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Hello. I began writing this on Labor Day, a day in which I decided to do no meaningful labor. Nothing much to say. So you are going to have to wade through my ponderous thoughts on Humor and the Narrative Arts, take two polls, and withstand a bit of cheesy doggerel and a couple of meaningless ironic observations. There will also be a dick joke, if you listen carefully.

We begin with the comic above, by the terrific ‘toonist Wayne Hornath. I first saw it last week at four in the morning. I had no idea what it was about, so did the only thing that made any sense, which was to go upstairs and wake Rachel, and show it to her, and ask her to interpret it. She was bleary-eyed and mush-mouthed, as one tends to be at four in the morning. She studied it for about 15 seconds, and then said two words, which explained the comic.

Today’s first Gene Pool Gene Poll:

I cannot explain why I didn’t get this joke right away, except that humor is sometimes randomly absorbed and processed. The mechanics can be confusing. Also, it was four a.m.

Which brings me to issue #2. A reader writes the following:

Q: “You have argued — obnoxiously, in my view — that humor columns must tell the truth. Why? Are you better and more noble than David Sedaris, who admits to having made stuff up, and is still funny as hell?”

A: This is a very fine question, you anus. The answer is, yes, I am vastly better than Sedaris, for reasons I will now tediously and pompously explain.

Here is a column I wrote several years ago, which I am reproducing in toto, but adding an f-word, which was only originally hinted at, because The Rules Have Changed. It is (I believe) the shortest column I ever wrote, and I think one of the best:

Guy goes up to a cabdriver in New York City and says, “Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Grand Central, or should I just go fuck myself?”

If you grew up in New York, as I did, you get this joke. To survive, New Yorkers learn to develop a pre-emptive defense against rudeness. Sometimes this involves deliberately not noticing the plainly obvious, such as the man next to you on the bus who is not wearing pants. Sometimes, your pre-emptive defense has to be more aggressive. I once told a perniciously persistent panhandler that I would happily pay him in “God juice.” He blinked twice, then slowly backed away.

It has been more than 25 years since I last lived in New York, so I must have lowered my defenses. That’s the only explanation I have for why it took me so long to confront the Boom-Badoom Boys.

If you live in any city, you know the Boom-Badoom Boys. They’re a summertime blight, like earwigs. They cruise the streets with their car windows down and their woofed-up stereos concussively throbbing out music of their preference and no one else’s. The air shudders. Potted plants wilt. Songbirds fall from the sky. As these cars roll into neighborhoods, they sow despair, like Russian tanks entering Belarus.

Like most people, I’ve always stayed mute in the presence of the Boom-Badoom Boys. That’s partly because they tend to be large and young and irascible-looking, but mostly it’s because they are a migratory species, and engaging them for even a moment would mean possibly delaying their departure. Seconds matter.

But it was while walking my dog the other day that my New Yorker instincts kicked in. A Boom-Badoomer was percussing his way down the street, big, bad and basso, like the T. rex from “Jurassic Park.” Murphy and I crossed in front of the car, forcing it to stop, then we walked around to the passenger side. I was gesturing concernedly, an earnest expression on my face, mouthing words that were lost in the din.

The Boys lowered the stereo some, but it did no good. They still couldn’t hear me, mostly because I was not actually saying anything. I was just moving my lips. Finally, the driver turned the stereo off entirely.

“Thanks, man,” I said. “This is important.” I pointed toward the top floor of a row house across the street.

“See that window?” The passenger guy nodded. The driver was fidgeting because he was about to lose the green light. It’s a short light.

“There’s an old lady who lives up there,” I said. The light went red. “She’s very hard of hearing. She uses one of those ear trumpets.” To pantomime the use of an ear trumpet, I needed a free hand, meaning I had to put down what I was carrying. I put it on the nose of their car. It was a full, warm bag of poop.

“The lady’s name is Mildred,” I explained. “Mildred Rosenthal.”

