By Steve Fey

First joke. In the style of the "Dilbert Newsletter" by Scott Adams, comes this bit of induhvidual bossspeak: "the small technical sub-tasks, durations, and owners need to be flushed out." Absolutely. Don’t let those small technical sub-tasks keep hiding in their hidey-holes! Flush ‘em out right away!

Second joke. How many of Bush’s people does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: none. They’d rather sit in the dark and blame the Liberals.

Third joke. Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson and Hillary Duff walk into a bar. Everyone on the sidewalk is glad.

Three jokes, three types of humor. I’m nothing if not flexible. I do have a problem because I decided the other day that for the most part, it just isn’t fair any more picking on President Bush. Not that he doesn’t still deserve it; he’s the President; if I can’t make fun of the President of the United States, then who? It’s that it’s gotten to be like fish in a barrel, and I just don’t have the heart. When I heard Ann Coulter turn on him on Bill Maher’s show the other day I knew it was time to stick in the fork. But that leaves me, as I said, with a problem. There is so much focus on the real and imagined foibles of Mr. Bush that nobody is paying enough attention to anything else to get the point of topical humor.

So there’s the situational joke about some popular cultural icon or other, like Jessica, Hillary, and Paris. It’s not that they suck, it’s just that there’s so little in them that air rushes in to fill the void. It’s not that they lack talent, it’s that their talent was all wasted on Mickey Mouse or Internet Porn. It’s not that they all could use a few milkshakes, it’s just that the wind howling through their exposed bones drowns out the lyrics to the songs they sing. Yeah, well, sort of it works, sort of. Kinda.

Then there’s the real-life report of someone being stupid, as in the first joke above. It’s a true line from a true e-mail sent out by a true executive in my true place of employment. Is he dumb? No. Is that sentence dumb? Absolutely. "I’d proofread this memo, but I’m too busy cleaning up the mess made by the last memo I sent out without reading. Maybe when I’m done cleaning up the mess this one causes I’ll have time to read what I wrote. But I doubt it." It’s not that it sucks, it’s just that it lacks gravity and keeps blowing away.

I guess you’ll find this one indexed under "humor" as well as probably another topic or two. Too bad I can’t put up a category marked "funny", isn’t it? The question is: does my humor suck, or does my writing blow? I just put it out there. You’ll have to decide. It’s like Fox news, but well written. It’s like CNN but with substance. It’s like a great novel, but without the story line or novel part. It’s like, wow!