Y U Haz no Humor?

Not Funny, motherfucker!

In a previous post I told you about the card game we played at the Ginger Man. Even though the “kids” we were playing with were about 15 years younger than us, we had a lot in common. They had a sense of humor for one. They were also a bit shocked that we had one. I’m not certain whether it is our location or just the way things are these days, but it seems like no one has a fucking sense of humor. I use humor a lot. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, or maybe I just don’t give a rat’s ass, but I can’t understand people who get a dull blank look in their eyes when I crack a joke. The Missus and I have had this discussion a lot. It seems that people are either in a bubble, or just plain stupid. Maybe they think it childish to joke around. After all this country is being run by a secret Mooslim and homersexual cabal and is decaying every day. Or maybe they’re too fucking macho to be funny. Hell I don’t know.

Lenny Says: Fuck those people
with no sense of humor

I want to ask people why they lack a sense of humor. Were they hit in the head as a kid? Did they suffer some kind of humor related trauma as a child? Did Don Rickles call them a hockey puck on a childhood trip to Vegas? Are they German or something? Enquiring minds want to know. In my house, comedians were a thing of wonder. The great ones like Rickles and Alan King and David Brennar and Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce. Buddy Hackett, Phil Silvers and Steve Martin, even Sam Kinnison. My old man loved comedians and we would watch Johnny Carson every night for the monologue and the guest comedian.

Patron Saint of Snark!

Maybe it’s because our standard of humor has changed. We would rather watch Youtube videos of guys getting punched in the nutsack than tell jokes. (Ow my Balls!)  Along with comedy, the concept of wit has changed. Wit used to about being clever, about punning or flipping a situation to make it humorous and possibly insightful. My family is incredibly witty. When we get together it almost becomes a contest. Our current culture, however, confuses wit and snark. Snark is easy. Snark isn’t as well-read as wit. Snark is wit’s dilettantish cousin.

Don’t get me wrong, I came out of the womb snarky. When I popped out of my mother’s baby cave, my first words to the doctor were:

“Oh my God, this place is a dump!”

I write snarkily because people like it, and wit is seen as elitist these days, and anything elitist is bad because it doesn't  represent true Americans for whom Larry the Cable Guy is the equivalent of Oscar Wilde.

But to some people it doesn’t matter, they simply have no sense of humor, and it seems that it’s getting worse. I sometimes wonder if people don’t take me seriously because I use humor in the workplace. Hell, when you work a corporate job and witness all the douchebaggery and dumbfuckery that goes on, you have to laugh about it or you’ll go out of your skull.

To a lot of “executive” types, humor is not seen as an asset. Unless they are telling the joke. Let me tell you something about the executive types, they are always the funniest ones in the room, and it makes me crazy because they truly aren’t. I don’t know how many meetings I’ve sat in where I’ve had to force a guffaw with a self-administered Heimlich maneuver. Executives are rarely funny because they’ve spent their entire lives being “serious” and business-like. So sit there biting my tongue, forcing out the chuckles.

I just think it’s a symptom of the uptight culture we live in. We don’t talk anymore about things we CAN do, all anyone yaps about is what you CAN’T do, and frankly I’m a bit tired of it. People need to get a grip and stopping taking themselves so seriously. Shatter the bubble, get their heads out the Twitterverse, the Textingverse and whatever excuse for escaping reality and human interaction they are using and wake the fuck up. If they don’t, the Missus I will make sure they do.