Bursting Bubbles

posted in Author, Programmer, Bag of Wind(TM)

Published February 24, 2005

Are *YOU* someone who hates the overdoneness of double entendres by your peer group? Feel like you are trapped in a bad episode of Three's Company?

I sure know I am.

Here's how to combat it:

When your peer group starts to giggle and crack jokes like a group of middle school students over something like the word "sausage" being mentioned, simply do this:

Say "Hey! That's funny! Because 'sausage' is slang for 'penis'! Ha ha!"

Or, if the group starts to do that "gay play" thing. You know, where someone in the group who is obviously heterosexual insinuates that they are homosexual in a non-demeaning way, simply say:

"Hey! That's funny! Because it insinuates that you are gay! And you aren't! Ha ha!"

Nothing takes the wind out of these folks' sails like removing the billowy veil of insinuation.

And the key to this is that you have to have an upbeat tone to your voice, not a mean sarcastic one. You have to pretend like you are innocently just getting the joke and explaining it to someone equally innocent.

After a while, the stupid double entendre and gay-play jokes will stop, at least around you, because you are NO FUN anymore. You always run the risk that nobody will talk to you anymore, but that's a small price to pay, really, to rid yourself of people you really didn't want to talk to anyway.

Glad I could help.

Addendum:

You can also use this technique on overdone pop culture references. You know: those people who believe that the HGTTG and Monty Python are the ONLY pop culture references worth making. The kids seem to get stuck on Monty Python and HGTTG these days, and the phase lasts way longer than it should.

Simply say: "Hey! That's funny! Because it's in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'*!" (Same innocent style voice as above)

* insert the name of the appropriate pop culture reference, of course.

Glad I could help again.

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0 likes 18 comments

Comments

evolutional

"Hey that number's funny because they mentioned it in Hitchikers Guide!"

I might try it.

February 24, 2005 11:06 AM

Myopic Rhino

TANSTAAFL: Spreading assholism one step at a time

February 24, 2005 03:20 PM

johnhattan

Thinking back, it's a technique that I should've used on an old coworker who thought he was astoundingly clever when he'd say "SwampUSA" and "Computer Shitty" instead of CompUSA and Computer City. He'd often use them over and over in sentences in the hopes that somebody'd laugh. We always ignored him, but acknowledging his bottomless wit would've probably worked better.

February 24, 2005 03:33 PM

EDI

Hehe, I knew you were a bitter guy when you told me "Game Development is NOT art", but this lol.

February 24, 2005 03:49 PM

TANSTAAFL

John, that reminds me of the "clever" names that people had for various fast food joints:

Toxic Hell(Taco Bell)
Booger Fling(Burger King)

As well as some of the supermarkets in Kenosha:

Pick-a-Slave (Pick & Save)
Food 4 N*gg*rs (Food 4 Less)

Note: Both of these supermarkets were positioned in areas inhabited mainly by impoverished african americans. I'm relatively certain that the people who lived near these supermarkets neither used these monikers nor appreciated their use.

Also, there is a family restaurant called "Marina Gardens", which was referred to as "Marina Garbage", a bar across the street called "Paddy O's", which was "Panty Hose" (Okay, I admit I'm the 'clever' one who tried popularizing that one.)

Yeah baby, yeah!
Sha-wing!
Isn't that special!
Baking Powder?
Nudge Nudge, say no more!
Spam spam spam spam....
42!
Take off, eh?
Kick the baby!
Two wild and crazy guys!
Whatchu talking about, Willis?
I'll be back!
What? Where?
Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!
You'll shoot your eye out!

February 24, 2005 04:38 PM

johnhattan

Where's the beef?
KHAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!!!
Soylent Green is People!

<keanu>
I know Kung Fuuuuu.
Whoaaaaaa.
I gotta get on that bus!
</keanu>

and, growing more obscure. . .

Every bit as stupifyin'
You are smart. You will make us strong.

my personal favorite. . .

I am a 30-year-old Medievalist living at home with my drunken trollop of a mother, in a city famous for being the flagrant vice capital of the civilized world. When not being forced into the working world and leading revolts against the bourgeois, I correspond with a masochistic liberal minx from the Bronx. In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.

and finally any reference to Lemurs or BROOO!, although that's so obscure that its only audience is TANS and myself.

