The Bliss of Ignorance

Someone once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of our own ignorance. Our schools are depriving millions of students of that kind of knowledge by promoting "self-esteem" and encouraging them to have opinions on things of which they are grossly ignorant, if not misinformed.

Thomas Sowell

I think that this quote encapsulates my discomfort with efforts like Rock the Vote. Voting is great, but I think it is important for voters to have a clue, and I fear that a voting bloc which rises as one on command from MTV may not represent a well-informed voice on the important issues of our day.


filed: us.politics; social.commentary; random.quotes

Original Column: How to Be Funny

This is one in a series of columns I wrote for a local newsletter in the past few years. The column was called The Brink of Normal and was full of humor and truly fun for all ages--and now it's back in convenient blog form!

As I searched desperately for a topic for my second column in this space, I thought about my rapid ascent to the heights of comedic expression. I suddenly realized that as a Humor Columnist I am now in a prime position to give hope and inspiration to the many young comedians out there. I’m all about public service, so this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

You might think that those closest to you will appreciate your jokes. In fact I have found the opposite to be true. Often after a stunningly funny comment, my father will say, “Don’t give up your day job”—while obviously stifling his mirth. Sometimes I will reduce most of a group to tears of laughter and one of my siblings will shout, “Don’t laugh—it only encourages him!” My theory here is that a person can’t take too much of a good thing. If you are too funny too often for too long, people just get desensitized to it.

Now if you are just getting started being funny, you may be asking, “I’m just getting started. How can I be funny?” Well, I’m glad you asked.

Jokes

One popular way to make people laugh is to tell jokes. There are many jokes, so I won’t try to cover them all here, but good jokes have two things in common: cleverness and surprise. Let me demonstrate with an actual joke:

Q: What did the mommy bullet say to the daddy bullet?
A: “We’re having a BB!”

The cleverness is the BB/baby pun, and the surprise is the ending that most people don’t expect. Both are vital for the comedy of the joke. (Please note that plausibility is not a necessary element of good jokes like this one.) Here is the joke without the surprise:

Q: What did little BB’s mommy, Mrs. Bullet, say to her daddy, Mr. Bullet?
A: “We’re having a BB!”

The joke is still clever, but there is no punch to the punch line. It bores us. The same effect can be achieved by asking your audience, “Have you heard the one about the little BB?” before you tell the joke.

Now, here is the joke with the cleverness removed:

Q: What did the mommy bullet say to the daddy bullet?
A: “We’re having a giraffe!”

This is not funny. The end is surprising, but the joke is not clever. It frustrates the listener. You will hear questions such as “What does the giraffe have to do with anything?” Believe me, it has to make sense.

Puns

If telling jokes isn’t your bag, perhaps you should try puns. Puns are a personal favorite of mine, but they elicit more groans than any other form of comedy you can use. In fact, that’s the best result you can ask from puns. If you don’t believe me, just pop a simple pun into a conversation, like “That soccer player really gets a kick out of his sport” and then just watch what happens. Often nothing will happen. At this point you can simply repeat yourself until someone realizes that you have made a joke. When they roll their eyes or groan or throw something at you, they’ve gotten it.

After you master the pun, try making several in a row related the same subject. For instance, you could follow up the soccer pun with “I wonder if his parents toed him to play”, “They probably had to put their foot down”, and “He’s probably still waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Again, some people find this less funny than others, so be ready to hoof it.

Physical Comedy

Often seen as less intelligent than other forms of funniness, physical comedy has been employed by everyone from the Three Stooges to America’s Funniest Videos. However hilarious it may be on TV, it is often less so if you personally fall out of a boat or have someone whack your nose with a serving tray. In the same way, practical jokes (the home version of physical comedy) are usually funnier for the joker than the victim, and if you accidentally get your parents they can find ways of spreading the pain, if you know what I mean. I speak as someone who has soaked my mother with water and coated my father with baby powder. I guess I forgot to mention that when noting that my family doesn’t think I’m funny.

With these tools in your bag you know enough to be dangerous. In fact, as I write this I realize that having an aspiring humorist in the house could be as maddening as living with someone teaching themselves the violin. And I didn’t even talk about the more advanced comedy techniques such as Running A Joke Into The Ground.

I’m sorry to the families of the amateur comedians I’ve encouraged. I didn’t mean to create a monster. But just think; after only a few years they may actually have their own column, and then it will all be worth it.

Right, Mom?

filed: humor; column

The Fork System

Have you ever planned to go out for lunch to a place you've never been, only to wish that you knew what kind of a place it is? Maybe a friend told you it was "kind-of fast food" or "a little bit nice," but what does that mean? Just as measurements were invented when somebody realized that "itsy-bitsy" and "great big" weren't going to cut it, the world needs an objective rating system for eating establishments. And so, World, I give you The Fork System.

The theory here is that you can tell what kind of restaurant you're dealing with from their eating utensils. The Fork System does not attempt to rate restaurants, but rather to categorize them. While you may have a good experience at a nice, clean fast food place or a bad time at a dumpy, badly run one, they are both fast food eateries and will both have the same Fork designation.

