Zen Moment of Self-Acceptance

[Dragonfly]

clowns are for children in hospitals, maybe

I remember that I even as a child didn't find clowns funny at all. I also disliked the special "childish" way some adults used to speak to me as a little child, I remember thinking "why don't you just speak in a normal way, I'm not an idiot!".

[Brant Gaede]

clowns are for children in hospitals, maybe

I remember that I even as a child didn't find clowns funny at all. I also disliked the special "childish" way some adults used to speak to me as a little child, I remember thinking "why don't you just speak in a normal way, I'm not an idiot!".

It's very hard for adults to adjust to the exponential learning of children. At first children need baby talk, and it may be true that adults would learn a new language easier if they started out exposed to baby talk, but very soon they don't need it at all. So we might say adults are trapped by parenting inertia. At least they don't turn off the baby talk too soon; that could be disastrous and maybe the whole point of it all. In any case I remember that too, sort of, and in other forms all through childhood and adolescence, but the pattern is too common to be mere adult ignorance and screwup. I don't think you were too much damaged, but I can see how it would particularly grate of the exceptionally intelligent. Human social interaction always has various forms of manifested and manifesting and threatening friction.

--Brant

[Dragonfly]

I don't think you were too much damaged

No question of damage, I was not that fragile, I just found it silly. Fortunately as far as I can remember my parents talked always normally to me. Funny, another old memory comes up: when I was about 10 years old I used to wonder how I would be as an adult, if I would think in the same way as I did then, what kind of person I would be. Around that time I also read in some medical encyclopedia of my parents about the development of the child, how they think etc. I no longer know the details of that article, but I remember thinking "They should've asked me, I myself could much better tell them how and what I think than they can guess!"

[tjohnson]

Yeah, I don't know if I'm getting it either. Is this shark having his dick sucked by another shark and finding that it's not all that pleasant?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I cringe to think that one day some really anti-Rand dudes will come across this thread, then point to others and say, "You see? You see what Rand does to people? She sucks their sense of humor right out of them!"

EDIT: "What a shark!"

(Sorry, couldn't resist... )

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I cringe to think that one day some really anti-Rand dudes will come across this thread, then point to others and say, "You see? You see what Rand does to people? She sucks their sense of humor right out of them!"

EDIT: "What a shark!"

(Sorry, couldn't resist... )

Michael

It's sad to see a man paddling a canoe in a dry stream-bed and he sees water that's not there.

--Brant

It was sad

It was sad

It was sad when that great ship* went down

To the bottom went the husbands and wives

LITTLE CHILDREN LOST THEIR LIVES!!

It was sad when that great ship went down**

*the Titanic

**sung by gleeful little boys at the Oracle, Arizona YMCA summer camp in the mid-late 1950s

[Rich Engle]

Well, you know, it's kind of my job, if you think about it. I'm the funny guy but the tradeoff is that I get invalidated. I guess the evidence piles up and/or I just do too much evasion.

Michael does a good job contributing to the humour dept. The rub is that O-types, even free thinking ones, they just have trouble making funnies. Objectivist Humor is close to oxymoronic.

It's like the Canadians. I know this one guy....anyway they try and try and they never pull off good jokes. It's all in the delivery, I guess.

Eh,

rde

I'd tell you we're in our 2nd day of filming a documentary about ... but I can't.

The real scary part is a game I call Guess Who's Writing The Screenplay<tm≥

[Aaron]

I don't really get the shark comic. But I somehow suspect it's related to why I find http://theoatmeal.com/comics/ptero absolutely hilarious - even though I don't really understand the 'why' for that either.

Aaron

[tjohnson]

I don't really get the shark comic. But I somehow suspect it's related to why I find http://theoatmeal.com/comics/ptero absolutely hilarious - even though I don't really understand the 'why' for that either.

Aaron

I think those kind of things are funny because of their "randomness". I guess random is the new slapstick??

