I am going to choose to celebrate his life by remembering the time you all had me read the Wikipedia entry on "Regulate" over chat while I was in McAlister's. Everyone in the restaurant looked at me like I was a mad man.
Dear Mr. Trash:
I represent Ms. Bomber in the above referenced matter. As a preliminary matter, I would ask that at this point all correspondence be directed to me. Below, you will find our answers to your Interrogatories.
1. Ms. Bomber objects to this question as it is overly broad and burdensome and is outside of the scope of Discovery allowed under the Rules. However, not waiving the aforementioned Objection, Ms. Bomber states that she doesn't consider herself to have an online persona, rather she is a wholly integrated human being, each facet of which is unique and only part of a whole. Ms. Bomber plans to call Ralph Waldo Emerson as an expert witness in this matter.
2. Ms. Bomber is looking into the GOOP Retox at this time.
3. Objection. This Interrogatory requests information covered by attorney client privilege.
If you have any comments, please hesitate to contact my office.
Regards,
Mans
See, R2, I agree with you. Comedy is best used when as a weapon against "sacred cows." What that means to me is that comedy should be used to highlight inequality or to subvert those social structures that are bad.
But too often, "offensive" comedy doesn't attack the establishment but just makes fun of those that already have to put up with the oppression. So I Chappelle's Show or Richard Pryor or Stewart Lee because they highlight what is wrong, in a very funny way. Just telling ironic racist or sexist jokes doesn't feel like going after sacred cows. It feels safe and unfunny.
I'm not saying that this is what you are saying, but I am trying to explain my position better. I like my comedy to be pointed and harsh, but I like it to be aimed at improving humanity rather than insulting the already insulted.
I'm not easily offended, but I am also not easily amused.
I think some folks would say that comedy has to be free to be offensive and hurtful because of the importance of humor or something and interrogating the motives behind why certain jokes are made has a harmful impact on the purity of comedy.
Of course, the real reason in a case like this is money. Sure he lots his job voicing a duck, but it raises his profile and it won't hurt his comedy career because people like shit like this. In the end, it will benefit him.
Oops, you make jokes about people's deaths to advance your career!
By our senior year, we ended up being friends. The fact that I would not fight at all impressed him in some way and after that, he liked me. I never got mad at him about beating me up. He had some serious issues that I think contributed to his behavior, so I just always tried to be nice to him and he was nice back. It actually works.
To this day, when my brother sees him around our hometown, he asks how I am doing and tells my brother to pass along his greetings.
Have you tried any of his short stories? I think the stories in "Oblivion" are just about the best things he wrote, especially "Good Old Neon" and "The Suffering Channel."
First I will say that everyone has different things that turn them on, so I wouldn't worry too much if some people like something and you don't. I imagine you don't actually worry about this, but I guess my point is, some things just work for some people and not for others and that is okay.
Second, Wallace is not really like Franzen or Eggers, though sometimes people who like one like the others, sometimes they don't. I do not like all of them.
Third, my answer to Why Do You Like David Foster Wallace (the short version) would be: 1. He writes about things I care about, specifically about how to have some sort of real human connection and experience in life. He is an earnest and compassionate writer and I like that. 2. He is very funny, or at least, his sense of humor appeals to me. 3. His prose style is very appealing to me.
I don't know if that answers your question.
While I understand what you are saying, I don't think intent really matters that much. For example, intent may be what we say separates Sarah Silverman from Jeff Dunham, but in the end, I just don't think that there is that much difference between the two.
Humor is non-logical. When you hear a joke and laugh, your mind does not consider the joke, determine its meaning and intent and then make a choice to laugh or not. It is instinctual and closer to vomiting than it is rational thought.
So my fear is that when a comic tells a race joke (or something else I would say offends me) and I laugh, my saying "Oh, but it was ironic" or "It was just a joke to try and push buttons, the comic did not mean it" that I am still just laughing because the joke triggered something in my baser self and that the critical context, which can be completely invisible to the person to hears the joke, is just an afterthought.
This isn't to say that there can't be good humor based on race or sex or something else, but they are best when they are used to attack racism or sexism or violence or oppression and not when they are used to reinforce those things.
I completely agree: Words Do Matter. Words can make people feel good. Words can make people feel bad. I remember in the 1990s when there was a lot of attention on music and its negative impact on the youth. The defense of music I heard was "Hey, music can't make you kill yourself or hurt someone else." I never liked that idea. If music can't make me feel bad and unhappy and hateful then music can't make me feel happy and loved and loving and kind. I very strongly believe that words--as literature, as comedy, as lyric--matter and have meaning and can ennoble the human spirit and can degrade it just as well.
My point being, there are probably funny ways to attack social ills, such as prison rape, but this wasn't one. The intent here was to just have a string of lazy puns about committing violence against other humans.
The YouTube Commenter Meet-up will be held in the Orange County Correctional Facility Rec Room (the trailer in the trees behind the conjugal visit shed).
Our culture fears its increasing fragmentation. Where families once gathered together to prepare meals and raise children and work and worship, now we are detached and each have our own television, cell phone, Zune and computer. We are isolated and alone. We as a culture are drawn to cute cat videos as they are something that unites us, across racial, economic, gender and educational lines. It is the one thing we can agree on.
PSYCHE!
Cats are cute and shit.
Our cultural obsession with cute cat videos reflects our societies fear in the face of its own fracturing. Where once families ate together and raised children together, now we all have our own television, and Zune, and computer and are isolated from one another and the cat video provides a central focus, bringing us together so that we can all feel the same about the same things again and feel that we are not disconnected, that we have some shared values across social, racial and gender lines.
PSYCHE!
Cats are just cute and shit.
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