Tag Archives: Humor
So Which President, Living or Dead, Would You Like to Drink With?
Face in the Blue has a most excellent question of great historical and political import: In a Mass Knife Fight to the Death Between Every American President, Who Would Win and Why? Which brought to my mind the bit of campaign fluff about whether Barak Obama is the kind of guy the average American would enjoy drinking with, especially compared to Mitt Romney, who as a Mormon, does not drink. So I thought I’d do a brief peruse of our 44 heads of state and figure which ones would be the most fun to sit down with at a table in a bar and knock back a few. These are my utterly unfair guesses: Continue reading
A Suggestion to Those Who Consider it Impossible to Make Fun of Obama
He’s a politician, which means that his first language is Bullshit. If you can’t make that funny, you need to give it up.
This is not LOL funny, but it’s not bad, even if it is ideologically charged. I know our professionals can do better. So I am forced to conclude that they don’t want to.
Lileks on Drugs
May be even funnier than normal Lileks, be such a thing concievable. You get the dryness with a hint of frenzy.
Went downstairs and turned on the TV and was amused to see I’d left off watching “They Live,” which is The Matrix except with a wrestler.
Heh. But that’s on OTC pain pills. Wait for Mr. Vicodin to come to town:
Vicodin #2 seems to have had the desired effect. Unfortunately, it has effed me up to the point where typing and typing as fast as possible seems the only way to maintain grasp on reality. If you can imagine feeling like you’d just eaten a pound of opium, then topped it off with a brick of raw meth, well, there you go: simultaneously distant and soothed and REALLY REALLY HERE, RIGHT HERE, VERY MUCH HERE.
And then of course, he starts hearing things:
Well, last night I heard a whining sound, culminating in a tortured shriek. I’d hear it, then silence, then a few minutes later, same thing. What. the hell? Finally went up the block to investigate, whereupon I heard the sound behind me, and realized:
IT’S COMING FROM MY HOUSE.
I have very little experience with drugs, save for having discovered the folly of mixing muscle relaxant with beer, and for a few lovely minutes spent hanging out with Valium right before I got my eyes fixed. Valium is awesome: you’re fully aware and can have a perfectly lucid conversation without the effort to “maintain,” but everything issmoooooooothed out . . . Then again, I was singing “Mother’s Little Helper,” to myself and giggling before they led me down the hall to to the Lasik room, so I could be rhapsodizing.
“We’re Back to ‘LGF Fan Hour’ Sponsored by Scrunchies and Zima.”
Reading Technology
Ah, but I love Doghouse Diaries.
State-of-the-art 1st-Century technology makes it more portable than scrolls.
The Weak of Wit
The obliquely-named Paltry Meanderings of a Taller-Than-Average Woman has a post entitled “Why I Hate Witty People” which has attained the blessed realm of the Freshly Pressed. Much of it laments the writer’s suffering from “l’esprit d’escalier,” the delay of repartee until after one becomes a departee. But an excellent point about how easy someone like Oscar Wilde had it back in a more-literate age arrives at the end.
During the Victorian era, the issues of politics, English society, literature and the arts, and religion were popular topics in dining and drawing rooms all over Britain. It would have been easy for Wilde to anticipate future conversations and arm himself accordingly, loading his quips like bullets into a pistol and pulling the trigger whenever appropriate. When the subject of the Americas or politics was broached, he could rattle off, “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people,” a statement which would have signaled uproarious laughter and tittering at any Victorian table.
This has the ring of truth. Everything we know about Wilde suggests that he regarded his life as much a performance as any showing of Lady Windemere’s Fan. The paradox of the theater is that, in order to make a moment seem spontaneous and free, it must be rigorously rehearsed.
Wit and humor also suffer from a communal requirement. In order to find something funny, one must have a shared sense of what is absurd. This is why conservatives find say, Margaret Cho painfully unfunny. Wilde lived in a society with much stronger shared assumptions.
The good news is, wit is far less important than it appears to be. Wordplay can provide an occasional fillip to a strong intellect, but as the pre-Socratics remind us, words are only words. To dance with the meaning of them cannot substitute for logic or analytics. One needs only to note Wilde’s helplessness before the remorseless logic of the law at his indecency trial, the grandeur of his performance fundamentally irrelevant to the proceedings, to observe this. As much as those Victorians enjoyed him, they suspected Wilde of an excess of wit, to be distrusted, as the near cousin of sophistry.
Everyone likes the funny uncle at Thanksgiving. No one wants to let him cook the meal.
Greatest. Stalker Video. Ever.
I don’t care if this young Jame Gumm is legit or not. It’s too hilariously awful to pass up, so I’m not.
Because you mean more to me than Home Depot means to Mr. Lotrado.
Have I mentioned that the Byronic Man is Funny? He is.
The proof of being really funny is the ability to make anything funny. George Carlin even had a way of making rape funny: picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd.
It was a long, hard road to recovery. Well, long anyway.
Behold: Byronic makes getting a bee stuck in your ear funny.
Please Enjoy the Teacher’s Dictionary
I do:
Teachers Union:
A fell beast of legendary folklore, which rises from the grave of ancient economic theory to drain the lifeblood of the community. Appears to avoid crucifixes.
