Cutting off your nose to ...

Let's talk nose jobs. As you might expect from my photo over there on the left, I find that -- just occasionally -- people try and offer a new nose joke, one that perhaps that Edmond Rostand's character Cyrano (on the right) might have missed. They always fail. Apparently David Slack gets the same jokes, but he's about to go under the knife to remove the world of some much-needed humour. You have only two more days to take the piss out of his nose:

Unless you are planning to get yourself smacked in the face with a piece of four by two this Thursday, I predict that I will be waking up on Friday morning feeling less comfortable than you. Elective surgery; upon the nose.

I have broken it twice, but being broken is only half the story. Huge, it is. In all but the fiercest storm, a small family could huddle safely in its shelter.

... From time to time I would come across an article about rhinoplasty and wonder if it might be for me. I would say to friends : I've been thinking about getting my nose done. And without exception they would say in the polite way people do: no, no, it's fine, you don't need to do that, and I would say No, really. I want them to make it bigger. That would pierce their diplomatic guard; they couldn't help themselves. Embarrassed laughter.

But I would never act on it.

He is now. He's giving up. Thursday morning, he goes under the knife. Not me. If I did, I'd have to abandon my favourite way of explaining libertarianism (one, ironically enough, I pinched from Jim McLay, another chap with a decent hooter). When asked about limits to freedom under libertarianism, I usually reply that under libertarianism, my freedom ends where your nose begins ... which means that some people get more freedom than others.

David Slack has just chosen less freedom for himself. Poor chap. I hope it really hurts. ;^)

LINKS: Twenty ways to insult a nose, Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rostand, via Rice University
Think of the children - David Slack

TAGS: Blog, Humour