Ok, it wasn't all bad...

Where was I? Getting pacifistically violent on yo’ asses, I believe.

Well, let me put down those sandals held aloft and get down to some more nonsense.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of playing a waiflike Ben Stiller in Meet The Parents III: The Promised Land.

Firstly, a car journey with a delightfully insufferable, stubborn brother. Quote of the day: “I’m not coming if she’s driving.”

Then a holiday meal of traditional strange fish leftovers rearranged into a congealed jelly mush ball with a carrot on top (for starter), a lovely roast chicken and vegetables and salad type affair (main) accompanied by some unappetizing cow’s tongue.

Since befriending the bovine (in general) in India, I am somewhat averse to chowing down on its tongue, but I never had that much to say to a chicken.

During the meal I was at the mercy of my beloved’s father as he relentlessly took the piss out of me in Hebrew. Recently, I’ve been feeling quick-witted enough to deal with the most scathing sarcasm dealt my way, but yesterday I’d never felt so much like an unfavoured panel member on Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

Here follows a translated transcript:

Tubby, aging bald jew: “Why’s he so skinny?”

Beautiful jewish girlfriend: “Well, he eats well enough, he just doesn’t put on weight.”

Sarcastic gitdad: “What? Well if he eats all that food and doesn’t put on weight, it’s a waste of food.”

ALL LAUGH (Except white boy with a pasted-on fake smile.)

Wanting seconds: “He looks like a lion on a heavy diet.”

ALL LAUGH (White boy now fully aware of who the joke is on, yet still smiling, blandly, eyes full of evil, betraying the whole façade).

Girlfriend’s brother, reliably literal and patronising: “Now what just happened is: he just said that you look really skinny, and so she said...and so the joke is…”

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Now I hate sarcasm, but you’ve driven me to it.

Oh, how terribly funny! Ha ha ha! That is funny. I do love to be ridiculed to my face in a sideways language I don’t understand by the father of THAT GIRL THAT I’M FUCKING!

As you can see, I’m progressing well down the path of sincerity and love for all, but I just found the whole experience too painful on the face (and soul).

Thankfully he has a lovely new young wife and two beautiful new children.

But surely I wasn’t the only one squirming in distaste when his eldest son translated the following joke:

A fifty year old man goes to a rabbi and asks, “I wish to marry a thirty year old woman. What do you think? She’s twenty years younger. Is that ok?”

And the rabbi says. “Goodness no. Just think, when you’re sixty, she’ll be forty. When you’re seventy, she’ll be fifty. And when you’re eighty, she’ll be sixty.

Who needs that old bag?”

What, was I supposed to laugh? Come on, of course I did my best to fangle some kind of noise together, betraying my better judgment, so that it sounded like I laughed a bit. And ok, the joke would perhaps be funny if not told to me by that increasingly unlikable sibling.

Ok ok, enough of this. I’m becoming too self-indulgent on this tirade, and frankly it’s terrible karma for me.

Dessert was lovely.