I almost never think that jokes are appropriate. While I'm sure I could say something amusing if I tried, I feel like maintaining a high level of seriousness and decorum is the least respect I can offer my interlocutors.
homes where the not-so-subtle currency was how funny you were?
You mean Jewish? Not all of us, no.
I re-read the first sentence of 1 way too many times, trying to figure out what Tweety meant, before finishing the rest of it.
I will endeavor to be more clearer subsequently.
Anyhow, heebie, I think you should name names.
This is a patriarchy thread, isn't it.
6: Are you calling me humorless?
This is about Moby being all serious in the marriage thread, isn't it?
'Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.'
William Blake
I'm just saying that sometimes I look at people and think "Why aren't you being funny? I know you have it in you."
This seems like a gender neutral version of "Cheer up - it might never happen." Why should they be making jokes all the time?
homes where the not-so-subtle currency was how funny you were?
This was true for my home. Is this peculiarly Jewish, as apo suggests? Any counter-examples?
I presume you mean 'just being funny' rather than 'telling jokes'. Because the latter is almost never excusable.
Maybe they just have highly accurate internal filters. There is the inverse problem to consider.
I am always perplexed by really funny people who don't very often make jokes
What about people that aren't funny, that are always trying to tell jokes?
More annoying than perplexing, right?
Yes, that's what I thought (in Eeyore voice).
I presume you mean 'just being funny' rather than 'telling jokes'.
Right. I'm not sad about omitted scripted jokes.
15: Hm. I hadn't thought about the possibility that these people are stopped clocks that know enough not to broadcast the time 11/12ths of the time.
What about people that aren't funny, that are always trying to tell jokes?
Mormons.
Telling jokes and being funny can come apart in many, many ways, so it shouldn't be that surprising if some people who are funny disdain to avail themselves of jokes. After all, a joke, unless you've made it up yourself, isn't really an indication of how funny you are, unless you're particularly good at telling them, and that's a trait that isn't necessarily going to be apparent in a textual medium. To value the one-off situationally-grounded witticism over the more portable complete-in-itself-like-a-hedgehog joke is no vice.
Right. I'm not sad about omitted scripted jokes.
I am not sure what you're talking about anymore!
How often people are funny don't manifest that funniness, I guess.
Your mama's so funny, others are generally willing to overlook her hirsutism.
And why take ye thought for raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin:
To value the one-off situationally-grounded witticism over the more portable complete-in-itself-like-a-hedgehog joke is no vice.
I'm talking about the former. Isn't it called a joke even if it's not the kind where everybody has to sigh and wait while you remember the set-up and mangle the punchline?
By far the funniest people on Unfogged are Shearer and Bob (and read in her day) but I suspect that's not what Heebie is talking about.
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
18: I kind of doubt this happens very often, though. Probably most people who are only occasionally funny but rarely fall flat could stand a few more misses.
My family is funny, and partially Jewish, but there's definitely never been any competition or oneupmanship about being funny - despite our complete irreligion, we have a sort of dour Protestant emotional default that humor can emerge from and slide around on.
Answer to the family currency/humor question: no. There was no value placed on being funny in my family. I think my son, in fact, is the first person in perhaps three or four generations of my family to have discovered the intrinsic value of the currency, which is quite amazing to watch and has more than once completely changed the tenor of a family event. He might actually grow up to be a stand-up comedian, but the rest of us -- while occasionally capable of being funny -- I think went with a sort of quiet kindness currency instead. (Puritans, basically.) But it's a really interesting question. I think my former in-laws did have that currency, which might have been part of why they were so mystifying to me, and vice versa. Maybe it's genetic and my son got it from them.
[W]e have a sort of dour Protestant emotional default that humor can emerge from and slide around on.
I blush to admit that my dour Protestant family is inordinately fond of puns.
