Humor 001: “The Running Joke”

As promised earlier this month I am herewith posting the first lecture in my Basic Humor course.  This series has been found to be necessary due to the uncommon quantity of noncomprehending visitors to this blog– folks who simply can’t seem to wrap their minds around my cartoons.  This humor deficit seems to be limited to left-leaning visitors; more moderate thinkers have no problem getting my stuff and even finding it reasonably funny. 

I have a possible theory on why the left fails to grasp so much humor, and the culprit once again, no surprise,  may be Manmade Global Warming.  The left is consumed with angst over this non-event.  [A non-event because 1) there is evidence that we may be cooling rather than warming, and 2) warming trends as well as cooling ones have ebbed and flowed over the eons probably since the early days of this planet, with no discernable ancient SUVs or other manmade things in sight to have caused these quixotic temperature changes.  Though, it is possible that modern man with his greenhouse gasses and miscellaneous crap may yet be responsible for temperature variations in past epochs via the newly theorized "carbon time-seepage," in which evil greenhouse gas emissions may actually have traveled backwards in time to wreak havoc on climates past.]  Anyway– in their endless preoccupation over imminently rising, globally warmed oceans and other horrible warm junk the left can’t possibly have mental room for other things– like humor.  They’re just too worried.  I’m hoping my series will help them work around this.

My first lesson pertains to the cartoon called “Zoned Out.”  Many visitors claimed that because I’ve utilized the “it’s cold out; what kinda Global Warming?” thesis in an earlier cartoon, this renders the new one nonvalid or lazy.  These readers need to acquaint themselves with the concept of the “running joke,” also known as the “running gag.”  This is a well-worn idea used in plays, films, TV shows, comic strips and every other species of humor known to man.  My suggestion to stumped or angry visitors and commentors is to go back to Aristophanes, continue reading through the comedies of Shakespeare, onward to Sheridan, Shaw, Wilde and any other notable playwright you can get your hands on and right up into the present.  Note the occurance of these “running jokes.”  When you have attained a full grasp of how such things work, come back to Diversity Lane.  We’ll be waiting for you with, maybe not open arms but certainly a nice organic sandwich.

Colorblindsided

Zoned Out

Scarewaves

Acadimia

Blinded by the Lie

Blind Spot

Emergensea

Nothing Cheesy Here

Hope ‘n’ Change is manned by suspiciously named author/artist Stilton Jarlsberg.  He hates lefty Democrats, has a great sense of fun and possesses the largest collection of old graphic clip-art and cartoons known to man; what more could you ask for in a conservative blog?  For extra credit he maintains a very regular running commentary on the news in a pithy, appropriately Obama-skewering tone that should keep you coming back for tomorrow’s installment.  Super-creative and much recommended.

Grave Situation

Afghanistalled

Chad Kent Speaks (and impresses)

Here’s a real find:  Chad Kent Speaks is a new website with short videos featuring young professional public speaker Chad’s exciting, down to earth approach to American government.  You’ll come away from these a) interested all over again about our Founding Principles and b) wishing these videos were longer.   Fortunately you can find more of his public speaking at the blog linked at this website and at Youtube where I found these.   Highly recommended for you, your family and your kid who thinks he doesn’t care about dry historical stuff and what’s really in the Constitution but will learn that he does after hearing a couple of these vids.  Liberals, beware: this stuff scoffs at the “living Constitution” concept and may be harmful to your self-delusions.

Playing Rough

Anita Dunce

Donate to Our Finest

The Paralyzed Veterans of America, a congressionally chartered veterans service organization founded in 1946, has developed a unique expertise on a wide variety of issues involving the special needs of their members—veterans of the armed forces who have experienced spinal cord injury or dysfunction.  They are the only Congressionally chartered veterans organization dedicated solely to serving the needs of SCI/SCD veterans.  Nobody deserves our donations more– hope you’ll give as generously as you can.

Mmm, mmm, mind-control

Lighter Than Air

Ignoble Prize

Broken Dreams…..25 cents

From Athens to Hollywood

[This out-of-the-park hit is the last word on the Polanski debacle.  Courtesy of bookseller/writer Craig S. Maxwell at the ever-indispensable Maxwell's House of Books, my primary source for reading material.]

 

During the course of his debates with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln wisely observed that, “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.”

Today, however, Lincoln’s insight is troubling–especially given Hollywood’s influence over the nation. Regrettably, this small, sordid suburb of Los Angeles is one of the world’s most powerful molders of “public sentiment”, and the recently focused attention on acclaimed director Roman Polanski should serve to remind us of of this fact. Over the years, movies have increasingly relied on the extreme, the perverse and the profane to sell themselves. But this is far from being the mere commercial exploitation of controversially “racy” material by cynical, yet otherwise bourgeois studio execs who “know better.” It is, rather, a clear reflection of the morally denuded minds of its makers–the producers and directors–those unwitting, third-hand consumers and distributors of the philosophical corrosives contrived by Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Sorel, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, et al. For over one hundred years, their destructive ideas have filtered down from academe and into popular culture. What “lesson” did they teach? Primarily, that truth and morality have no objective, universal content, and are nothing more than the arbitrary expressions of cultural bias, or the individual’s will to dominate. Thus, for their disciples, it followed that to free oneself from the fetters of traditional morality was to undertake a bold adventure in self-discovery, liberation and “progressive” thinking.

 

Traces of this “enlightened” perspective can be seen in the conspicuously calculated, dismissive and self-exonerating remarks of Roman Polanski who, when questioned about the thirteen year old girl he drugged and raped, told the interviewer that he was no aberration, and that (in truth), “everybody [deep down] wants to (four-letter obscenity deleted) little girls”; or in those of Woody Allen who, when questioned about the propriety of the affair he was having with his wife’s adopted daughter, blandly replied, “The heart wants what it wants.”

 

Our world was built on the solid pillars of three, great civilizations: Jerusalem, Athens and Rome. The first taught us to pray; the second, to think; and the third, to govern. Yet as strong as they are, these pillars require our respectful study, contemplation and defense, if they are to continue bearing the tremendous weight of the West. Absent this attention, we will continue to witness our ongoing decay, and eventual collapse.

Good ‘n’ Angry

Need a smart, very well-informed blogger who shares your disgust at liberal/leftism and is absolutely fearless about laying it all out?  Even kinda angry, to be honest?  Political Byline is a no-holds-barred, outraged outpost with tons of  up-to-date news and even more personality.  Nothing middle-of-the-road here, and if you’re like me that’s a big plus.  Recommended!

Olympic-sized Letdown

No Stone Left Unturned

Global Warning

ACARE