[Dragonfly]

I think those kind of things are funny because of their "randomness". I guess random is the new slapstick??

Or perhaps the ongoing bombardment with politically incorrect absurdities? Do you think you'd find a bowdlerized version funny?

[Brant Gaede]

I don't really get the shark comic. But I somehow suspect it's related to why I find http://theoatmeal.com/comics/ptero absolutely hilarious - even though I don't really understand the 'why' for that either.

Aaron

I guess it's the same kind of thing that Michael finds funny and I don't get it. I also find it hard to get insult comedy. Frank Sinatra loved to be insulted by Don Rickles, for instance. I sometimes found it funny and sometimes not, but he seldom made me laugh with that. He did mix it up with other stuff which I could enjoy. If not for his insult approach he'd be out of business and I never got the idea he was actually a nasty person or trying to hurt people, unlike some others. It was as if he was complementing his targets by telling them they were big and strong enough to take it.

The kind of humor I engage in and enjoy would not work too well for a professional comedian, who has to address a large audience. I might be wrong about that, but I never force it. I enjoy banter with supermarket and drugstore clerks who know me. There was one lady I met once so far who could hardly stop laughing as she ran my credit card. That was an extreme reaction and illustrated how different people will respond differently to the same material. It's pretty hard to stand at a register for an eight-hour shift with a constant stream of customers and that sort of thing makes it easier for them and I do like them as people. It's all playful.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

There was one lady I met once so far who could hardly stop laughing as she ran my credit card.

--Brant

Are you sure she was laughing at your comments? 8-)

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

There was one lady I met once so far who could hardly stop laughing as she ran my credit card.

--Brant

Are you sure she was laughing at your comments? 8-)

Ghs

She couldn't have been laughing at me; I had a bag over my head and was wearing speedos.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

I can't find humor in anything about Leonard Perigo though I can see humor used to attack him. Humor as a weapon would be something I'd have to work at but it's not any default position of mine. There are some very bad people and policies that are extremely vulnerable to humor but you'd not look to me to be the manufacturer of it.

--Brant

After spending some time on SOLO a few years ago, I found that using sarcastic humor was the only way I could bear to write posts. For example, I would sometimes refer to Lindsay Perigo as "Lint" instead of "Linz," but no one seemed to notice. 8-)

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

There was one lady I met once so far who could hardly stop laughing as she ran my credit card.

--Brant

Are you sure she was laughing at your comments? 8-)

Ghs

She couldn't have been laughing at me; I had a bag over my head and was wearing speedos.

--Brant

I thought maybe she was laughing at the result of running your credit card. 8-)

[Brant Gaede]

There was one lady I met once so far who could hardly stop laughing as she ran my credit card.

--Brant

Are you sure she was laughing at your comments? 8-)

Ghs

She couldn't have been laughing at me; I had a bag over my head and was wearing speedos.

--Brant

I thought maybe she was laughing at the result of running your credit card. 8-)

Now that wasn't funny--I had to pay cash. It might have been when I pulled my wallet out of my speedos.

--Brant

Edited April 18, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[sbeaulieu]

There was one lady I met once so far who could hardly stop laughing as she ran my credit card.

--Brant

Are you sure she was laughing at your comments? 8-)

Ghs

She couldn't have been laughing at me; I had a bag over my head and was wearing speedos.

--Brant

I'll say hi to you if ever you wear the outfit again at the supermarket ;)

~ Shane

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shane,

If you don't see him, just listen for someone singing, "I'm a shaaaaaarkkkk..."

Michael

[sbeaulieu]

Michael,

If Brant does start singing, can I assume that he'll be sporting the Sharkman Super Swim Set along with the speedos? Seems appropriate...haha!

~ Shane

[Christopher]

I just wanted to say that I really liked this post. I read it as achieving freedom from the guilt one feels for having power in the world. In the words of the comic strip: I am a shark, that's my nature, and I'm going embrace it!

The title is what does it for me