In my experience, the funniest person in the room has high status, but is not the one with the highest status. Often the highest status is, so to speak, belongs to the patriarch/matriarch quietly sitting to the side while the children try to entertain each other and relieve the leader of concerns and responsibilities...by distracting the court.
What is the jester's purpose? To get the court to involuntarily laugh...at the queen? At each other?
Since I understand that the demand that I be amusing will not even afford me the highest status or a subjectivity but makes me a mediation between the relationship of two others..a jester at h-g's court...I find it demeaning.
Let us posit an Unfogged jokester who makes only heebie laugh, but no others...is this what she wants? Let's think about that a while.
Those were the moments, when in a crowd my parents and I shared a private joke.
It is constant and incessant, the bane of my existence, this demand for humor in social interactions. The humor can wry and dry, dark and malicious, private or universal, absurdist or universal, but it is always there. Always.
And for the most part, it feels like despair and makes me sad and compassionate.
We're gonna die, maybe tomorrow. Why so serious?
Sorrow and fear and pain need jokes.
Joy just lets it all be.
I actually agree 100% with Bob here.
I'm going to theorize that there is a birth-order effect to the expression of funniness. That is, while funniness per se may be present throughout the family, the expression of said funniness is most commonly reserved to the baby of the family. While the remaining family members may express their funniness more frequently outside the family system, the full extent of such funniness may nevertheless remain suppressed in non-baby family members who retain an internalized belief that being funny is not their properly anointed role.
How often people are funny don't manifest that funniness
This gets into tree falling in the woods territory. Is it fair to call a person "funny" if they only very rarely do anything that anyone else considers humorous?
Is it fair to call a person "funny" if they only very rarely do anything that anyone else considers humorous?
Are we counting people who are funny-looking, or who have a funny smell about them?
Is it my imagination, or is this thread missing something? Can't quite put my finger on what it is, though...
Wait, no, I see that's been covered. Well, I'm stumped.
I for one am hilariously funny, but people infrequently get it, especially in a textual medium, so caution is indicated.
Agree with Bob also.
Weren't we all raised in homes where the not-so-subtle currency was how funny you were?
No freakin' way. That is, unless you count my dad's goodfellow back-slapping joshing sort of thing, which tended to embarrass everyone in restaurants.
That is, while funniness per se may be present throughout the family, the expression of said funniness is most commonly reserved to the baby of the family.
This both explains the situation in 16, and amplifies its tragic nature.
With my (Jewish) family, humor is how I draw attention away from my inexplicable inability to express much real emotion around them.
That's why I am so goddamn hilarious.
You've been a great crowd.
With my (Jewish) family, humor is how I draw attention away from my inexplicable inability to express much real emotion around them.
Do the other members of your family "express much real emotion" around each other? I'm trying to determine if we are actually from the same family.
I am not funny on unfogged, but I don't remember anymore whether I used to be. I'm quick-witted enough to get by in real life and definitely around the family dinner table. I was raised Catholic, but definitely in a pointed-joking-and-no-emotional-displays way that I guess could also be Jewish-ish.
46 hmm...I'm not even sure. I've gotten so neurotic about my own narrow emotional range around them. I guess my sister does the same thing I do and maybe my folks are more open. Are we related?
p.s. I was talking to the duck!!
I'm not even sure. I've gotten so neurotic about my own narrow emotional range around them.
That sounds like something I might have said, back when I was younger and more mature.
Are we related?
Most like, we're just members of the same tribe.
Like I said, I think about this a lot, partly because I am the one in the crowd not laughing. I smile when I'm alone.
Wikipedia is useful on "laughter," starts right out saying laughter is relief from stress, but brings to the fore a fact that may or may not confound me.
Children laugh a lot more than adults. The spontaneous laughter of a young child, the "sense of wonder" laughter, is important to me. And Mack Sennett said: "People don't laugh when they are confused." So what are the key conditions that make us laugh when the Queen of Spades vanishes from the prestidigitator's fingers?
