Sick, sick, sick

I’m one of those people who, unless they are having a good vitriolic rant, just wants to make a joke of everything.  Well, not make a joke of everything per se, but I always want to be able to make a joke whenever and wherever possible.  It’s a defence mechanism, I know.  I was never the most popular kid in school – in fact I would have yearned to be anything like the 136th Least Liked Kid in School when I was, in fact, about the 2nd Least Liked.  I may even have been the Least Liked on occasion (if the other kid was off sick, which probably happened quite a lot).  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps it was because I was a bit of a nerd.  Perhaps it was because I was built oddly (I have quite long arms).  Perhaps it was because I was hideously ugly (I’m not any more, of course – now I’m a positive Adonis).  Perhaps it was because I was awkward, both vocally and ambulatorily.  Or perhaps it was the uncontrollable Tourrets Syndrome.  (That last “perhaps” is not strictly true.)

After I left school I was fairly bitter, with a little dash of cynicism and topped with a sprinkle of loneliness.  One thing I could do was make people laugh.  Sometimes.  And making people laugh made you just that little bit more acceptable to others.  In company I spoke only to make a joke, and I let others do all the actual discussing.  Eventually I even made a group of friends, and I met my lovely wife (who, to be honest, is probably now growing extremely tired of my perpetual wisecracks).  But, as often happens in life, you find yourself in the company of others all the time, some of whom you know and others of whom you don’t (and some you like and some you’d rather would take a day trip to Beachy Head).  And so you find yourself having to make smalltalk a hell of a lot of the time and, because it is now so deeply ingrained, you find yourself constantly making jokes.

This is where the problem starts. 

Firstly, smalltalk is shallow.  It’s generally pretty meaningless, it doesn’t delve into subjects, and it’s not really intended to make you think.  There is a limited number of jokes that can be made when making smalltalk.  Eventually you end up repeating old jokes but with different wordings.  If you do it cleverly enough then you can get away with it, but you start to feel like a bit of a tit when the person to whom you are talking notices the repetition (you can tell when they do because their laugh is neither as loud nor as convincing as it was the first time round). 

Secondly, everybody has their own sense of humour: some people like highbrow humour, while others like Only Fools and Horses (and, for those of you who are fortunate enough to have never seen it, it’s shite).  Some people like Airplane! while others like Charlie Chaplin (I think he’s also shite, but that’s just my opinion – Buster Keaton…now there was a comedy genius).  Not only that, but there is also the issue of Bad Taste.  Now, while I appreciate when a joke is in Bad Taste, my personal feelings are that you should never hold back from a joke.  Sick, rude, distasteful…so long as it is spontaneous and good-natured, I don’t see what the problem is.

Humour is how humans cope with the world around them.  Life is hard, tiring, stressful, and sometimes even horrific.  If you can’t laugh about absolutely everything then you can’t laugh about anything at all.  I think there are two crucial points to making a good joke: the tragedy and the twist.  I believe it was Mel Brooks who said, “If I fall down an open manhole and break my leg it’s a tragedy – if somebody else does it then it’s comedy” (or words to that effect).  A joke is a joke because it happens to someone else.  And what makes a joke into a good joke is when something unexpected happens – this is why surreal humour, like the kind that Eddie Izzard does, is so popular: everything he says is unexpected.

Unless I am in extremely polite company, I won’t hold back from a joke.  Which has got me into some trouble in the past, I admit.  I also won’t hold back from a joke if it’s bad, or obvious, or well-known, or a million years old and in serious need of dusting.  A joke’s a joke.  Although I did shock myself today by letting slip quite possibly the worst taste joke I’ve ever said.  I was watching the news and there was a report about a beach in Scotland upon which a woman’s severed head (wrapped in a plastic bag) had washed.  The newsreader said that the police have released a description of the woman.  I missed the description given because I immediately said, “she’s very short, with brown hair that reaches the ground.”

On that note I think I had better go and burn in Hell…

Please forgive me.