Murphy stood up, her paws on their window, her tail wagging. The passenger rubbed her ears. The light turned green, and red again. I realized, to my delight, that the Boom-Badoom Boys were trying to be polite.

“I’m a little worried about Mildred,” I said. “I think maybe she can’t hear the music, and I know she’s a big fan of Busta Rhymes. So I was wondering if you could turn up the volume a little.”

Murphy got down. The two guys looked at each other, then back at me.

“It’s Ghostface Killah.”

Not Busta?”

“No. Ghostface.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry, I always confuse the two.”

No problem, they said.

I started walking away.

“Hey.”

I stiffened and turned back.

The guy nodded toward the poo. I retrieved it. They drove off. I counted a full minute, maybe four full blocks and one neighborhood away, before they turned the stereo back on.

— Now, here is my question, for Gene Pool Gene Poll #2. What if I confessed to you, right now, in this here Gene Pool, the following?

Only correct answer: Yes, it would. Because the absolute center of anecdotal humor — at least, personal humor columns — is that life, as we actually live it, is absurd. You can laugh, or you can cry. Here, laugh. It’s true.

No, I didn’t make up the Murphy story.

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Hey, please send your questions and observations here:

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Oh, wait. I promised a couple of witty, ironic observation. Here is the first one.

One of the greatest closers in baseball history was named “Elroy Face.” Mr. Face pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time there was no reliable statistic for what closers do — how their late-inning heroics are central to winning games. But there is, now, of course, in the SabreMetric era, just such a measure. Many stats have been updated to recognize this. And so it is now possible to dig into old, but updated, box xcores and see the following line. It is there literally hundreds of times. It reads:

“SAVE: Face.”

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Speaking of baseball, the White Sox, whom I have written about twice this year, are still poised, both gloriously and ignominiously, to become, officially, the Crappiest Team in the Modern History of Professional Sports. Their current record is 31-108, a winning percentage of .225, eclipsing the futility record of both the 1962 Mets (120 losses!) and the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, whose winning percentage was .235.

The Sox can do it! I know they can, if they truly apply themselves to stinkage. After losing 20 in a row, they have now lost 10 in a row. This is big. I believe I was the first national writer to note this. I am very proud. I remain convinced The self-abusing Bite Sox can pull it off, as it were, with your spiritual help and mine. I am sure the national media will belatedly climb aboard my Badwagon any day now.

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Okay, so here is a poem. It is about a recent experience of Lexi’s and mine. I present it now with abject apologies to Ogden Nash and Dr. Seuss.

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The Squoils of War

You can't really tell when you deal with a squoil
If it's a boy or if it's a goil, 
It's a thing with a long fuzzy tail in a coil 
But you know, from your genes, that it makes your blood boil.

If you're there in the street, as a dog on a leash,
Your job is to eat it like a ham-and-cheese quiche
You were bred for this moment, it’s part of your mission,
As urgent and deadly as nuclear fission

But now comes this creature, all brash and right here.
Bellying up to you, showing no fear,
And your leash, it gets loose and you’re now nose to nose
Something you never thought — two mortal foes

Engaged in a sniffing and clicking routine
With no harm implied or intended, or mean.
In the end there is parting, with a wag and a snort,
And a type of a truce of the casual sort,

Two little dopes in a big, hostile place
Learning to live and let live with some grace,
Getting along, like brother to brother —
A gentle detente ‘tween one beast and another.

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Okay, we’re done with all that .

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This is where we enter the highly coveted Real Time Segment of The Gene Pool, where you ask questions and make observations in real time, and I respond to them. This week appears to be heavily influenced by my request, on the Weekend Gene Pool, for examples of scams you, or someone you knew, fell for. As always, send your stuff here:

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Q:  If you found yourself in Trump’s body for 24 hours, what would you do? Say the most outrageous things possible in the hopes of costing him the election? (You’re a humor writer, I’m sure you can think of something, like how if elected your first act will be to nuke Mexico and your second act to require all Americans to worship you as Lord Almighty Donald). Do you drop out of the race only for him to undo if the next day? 