We can't tickle ourselves. Wiki says laughter is a release from stress in conditions of safety.
So children laugh. Do blacks, prisoners, poor people, Jews laugh more than their counterparts? You know I consider the lives of children-as-property to be a terrifying hell-on-earth. No idyll. The majority of humans are fucking pets.
As I explained in Goodbye Columbus, Jewish men are unhumorous, uncommunicative, unambitious, undereducated, prone to starting accidental pregnancies, and very good at basketball. Some might think we are an entirely different ethnic stereotype.
The majority of humans are fucking pets.
That sounds unlikely. The statistic I'm familiar with about masturbating them was only 40%.
||
Wait, I don't understand. Jeff Redfern, Red Rascal, is Alex's uncle?
Wikipedia explains it to me, but I had never realized that. Do they ever interact?
|>
52: If I'm remembering correctly, and I'm probably not:
Fresh fruit! Hot sex! Big Ten Basketball! Who could imagine a happier fate for the Jews?
It's because Joannie is JJ's (of the infamous NY performance artist of the 1980s) mother. Thinking about it, Mike does have kind of a thing for younger women, perhaps interesting because he's the Trudeau stand-in.
Who could imagine a happier fate for the Jews?
Not an expert, but I'd call that a slow, languid even, layup.
55: Very close. It seems to be Hot sex, fresh fruit, and Big Ten basketball-- who could imagine a happier ending for the Jewish people?
My family does not have a tradition of humor, so basically I had to train them to be prepared for the fact that I make jokes all the time. I have no idea why I'm the only one who makes jokes -- apparently I was already like this by age 6.
Both my parents are pretty funny. My Dad in the sort of tall-tales anecdotal Glasgow style; my Mum is much drier and more wry and sarcastic. My sister's kids are both pretty funny, too. And my brother was when he was younger. Interestingly, everyone in the family [to the extent that they are funny at all] seems to take after my Mum's sense of humour.
Certainly, I'm pretty sure the family tradition of running (although fairly gentle) insults comes from my Mum.
You hardly ever even see Alex interacting with her mom. Opportunities for interaction with Jeff, who is half the time deployed god knows where anyway, seems scant at best. That said, I have not seen every panel of the strip. (It's an incestuous little world anyway, isn't it? Frequently when a new character is introduced I suspect it's going to be a love interest, because the core characters are already related to most of each other.) (Sorry not incestuous in the sense that anyone in the strip is actually dating a relative.) (My mother in law, if the subject comes up, is uninterested in any character in the strip except Honey. It's a little ... odd.)
Alex does interact with Joanie, even more than with JJ. I think Trudeau may keep Jeff and Alex away from each other because Joanie's age (or at least JJ's age) is borderline impossible, and having her son and granddaughter standing next to each other pops that into focus. (It is possible that I have read all the strips.)
My family values being funny highly, but we're mostly only funny to each other. There's a tendency for any two of us in the same room to start giggling helplessly at stupider and stupider remarks, while everyone present not related by blood grows bored and annoyed.
I've read every Doonesbury through 2000, but am very, very spotty since then. Which is too bad, because the strip has gotten better.
Is it weird that I have a very low-priority goal of sometime catching up with all the Doonesbury's I've never read (which is to say, approximately 1993 on)? I think it is a bit weird.
I learned all about the early 70s from a four book set of Doonesbury that somebody bought my parents.
67: me too! It was invaluable to my project of making more Watergate jokes than anybody else at my high school.
66: You could do it in a weekend.
I'm a terrible sucker for anything with an endless soapy plot like that. Once I'm attached to the characters, I'll read forever.
(I would like Toggle to be less of a plaster saint, though. Just because he suffered a traumatic brain injury and is the only person on the planet who can put up with Alex's twitchiness is no excuse for his being so goddamn plucky.)