Here is the system, with categories ordered by price from lowest to highest:


No Fork/Plastic Fork: The cheapest form of restaurant, Fast Food. If you don't need a fork, you don't get one; if your order requires one it is plastic and sometimes packaged in a plastic baggie with a knife, paper napkin and paper salt/pepper packets. Variation: The Spork, the plastic offspring of a spoon and fork, is probably my favorite utensil. If you get a spork, you're at a fast-food place.

Wrapped Fork: A step up in from No Fork, this is the Casual Dining category. Here you get a fork made of real metal, along with a spoon and a knife, wrapped tightly in a napkin. At this level the Waiter makes his first appearance. This is a fairly wide-ranging category, with prices from just above No Fork prices and all the way up into Single Fork levels. To further differentiate inside the Wrapped Fork category, take a look at the napkin that wraps your fork. A cheap paper napkin is low-end, heavy paper is nicer, and cloth napkins may tell you that your Wrapped Fork restaurant wants to be a Single Fork restaurant.

Single Fork: This takes us into the Fine Dining category. The fork is unwrapped, to the left of the plate, and the knife and spoon are on the right. The napkin is cloth and may be folded into some sort of origami. The food is no longer cooked by cooks, but is instead prepared by chefs. The prices are higher but are still on the menu. Gentlemen, this is generally the lowest level acceptable for marriage proposals, Valentine's Day dinners, and anniversaries--and call ahead, because you definitely can't just walk in and be seated on February 14th.

Multi-Fork: Like Single Fork, but more--definitely Fine Dining. At this level the more utensils you see, the fancier the restaurant. Salad Forks, dessert forks, several glasses. Maitre d's, tuxedos, studied unobtrusiveness by wait staff--the sky is the limit here. If you can't find a price by your entree you can't afford it.


So there you have it. I hope you're asking yourself "How can one guy come up with a system so brilliant, so revolutionary, so useful?" However, you are more likely asking yourself "Why would somebody spend their time making this stuff up?" All I can say is that the whole fork thing was a random thought, and I had to flesh it out and write it up to get it out of my system. This is why I have a blog.

And there's more where that came from.


filed: etcetera

This Just In: Old Food is Great

If you throw out perfectly good food just because it has passed it's expiration date or been left out overnight or sat in a Mormon's basement for thirty years, you must read this article.


Wired News: Oatmeal From '70s Still Tastes OK


filed: etcetera

Random Thoughts and Manufactured Music

You know how sometimes seemingly random thoughts just pop into your head? Usually these thoughts aren't all that helpful, like when I find myself singing twenty-year-old commercial jingles for no apparent reason. Occasionally I will come up with something more interesting, though. For instance, here's a very strange line of thought that has occurred to me:

A bat "sees" by emitting a noise and then listening for it to bounce back, and surely too much surrounding noise would hinder that capability. What if our own vision worked similarly? What if, instead of passively perceiving ambient light, our eyes could only process light they generated--like a flashlight in the dark except that we could each only use our own light, and others' light interfered with our own? What would be the effect on human social interaction? Maybe it would be rude to look steadily at anything in public since nobody else could see it while you look at it. What would rock concerts or church services look like since nobody could see if everybody was looking at the same people? It would probably put a premium on one-to-one and aural interaction.

Wow. I hadn't really tried to put that into words before. Like I said, very strange.

Anyway, I recently had a bunch of old Backstreet Boys songs stuck in my head. I find the best thing to do when this happens is to listen to the songs again. Now I have never actively listened to the Backstreet Boys (but I heard plenty of their work back in the day when they were everywhere), so I don't have the albums, but thanks to the magic of Rhapsody I listened to some of their hits. Here are some of my thoughts from that experience:

First of all, this is not good music. On this point I must agree with Ben, who is a music snob and was nearby during my Backstreet marathon. In fact, as he noted, 99 percent of my enjoyment of the whole experience was watching his reactions to it--anger, revulsion, snide commentary, depression, begging for mercy...

Some of it actually doesn't sound too dated--in fact, some of it sounds like Britney Spears. In fact, I think if you dropped Spears voice into "Larger than Life" you could almost pass it off as her latest. This brings me to a point about "manufactured" music-- most of the lyrics aren't written by the idols themselves, but by middle-aged English majors on caffeine and a deadline. Either that, or by a computer program (Love + heart + baby + forever = POP HIT) or by 10,000 monkeys with typewriters (this is Ben's theory). I think the music is handled by all of the same computer jockeys, which would explain why the Backstreet Boys from the nineties sounds similar to Britney Spears of today, or why all of Spears' hits sound the same.

Finally, Josie and the Pussycats has some very funny things to say about manufactured music. It features a boy band called Du Jour which is funny because du jour means "of the day". They're the boy band of the day! Get it? (Warning: It's rated PG for "sensuality and language", kids, so be advised.)


filed: etcetera; entertainment

Trash Talk and Dominoes

"It's funny to hear an 80-year-old man talk smack."

Friend of The Brink Ben S.

Ben was a passerby the other day in a small town at a particularly zesty game of dominoes. I'm not exactly sure what kind of put-downs you use to get in the other guy's head in that game, but whatever they are they must seem strange coming from somebody's Grandpa.


filed: random.quotes