She has a bunch of non-cancer-related strips, too, mostly dealing with parenthood. One is about marijuana, which you all seem to enjoy talking about, so here's the link to a sample called Toddler or Stoner?.
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Another nice site is GotCancer.org (the name plays on the whole "Got Milk?" thing). Their motto is "Your online source for unique cancer shirts, hats and more!"
This is where you'll find a great selection of colorectal and testicular cancer t-shirts with amusing puns. Of the non-rude shirts (click the link to see the rude ones for yourself), I like:
"Think Positive, Be Negative (It's a Cancer Thing)" and
"My Oncologist is Better than Your Oncologist."
But this one is my favorite. What NHL guy could think otherwise?
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A quick, clean joke:
Q. How many cancer patients does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. Just one, but it takes a support group to cheer him on.
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Finally, you might enjoy Buck Cash's Cancer Island. Among other things, he has a series of cancer-related comics called "Toomers" (click on the "toons" link). Some are fairly intense chemo-related topics. Here are two that are OK to post -- only mildly offensive, especially compared to the Irish Cancer joke:
I really want to do this with my oncologist.
(Kind of self-explanatory.)
Speaking of Cancer Humor and the like, I used to enjoy the reaction I would get in the following situations:
ReplyDeleteFriend: "I just can't seem to shake this cold. I've been sick for weeks."
Me: "Perhaps its CANCER!"
A similar dark humor opportunity presented itself in the following common situation:
Friend: "I wonder where Jim is. He was supposed to be here by now."
Me: "Perhaps he was in a fiery automobile accident."
The offhand way that I would say "perhaps" is the key to both "jokes". It somehow makes the inappropriate and insensitive conjecture that much more offensive.
The remarkable thing in both cases is that the common reaction from people was very often that just by uttering these thoughts, if they turned out to be prescient, it would be entirely my fault. People seem to actually believe that I could actually cause these terrible things to take place just by being flip about them.
So just in case, I always had to do the Buck thing and quickly say, "Just Kidding!"
In my defense, I never did either of these jokes if the target of the joke did not seem otherwise very healthy or was a terrible driver. That would be in poor taste.
And we wouldn't want to do anything that was in poor taste...
ReplyDeleteI know it's an old joke, but how about...
ReplyDeleteDoctor: "I've got bad news, you've got Cancer and Alzheimer's"
Patient: "Well it could be worse; at least I don't have cancer."
Sorry I haven't posted sooner. I only get a chance to catch up about once a week, so to post comments at that point seems a little late. Keep up the humor and the blog; it's a nice way for us to keep up with you, Isy and the kids.
-Mike B.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteIsabel read your post last night before I'd seen it, and then told me the joke. I laughed for a solid two minutes. Very nice.
Thanks for posting. Hope you're all doing well down there.
Bob
I just found out I have cancer, I'm dying for some jokes!
ReplyDeleteThis is actually true, gotta have humor!