humor – Professional Copywriter | Wyalusing, PA Bradford County

Hurtful and Hateful Humor Returns to American Politics

It’s one of the things that has made America great. Humor can be the great equalizer— from the wisecracking GI coping with wartime stress to the disaster victim refusing to submit to self-pity. It’s even prevalent in politics and government, though carefully rendered in political campaigns with mixed results. We think of Ronald Reagan, 73, and the oldest person ever to run for President at the time (both Trump and Biden were older in the last election) in the [...]

By Wes Skillings|2023-06-28T19:26:03+00:00June 28, 2023|Campaign Rhetoric, Congress, Conservatives, Elections, Trump|

Yukking It Up with Artificial Intelligence

Will artificial intelligence mimic a human's sense of humor? It seems that, all of a sudden, artificial intelligence is about to change life and humanity as we know it. Who is going to need writers, poets, artists, musicians, composers, philosophers, and even preachers when artificial intelligence is about to mine the best we have within us, including any thoughts and theories ever recorded or visuals created on canvasses and movie screens since the first stick figures were [...]

By Wes Skillings|2023-03-05T14:09:41+00:00March 5, 2023|Artificial Intelligence, Humor, Language, Learning, Minds, Politics, Social Issues, Social Media|

Reaching Back in Time for Some Random Observations

I often look through past commentaries to make sure I’m not repeating myself— not just the topics but the wording as well. I’ll write something and it seems too familiar. Am I repeating myself? Lots of people repeat themselves in conversations— telling the same jokes, making the same points— so it’s logical that writers occasionally do the same thing. This time I thought I might purposely repeat myself, with random observations from columns and blogs written over the span [...]

By Wes Skillings|2023-02-02T13:52:14+00:00February 2, 2023|Aging, Opinions, Phrases, Respect, Social Issues, Words|

Get Over the Anger; Get on with What’s Left in Your Life

So much to be angry about and so little time. Okay, everybody. I just want you to tune in and mellow out, as they said in the commune before it was time-shared into a condo. Take a few deep breaths and count to ten. Now tell me, as calmly as you can: Why are we all so angry? Why all the sputtering and spitting? Have things really reached such a sad state? How is it that we’ve [...]

By Wes Skillings|2023-01-18T15:47:16+00:00January 18, 2023|Aging, Anger, Baby Boomers, death, Diet, Happiness, Hope, Politics, Retirement, Unity|

You Poop, Girl, and Freshen That Whiffy Butt!

This may be the year of redefining Democracy in these United States, notably the approaching midterm elections and continuing anger and unrest in a. divided nation. Cracks about butts and bottom-half drafts invade prime-time TV ads.GoGraph.com Art This is not about that. I’m seeing something else breaking in the winds of change with the prime-time television advent of pooping women, smelly crotches and whiffy butts. It is being called, among other things, a shift in advertising to [...]

By Wes Skillings|2022-10-26T11:54:51+00:00October 26, 2022|Advertising, Black Americans, Commercials, Language, Women, Words|

A Strange Little Word with So Many Issues

Chowing down while the dogs fight over a bone of contention. I’ve spent of good deal of my life dealing with words. We all use them. At least all of us who speak or write, but even illiterate people, who may not know how to spell them, use them, and people who are unable to speak or hear must think them. I think about words and how they came to mean what they do. You use them [...]

By Wes Skillings|2022-06-14T01:16:00+00:00June 14, 2022|Language, Synonyms, Vocabulary, Words, Writing|

At Last, Something We All Have in Common!

Cheer up! We’ve always got death to look forward to. Sometimes we get so caught up in the mean spiritedness of politics and man’s inhumanity to man, which is one male chauvinistic expression feminists don’t seem to mind, that we lose our grasp on humanity and the shared assets and liabilities that make us more similar than different. We cringe through morning updates on the slaughter of innocents in the Ukraine as we brave the tirade of [...]

By Wes Skillings|2022-05-05T14:35:02+00:00May 5, 2022|Bad News, death, Fear, Funeral, Mortality|

Pros and Cons of Getting to the Point

Reaching back into the past for observations on humanity and humor. A number of years ago during my years as an editor and weekly columnist for a newspaper that has since banned my opinions, I wrote a column with the heading: “Direct Routes Aren’t Always the Most Effective Ways to Travel.” You see, the “number of years” from the date of that commentary is approaching 28, and I was, at the time, past the midpoint of a [...]

By Wes Skillings|2022-03-18T19:57:52+00:00March 18, 2022|Aging, Baldness, Directness, Extremes, Humor, Journalism and Writing, Newspapers, Opinions, Words|

Playing around with the Three “Homos”

Making it to the end of this essay is enough to wipe the smile off any face. I think I missed a week of blogging. I recently found a publisher for my book, and I’ve been going back and forth with a consultant, establishing a portal so we can start the editing process. That means carefully proofing two dozen chapters containing some 93,000 words and rounding up photos to illustrate the true crime manuscript. That’s my excuse [...]

By Wes Skillings|2022-01-26T04:14:50+00:00January 26, 2022|Homonyms, Homophones, Humor, Language, Vocabulary, Words|

Defining America through a Fanciful Past

Sleeping through the present while dreaming of a sitcom-portrayed and idealized past. Several Februarys ago, during our return drive on what has become an annual winter excursion to Florida, we were intrigued by signage along I-77 North hawking the Andy Griffith Museum in Mount Airy, NC. We were briefly tempted to check it out. It wasn’t so much our interest in Griffith himself, star of a pair of major television hits over the years — Matlock (1986-1995) [...]

By Wes Skillings|2022-01-24T09:09:30+00:00January 2, 2022|1960's, American History, Television, TV Sitcoms|

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