Er, I mean, I learned about the early '70s from Doonesbury books. They probably weren't the exact Doonesbury books that somebody bought your parents.
67: Me three! (Except they were my oldest brother's.)
I also learned about the '70s (early and late) primarily from Doonesbury books. I've read relatively little of the strip since then, and almost nothing from the past ten years.
I smell a new project for the Unfogged Reading Group.
I could never keep the characters names straight, but just today I joked to myself "It settles as it ships", from some storyline where one of them has skimmed some off the top of a big shipment of pot that another one is receiving.
I learned about the early '80s from Bloom County. Couldn't understand what was going on in Doonesbury.
I was just thinking about doonesberry today
Because they were playing Donna summers song at a restaurant. I can't find the stinging anti-disco satire on the Internet though.
Disco was so unfairly maligned in many ways.
But not, having watched the Village People movie again last night, all ways.
I don't think there is a finite set of ways anything can be unfairly maligned.
67: Me three! (Except they were my oldest brother's.)
Ha, me too, except they were my German host family's. (I returned the favor by watching The Simpsons with them every day and explaining the cultural references.)
81: I am far more familiar with Doonesbury strips from before I was born than those published afterward. Besides the "Joanie teaches pre-school" strips, I think my favorite is when Zonker's hotel room is bugged by an overzealous DA. "I'm high on life & high on America!"
still can't find it. Here is an article on the strip:
"jawohl, mein disco fuhrer!"
I've never had ready access to the entirety of Doonesbury strips. I read the first collection, most of the way through, only recently. But "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" is pretty firmly lodged in my consciousness.
I am way funnier than my siblings. And I totally have my father's sense of humor. When we play those various word-card games we're pretty much unbeatable as a team. (E.g. Catchphrase) (This despite not really being able to talk to each other about anything real.)
Man, have you ever listened to Vicki Sue Robinson's "Turn the Beat Around"? It is practically "Lexicon Devil" in terms of surreal lyrics.
The path of excess leads to the palace of excess. Why the hell would you want to get to the palace of wisdom on the path of excess? That doesn't make any sense at all. The end result of excess has to be more excess or what's the point? William Blake wasn't as smart as everyone thinks.
The end result of excess has to be more excess or what's the point?
I think the point is everybody reaches that point where they've had too much. But you don't know until you get there. And ,when you're there, you know it, and you've reached the palace of wisdom.
Ummm....what are we talking about?
I was making fart jokes, which is the universal language of humanity.
Man, have you ever listened to Vicki Sue Robinson's "Turn the Beat Around"?
Got to have percussion.
I'm told by outsiders that dinner with with my immediate family is uproariously hilarious, but I don't think we're particularly funny. What I suspect is actually going on: (a) we're loud; (b) we crack one another up.
67: OMG! I used to go on and on about creep etc. non-stop with the nixon jokes in high school. my family is funny in a way that sometimes leads to cutting viciousness. when my mom and step-dad were still drinking the hilarity tipped over into savage malice or tragicomedy all the time. but it was still pretty fucking hilarious, frankly. my brother actually convinced my sister, on christmas eve at our festive family dinner with the christmas crackers, that she was adopted, and we all went along with it because it was so fucking funny. she was 7.
god I would no more do that to my 7-year-old...fuck, I hate everything.
whenever I say this my children naturally want to be assured that in fact I love them. which reassure them I do. and my husband. and my mom. then we go on from there. it turns out I don't hate everything after all.
like in the belle and sebastian song I don't love anyone.* "not even christmas/especially not that." the narrator lets it slip later though: "I don't love anyone/well maybe my sister/maybe my baby brother too, yeah/I don't love anyone." I only don't like the conclusion: "the world is as soft as clay." that I find extremely disturbing.
*though I can't get youtube to play at the moment?
We've all been working nonstop to see if YouTube can't get better service to Narnia.
I killed the thread too.
There's always somebody saying something.
I thought it was "the world was as soft as lace."