Assume that if you die in his body, you die for real, but anything else is fair game. Dying is too, but only if you’re willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to bring it about. 

A: I would do something that would persuade even his most idiot supporters that they could not vote for him.  That would be the sole goal.   I might hold up a convenience store, naked except for clown shoes, a cummerbund, and a sombrero.   Then, when arrested, I would claim the Southern Baptists made me do it. 

Still he’d probably only lose four percent of his base, or so.

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Q: There are several mimics of the BestBuy scam you mentioned, including cloud storage fakers, Amazon impersonators, and various others — you might remind your readers of their range. They are related to the phone scammers. I once toyed with the phone phonies by playing along as long I could by asking lots of questions (but never actually sharing my account number etc), just to eat up their time and keep them from hitting up others.

A: I do that time-eating thing too. A get a lot of calls by some phony Canadian pharmacy selling Viagra and Cialis.  I tell them I need 60,000 pills because I have a Certain Embarrassing Problem.  Sometimes they’ll stay on the phone for me for ten minutes, Just In Case.  I once asked them if they had “that date-rape drug.”

Yes, I know. I am sorry for that last thing. But it was a funny moment, listening to them try to somehow negotiate on this subject.

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One more random thought: Why on Earth does Donald persist in denigrating war heroes? Who has persuaded him that there is a single vote in that?

I think it is because he is, at his very center — really, the very definition of him — an insane megalomaniac, a man who defines everything by how it pertains to him. Everything is a challenge to his pathologically needy ego.

He is a notorious draft dodger. He simply cannot deal with the fact that he is a coward. If war heroes are heroes, he is a coward. If war heroes are suckers and losers, he is smart. So he has to attack his “enemies”— the people who died or were captured in wartime.

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: JUST CLICK ON THE HEADLINE IN THE EMAIL AND IT WILL DELIVER YOU TO THE FULL COLUMN ONLINE. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

Also, you might want to send me money by upgrading your subscription to “paid.” You might not, of course, but you might, just for frugality’s sake. I have calculated it, and determined — this is true — that the cost of one column is 29.2 cents. That’s cheaper than the price of a single cage-free chicken egg.

Or choose a chicken egg instead:

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Q: Falling for scams.... Does being 10 years old and finally, FINALLY falling for the "sea monkeys" ads in the back of the comic books count? Oh, and the "X-ray Specs" to see through women's clothing? And the "throw your voice" gadget. I'm asking for a friend. Tom Logan, Sterling VA.

A: I bought all three of them, at 10 or so. The X-Ray specs were a TERRIBLE disappointment, as was the throw-your-voice thing, which was basically a cheap kazoo. But the sea monkeys were great! Though they didn’t have little crowns or build a castle. But they were really alive. Tiny slimy things, but actual animals. Pets!

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Q: A few days ago I needed to renew my passport.  Upon googling "passport renewal' I saw the first entry was for govapplysupport.com, which I clicked upon and laboriously filled out the form, including much rather sensitive information such as social security number and parents' names.  I was puzzled by their demand for $87 since I know that passport renewal costs $130, and then my credit card charge was declined.  At that point I finally figured out that this site was questionable, which Chase had, presumably, already figured out.  Result:  Chase cancelled my credit card immediately, telling me they'll send a new card; I don't now what else might happen but I'm feeling pretty silly.

A: You are pretty silly.  So was I.  I have learnt only recently that a good way to sniff out a scam is to hover over the return URL.    It’s called the “Hover Technique.” 

From Wiki:  “Be cautious of links you receive embedded in emails, or even on websites. Move your cursor over the link and note the actual URL displayed. Practice this technique so that you won't be fooled by phishing and other email scams that entice you to click on links that appear to be legitimate.”

