jests japes jokes jollies

Obscene Joy

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“Obscene joy”? Sounds fun, but I don’t even know what that is. Me, I was this guy:

Well, to be precise, when I saw that the US had lost, I chuckled. When I learned that it was thanks to Rapinoe sending her penalty kick into row Z, I did indeed laugh, because I was reminded once again that there is a trickster god who loves us and wants us to be amused, and laughter is how we show our thanks. It just had to be her! Her last act as a professional athlete! Couldn’t have happened to a nicer attention whore! Seeing some professional lib from MSNBC getting mad about it is a bonus chuckle. That same professional lib accusing me of being “too into politics,” rather than, say, the arrogant players who spent the last several years making their political showboating a major part of their “brand”? Well, now, that’s just goddamed hilarious. Enjoy your post-athletic career as a dime-a-dozen influencer, you silly bint.

This Is Not a Post

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Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books

To the untrained eye, it may seem that I’m a lazy bastard who fails to uphold the implicit bargain I’ve made to provide you fellows with some light entertainment on a semi-regular basis. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, what you’ve been seeing is an avant-garde exercise in non-posting. The layman thinks, “This guy only posts every couple weeks. What a bum!” No doubt, he also thinks that his kindergartener could create a masterpiece of abstract expressionism. You, though, the blognoscenti, you understand that what appears to be an expanse of empty time, a forgotten password, or perhaps the literal death of the author, is actually an acerbic meta-commentary on the inane discourse of our culture. The philistine sees everyone chattering about a Barbie movie, goes to social media to say, “Why are all these adults so worked up over a two-hour advertisement for Mattel products?” and in so doing, compromises his integrity by participating in the same chatter and seeking the same validation. Here, you see the absence of commentary on blockbuster movies, viral clickbait, and political folly. The silence hangs heavy; reproving; accusatory. The discerning observer sees the same post occupying the top spot for two weeks and says, “Ah, I can imagine Damian’s snort of contempt and disgusted eye-roll when he saw the Current Thing.” It’s like our little inside joke.

They Made Me Tap the Sign

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I warned them:

I’m sorry; I’ve tried to be lenient, but since you all can’t be trusted with responsibility, I will hereby be confiscating the Internet license of anyone caught conflating “tenet” with “tenant.” If this trend continues, I will add a whole new wing onto the correctional facility where I currently keep all those who misuse “begs the question.”

Well, I wouldn’t have guessed that my first big bust would be a kingpin like the Chronicle of Higher Education, but I can’t ignore this blatant challenge to my authority:

What a shame. I’ve browsed that website for years, but the law is the law.

Eviction Notice

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From today’s Daily Scroll:

I graciously ignored this last week, but since standards are falling at an alarming rate, I return to note:

I’m sorry; I’ve tried to be lenient, but since you all can’t be trusted with responsibility, I will hereby be confiscating the Internet license of anyone caught conflating “tenet” with “tenant.” If this trend continues, I will add a whole new wing onto the correctional facility where I currently keep all those who misuse “begs the question.”

Praeteritio

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In the past ten days, I have unloaded five shipping containers (not single-handedly, of course, though rumors have begun to spread). Close to 100 tons of merchandise. I wish it to be known that I disavow any and all attempts to paint me as a modern-day Alexey Stakhanov. I hate to even dignify such careless talk with a response, but unfortunately, some have said that this sort of heroic labor, combined with my prodigious intellectual output, suggests that I may be an übermensch, a stud, or even a “chad,” as the youth say these days. I give no credence to such idle chatter. In no way do I deserve to be seen as the natural successor to Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman philosopher, let alone mentioned in the same breath as him. I would remind you that it is no blot on Hercules’s accomplishments that even he didn’t unload five shipping containers, nor is there any significance to the fact that, unlike John Henry, I live to work another day. My only desire is to return to my humble day-to-day life with no thought of recognition, not to live on in legend like Cincinnatus as some would have me do.

Smells Like Victory?

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There was an older oriental man who lived in town. Perhaps due to race or other factors unstated this man had been singled out to receive a large portion of the attention of the boys of the neighborhood. It was, for example, tradition that his outhouse be tipped year after year on Halloween eve — to trick is better than to treat. This Hallows Eve my father and two of his friends had taken it upon themselves to do this dirty deed and were gliding like shadows across the darkened field that guarded the approach to their target. Caution was essential and every nerve was taut, for a shotgun with a load of rock-salt oft awaited the unwary trickster.

As the skirmish line of three closed the last yards to the outhouse the taste of victory was already on the tongue. Then my father’s friend, to his left and middle in the line, vanished. Moments later followed a throaty, muted cry for help. The tables had been turned, the outhouse moved in anticipation leaving waiting the gaping hole, and this year the old man had won.

— Malan D. Rampton, cited in Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life

Cheerfulness Was Always Breaking In

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Humorists handle thoughts and ideas as golf or billiard champions handle their balls, or as cowboy champions handle their lariats. There is an ease, a sureness, a lightness of touch, that comes from mastery. After all, only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them. Seriousness, after all, is only a sign of effort, and effort is a sign of imperfect mastery. A serious writer is awkward and ill at ease in the realm of ideas as a nouveau riche is awkward, ill at ease and self-conscious in society. He is serious because he has not come to feel at home with his ideas.

— Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

****

Actually, seriousness is not incompatible with joking. It’s a common mistake to confuse “serious” with “solemn,” and to assume that seriousness of purpose can only be conveyed by solemnity of tone. It’s an understandable error; we do have a marked tendency, we Anglo-Saxons, to answer the big questions with furrowed brow and down-turned mouth. An acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, on hearing of his reputation as a philosopher, remarked, “I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher, but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.” But cheerfulness and thoughtfulness aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s simply wrong to assume that everyone who jokes about serious matters like death and pain is somehow failing to deal with them, that laughter is a childish, evasive response and that the only mature reactions are solemn, somber and po-faced.

Jimmy Carr & Lucy Greeves, The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes

I Started a Joke Which Started the Whole World Crying

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For the past four days, several journalists at The Washington Post Montessori School have been doing the Twitter equivalent of hair-pulling, biting, kicking and scratching one another, which started when one of them did the Twitter equivalent of chuckling at a “problematic” joke. By way of comparison, on that same day, several of us at work were telling offensive and profane jokes about a guy we know who stands roughly three feet tall, and somehow we all got on with our lives. Forget education, income, and all those sociological markers; the real divide in the workplace is over humor.

Memes Test

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So, Elon Musk, proud new owner of the world’s largest open sewer-slash-lunatic asylum, a man who I am increasingly coming to believe is the earthly avatar of LOL, the trickster deity who loves us and wants us to be amused, tweeted out a cartoon the other day:

This was the signal for the newspaper owned by the world’s second-richest man, which has become deeply concerned over the threat to “democracy” posed by the world’s richest man owning a major communication channel, to cry “ACKSHUALLY” and let slip the dogs of fact-checking. I guess we’re not doing that “lived experience” thing anymore? How perfect. How “on-brand,” as the kids say these days, especially as a Democrat administration launches a “Disinformation Governance Board” (I assume because “Ministry of Truth” and “Committee of Public Safety” were already trademarked). Well, I guess I’m glad to see that journalists and political obsessives have finally found something to fill that Trump-sized hole in their hearts.

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