“HELL, BOY, THE ONLY DIFFERENCE between us is that I know I’m asleep. Now if you want to see a real miracle, hand me that wrench.”
Tag: “Bob”
Cult of the Hidden Joke.
Paleostyle Question
I UNDERSTAND WHY CARTOON DEPICTIONS of “cavemen” show them dressed in fur. But why does the fur usually drape over one shoulder?
Your Orders
RESIST ENTROPY.
21st Century Magritte
Why I’m Called “Dances With Boulders”
FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS, a group of friends has made an annual equinoctial hike to a secret location for the sole purpose of … well, I can’t really say, since what fun is a secret society if you don’t keep it secret?
But one night at the bonfire … let me back up. The bonfire is some distance from the campground, with most of that distance along a sandy beach beneath an overtowering and rock-calving cliff. During the latter part of the evening, which stretched into the early hours of the next morning, some of our bonfire circle had drifted off in twos and threes so as not to be caught by the incoming tide. Continue reading “Why I’m Called “Dances With Boulders””
Looking Back on Apocalypse
HOW STRANGE TO SIT IN 2011, and wax wistfully nostalgic over the heady nihilism of Repo Man. Had we but known …
Free Metaphor: “Don’t Poke The Squid”
STUCK FOR AN ANALOGY WHEN your well-intendeds provoke a horrible mess that you should have known better than to bother with? Then “Don’t Poke The Squid.”
Squid are lovely, largely inoffensive creatures who flash and lurk throughout the ocean’s vasty deep. They have eight tentacles and two arms; all appendages have suckers, some jaggedly toothed. They flail something awful when disturbed, and can entwine sperm whales instantly and dance them to death. What chance has an unwary swimmer? Thus, for your own safety and health, “Don’t Poke The Squid.”
(Usage of this metaphor is subject to payment via pizza or other coin-shaped vittles. Thankee sir or madam, and g’blessye.)
Refining Maslow
THE GREAT PSYCHOLOGIST ABRAHAM MASLOW proposed a pyramid paradigm of human needs, ranking their vitality and importance as physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization. One must satisfy the first in order to be able to secure the second, then explore the third and so forth to self-actualization (or to put it more cryptically, I-am-I-ness).
This is all very well as far as it goes, which isn’t very far at all without one particular ingredient: humor.
I would argue that a sense of humor lies among our physiological needs. Our bodies crave laughter — it makes us feel good, for one thing, and promotes the rest of Maslow’s overstructure: safety, love, belonging, and certainly esteem and self-actualization. In fact, I would go so far as to say that our most basic needs are ordered by what we breathe, drink, eat, shelter under and laugh at (or with). The first chuckle may even have occurred when we saw each other naked, huddling in some cave away from the mid-Pleistocene rain. (Certainly humor makes nudity easier to cope with, which to me screams “prerequisite!” I can only assume it also helps with the random smilodon or mammoth.) Humor is so important in fact, that its lack can be attributed to every human war, skirmish, argument or bluster — especially the unresolved ones.
Many years ago, while preparing to hitchhike across the USA, I was describing my road gear to a seasoned friend. “Backpack (soft), spare clothes, paperback book, extra shoes, sleeping bag, boots (new), Swiss Army knife (new) …”
“Where’s your toilet paper?” he asked.
“What do I need that for?” I asked.
He fixed me with a gaze reserved for the feeble. “If you don’t have toilet paper, the rest just don’t matter,” he said.
Humor is like that too: it cleans out the head and refreshes it for the next challenge, which is always a moment away. And without humor, the rest just don’t matter.
Schrodinger’s Bat
IF THERE ARE UNIVERSES NEXT door to ours, I would swap the one with sentient reptiles for one that’s just different enough — one containing, say, all-new Star Trek episodes with just a wee bit o’ difference. How much would you pay for an original, still-in-the-wrapper Spock nose?
Question of Essence
DO YOU PRACTICE AN ART form, or a life form?
David Feldman, Post-Modern Comic Genius
PAY ATTENTION, CLASS: TODAY WE learn from David Feldman, American, how to correctly structure a portable visual joke (in this case, a bumpersticker) for maximum satiric and comic effect.
First point: Understand the medium. The English-speaking American eye travels a line of text, or what the brain immediately assesses as same, from left to right.
Second point: Camouflage. On a black background, the eye first registers a patriotic symbol — an American flag overlaying a proud bald eagle’s profile — followed by a line of white text. Continue reading “David Feldman, Post-Modern Comic Genius”
Five Words In Search Of A Context
“FUN’S FUN, GENERAL. BUT THIS …”