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Q: As a fiction writer, I gotta disagree with the fact vs fiction conundrum. Yes, fact is often stranger than anything I can write, but fiction writers are editors of the truth. We mold and shape the world until it fits what we want to say. Still, the cab driver joke is my favorite.

A: You get no argument from me here. But you’re missing the point, I think. Fiction writers present their writing as fiction. You know that. They are telling you that. Arm’s length.

If I say something happened, and present it as fact, I am obliged to tell the truth.

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Q: I'm halfway to a joke and decades too late with the observation that Readers Digest was a great name for a magazine everyone kept in their bathrooms. It's a sentence!

A: Thank you.

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Q: Regarding overcharging of youth and the insanity of lengthy jail sentences for nonviolent first offenders: 

I can only speak for myself, but when I was 21 (clearly an adult by any legal standard, but still not fully so as measured by prefrontal cortex development), I found myself without a subway token and in a rush, and slipped into a student group going through a Brooklyn subway entrance. It was a "sting day" and I was followed by a cop who arrested and handcuffed me in front of hundreds of people, and patted me down and then held me for hours as I was chained to other cuffed scofflaws, then trucked us all to the station to be fingerprinted and booked. The excruciating experience lasted about 6 hours before I was released with what amounted to a traffic ticket -- nothing on my record. I never spent a minute in a jail cell; but trust me. It was more than enough to make sure I never skirted with illegal behavior again. In fact, I'm still ashamed and still think about it too often, 40 years later. I made up a story about where I'd been that day and never told another soul about it until now (and this is being submitted anonymously).

A: Thank you, Ignatz Perelman from Paducah, Kentucky.   It’s good to hear from you again.  How is your wife, Clytemnestra?

Hey, I have told this story before, but in 1971, at the age of 20, I was in a car with my friend, Doug.  It was his MG, a hot little car, very noticeable by police when driven by yoots.   We were stopping to pay a toll on the Throgs Neck Bridge, and Doug said, “WATCH THIS!” and tailgated the car in front of us to get through the gate without paying the toll.

The thing that made this a good story is that, at the time, we had several dozens of dollars of heroin in the car. I wanted to kill him. We skated, somehow.

Yes, if you are new to this newsletter, I have a sordid History.

Yes, this was a different time.

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Q: I was pretty sure it was a scam. But I proceeded with skepticism. Ego-stroking is enticing. I got a call about one of my titles on the Amazon KDP self-publishing list. An agent wanted to try sell my book to publishers. A cold call from an agent seemed unlikely, but the literary agent agreement seemed fine. Note: “Kyle McArthur” had just enough of an unidentifiable accent to make me suspect of the name “Kyle.” He had me send him a copy of the manuscript, a copy of my Amazon sales statement and the cover art. The next week, he sends me an email that he has sent out “endorsements” of my books to a list of publishing companies. The very next day, an unknown number calls me twice in a row and I don’t answer. “Kyle” then calls me to say that Chronicle Books is interested and wants to talk with me. I tell Kyle that’s his job, but he says they have a few questions. So, I take the call. The questions are nonsense, but they want to bait the hook. They want to offer me $235,000 dollars for my book – but it’s not a guarantee of that much, they have pitch it to their investors still. But they have a few prerequisites: I need to secure a book license, there is some manuscripts edits (typographical and spacing issues) and book cover enhancements. They send me an email with an “letter to intent” to publish my book. It has the $235,000 figure (listed as a “major deal one-time payment” and not as an advance on royalties, so red flag #1). And of course, wanting me to fix manuscript edits and deal with the cover are red flags 2 and 3. Because that’s part of the publisher’s domain and not the author’s. “Kyle” calls me and is excited about the offer but he also asks if I have anyone who can help with the prerequisites. I say that I do. My wife is the Director of Communications for an association and deals with book licensing issues often. She is also a professional editor so the manuscript edits are not a problem and we know plenty of graphic designers. “Kyle” becomes subdued by that response. The next day Kyle calls and says the Chronicle has recommended a firm that can help with all the aspects. Kyle has talked with them and they have a lawyer to help with the licensing and editors and graphic designers and they will package the whole thing for a fee of $2700. Then send over a proposal. And there’s the scam. A quick Google search on that company name with the word “scam” and it’s done. Chronicle Books is a legitimate company that was spoofed by the scammers. The email I got with the intent had a company address of @chronicle-books.com but the real company does not have a hyphen in their email addresses. I emailed “Kyle” to cancel our agreement and told him not to contact me again. It was a fun couple of days. “Oral Histories” remains a self-published book on Amazon. — Ward Kay

