  Comedy
This week: Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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"I had thought — I had been told — that a 'funny' thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery... and a sharing... against pain and sorrow and defeat."
- Valentine Michael Smith
(Robert Heinlein,
Stranger in a Strange Land) |
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FAIL
Unless you've been living under the Internet equivalent of a rock (the iRock?) for the last couple of years, you've seen them: Pictures or videos of someone or something spectacularly doing it wrong - and usually accompanied by the word FAIL.
Of course, there are entire websites devoted to this sort of thing. Here's one:
http://failblog.org/
As far as I can tell, though, the phenomenon of laughing at another's misstep is as old as the human race. Perhaps it even defines our humanity - because the first ape who laughed when she saw another ape fall out of the baobab tree probably did it because she was secure in her superiority. That is, until she fell out of the tree and the other apes laughed at her. Pretty much the story of homo sapiens in a nutshell. We'd be called homo FAILiens if that didn't sound so weird.
Further support for the idea that FAIL is even older than the internet is that there's even a Biblical injunction against taking delight in another's misfortune, which there wouldn't have to be if people weren't laughing every time their neighbor slipped on a fig to land face-first into a pile of camel dung: "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him." (Proverbs 24:17-18, King James Version). [English translation: "Don't laugh; you're next."]
When I was a kid, there was a show on the ABC network called Wide World of Sports. In its opening title sequence was the line, "The thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat." I didn't care much for sports then, as now, but I always tried to catch the opening sequence, because "the agony of defeat" was captured for all eternity as a skiier executing an epic FAIL maneuver down a snowy mountainside.
(Later, I found out that the skiier in question, one Vinko Bogataj, basically walked away from the cringe-inducing crash with nothing more than minor injuries. Apparently, he didn't even hurt his pedal extremities, so I couldn't even pun on "the agony of de feet.")
It's also common to simply add the word FAIL to a photograph of some spectacular accident. Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Train_wreck_at_Montparnasse_1895_FAIL.jpg
Which I suppose should have been captioned, "LE FAIL."
Schadenfreude is universal, even if it took the Germans to come up with a name for it. Just remember: it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Afterwards, it's just funny.
Lachen heißt: schadenfroh sein, aber mit gutem Gewissen
"Humour is just Schadenfreude with a clear conscience." (Nietzsche)
(quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude} |
No FAIL here - just some funnies from around the site:
| | 54 EXCUSES [13+] #1533412
An aptly named racehorse sheds the cloak of loser and drapes it over its bevy of owners.
by DRSmith  |
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The last time I polluted your inbox with a Comedy newsletter, I talked about food humor.
THANKFUL SONALI Library Class!  : And me on a strict diet ... sigh!
Okay, then I won't talk about delicious, gooey hot fudge sundaes.
Elaine's Beary Limited*~  : I definitely like food jokes better than fart jokes then they both eventually fall along the same route Huh?
Plenty of comedy material all along the alimentary canal, really. But I'll liver up to you guys to come up with more.
sarahreed: I have so many office fridge stories, it isn't funny. But the funniest one is when someone stole the absolute worst spaghetti (her husband had made it with ketchup) from a sick co-worker. Having discovered her food gone, she wrote a one-page rant and posted it on the fridge basically telling the person that they were probably going to get sick and hoped they liked ketchup pasta! It's been a year and we still talk about it.
Ew! That's almost as funny as drinking stored breast milk! (Wait, is there another kind?)
Thomas : Then there's the king of food comedy, George Carlin. http://www.themadmusicarchive.com/song_details.aspx?SongID=3934
George was the king of ALL comedy.
KimChi : Robert,
Thanks for a funny newsletter on food. You make this humor thang look easy.
Hey, with people named "Kimchi" around, I can't miss!
And that's it for this week, folks! Tune in next time, when I talk about... well, whatever I decide about an hour before the deadline to talk about. Until then,
LAUGH ON! |
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Comedy: June 03, 2009 Issue [#3088]
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