A: Hey, Ward. Good to hear from you. I don’t ordinarily promote books here, but your story is interesting and I love the cover of your book.

Q: Rachel. 4 am. A cartoon. Either she is saint-like and has the patience of a mother with a two-year-old or, you are blackmailing her. — Dale

A: I withheld certain pertinent information. Rachel is a very fine actor and a brilliant writer. But her greatest life skill is Falling Back to Sleep. It takes seconds, usually.

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Q: About 10 years ago, when I was helping take care of my elderly mother, she received a phone call from someone and handed the receiver to me with a confused expression on her face. The man on the other end , in a foreign accent , informed me that he was from Microsoft and that my mother‘s computer was discovered to have a virus that he could help fix. “Huh, that sounds serious,” I told him.  He wholeheartedly agreed.  So I walked over to my mother’s non-existent computer and looked at its imaginary monitor.  “That’s strange,” I reported.  “I’m looking at the monitor right now and it’s telling me that you are a scammer!”  “It’s telling you that I am a scammer?“ he repeated, incredulous.  “Yes, and now it is telling me that you should be ashamed of yourself for scamming people.”  “I should be ashamed?” he replied, seemingly at a loss for words but to parrot me.  ”Yes, that you should be ashamed, oh, wait, and that your MOTHER would be ashamed of you! “ Silence on the other end.  “Yep,” I continued,  “And that you should find a respectable job.”  I think I went too far.  Breaking his Microsoft character, anger charging his voice, he shouted, “And what respectable job, madam, would you suggest?!”  “ I don’t know, “ I replied, “but you’re probably an intelligent man and can figure it out.”  Click.  PSA -Having any conversation with telephone scammers in this AI day and age is not recommended.  AI ruins all the fun. Jennifer Yos

A: Funny.   I have asked the Cialis people if they have kids. If they say they do, I ask them if they actually tell their kids what they do for a living, or do they say they are a doctor, or a race-car driver, or jet rocket scientist or something. That usually ends the call.

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Q: My some-time-to-be ex husband was angry at me and fell for a cold call investment into the movie Freaky Deaky where he sent them $50k from a 401k in an attempt to hide money from me.

Guess what?  Total scam.  They’ve been sending fake paperwork for over a decade and to this point says he owes them money for managing the account.    

If I don’t think about how much that money would be worth now had he left it alone it I still am mad about it.

A: I am truly sorry about this, and I realize you are revealing a difficult truth, but am laughing at the notion that he is still paying them money for managing the account. 

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Q: Not on topic but there is a cute little baseball-related pun that I thought you might enjoy in the beginning of this Athletic article.

A: This is really good writing. Thank you. Search for it.

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Q: Trump's distain for soldiers is much simpler than you posited: He is completely self-centered, and the concept of voluntary sacrifice, or any sort of altruism, bewilders him. It reminds me of John Updike's line from Rabbit at Rest: "...that strange way women have, of really caring about somebody beyond themselves."

A: Nice.

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This is Gene. To paraphrase the famous words of NASA ground control, I copy us down.

PLEASE keep sending send in more questions and observations. I will respond to them on Thursday. Send them here:

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Also, you can keep commenting!