February 24, 2005 04:49 PM

noaktree

"Hey! That's funny! Because it insinuates that your helping people! And you really aren't! Ha ha!"

February 24, 2005 04:53 PM

kingnosis

"Wow! That is absolutely hilarious! You just took his own advice to comment on that advice. Wow. Just wow. You should post that joke again."

February 24, 2005 11:06 PM

Myopic Rhino

Quote:John, that reminds me of the "clever" names that people had for various fast food joints:
[snip]

G'ah, a guy I work with - who is in a very senior engineering position - does that, except with tech stuff (e.g. Winblowz). Drives me nuts.

February 24, 2005 11:38 PM

xanin

I must admit I tend to do this myself, though mostly it seems I have a fascination with renaming places with the maximal usage of the word "shit" involved.

ShopKo => SkitKo
Walmart => ShitMart
etc, etc...

I also tend to refer to CompUSA as CompUSSR, but then I've never had a single good experience at their stores excepting that one time I found a huge stack of cases of BAWLS on sale...

I also refer to software products and companies in similar ways
winblows
microsuck
(Though I tend to be a supporter of both Microsoft and most of its wonderful products)
Visual Stupido/Shiteo

The list goes on....

In my defense I can only say that I am but an immature college student and that I don't even do it as a joke, its just the way I am.

February 25, 2005 01:34 AM

TANSTAAFL

mr. xanin... you are the poster child for the sort of folks i'm talking about.

it's okay, though. we can help you.

February 25, 2005 07:17 AM

johnhattan

I'm wondering if this same technique would work in email form for things that don't have a verbal equivalent. . .

Hey, you just used a dollar-sign instead of a letter 's' in the middle of 'Microsoft', thus making an allusion to the fact that they've got lots of money. Would you mind if I use that clever idiom in my own writings (crediting you for it, of course)?

Not quite the rhetorical punch that the verbal version has, unfortunately. Problem is, sarcasm just doesn't play as well in the written word as it does in person.

February 25, 2005 09:42 AM

noaktree

What is this humor? I am put off by the method described above as it seems, to me, that this technique forms a template to deal with people of lesser wit. It is my opinion that using any such template, to overcome the wit of another, is in itself a fairly witless act.

But what the hell do I know? (I’m sure you’ll let me know.) So I looked up “wit” at dictionary.com.

Wit implies intellectual keenness and the ability to perceive and express in a diverting way analogies between dissimilar things: “Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words” (Dorothy Parker).

Yes. This method does produce truth; Truth being the very core of the technique. Ah but can I learn more?

Repartee implies a facility for answering swiftly and cleverly: “framing comments... that would be sure to sting and yet leave no opening for repartee” (H.G. Wells).

I believe this is where the technique really fails. It is disturbingly unimaginative, leaves room for rebuttal, and if used to often, becomes the very thing it seeks to destroy - a repetitive and annoying phrase.

So what sort of wit are we dealing with?

Sarcasm is a form of caustic wit intended to wound or ridicule another: “ [His] tone seemed as if meant to be kind and soothing, but yet had a bitterness of sarcasm in it” (Nathaniel Hawthorne).

In conclusion, please try to show kindness to those who aren't as smart as you. They seem to be having fun imitating gay people and making sausage jokes. Do we really need to destroy their fun just because we're too smart to experience life at their level?

"Wit without discretion is a sword in the hand of a fool"

February 26, 2005 12:44 PM

TANSTAAFL

The funniest thing is, I feel, irony. Above all, I find dramatic irony to be the best. Hoist(To raise or haul up with or as if with the help of a mechanical apparatus) upon your own petard(A small bell-shaped bomb used to breach a gate or wall). (See? I can use dictionary.com, too!) Of course, dramatic irony can be taken to an extreme as well, at which point it becomes slapstick (q.v. the Road Runner cartoons), and after N iterations, it is no longer funny.

Yes, this technique becomes exactly what it is purported to cure, and eventually becomes about as funny as "Guess what? Chicken Butt!"

For example, I have used this technique at work, and it quickly became corny, because everyone was overusing it. And to give you more information about my test group, they are a room full of engineers. None of them are stupid, but not all of them are intellectuals.

The problem with funny is that it requires surprise, and the problem with BEING funny is that you always have to be surprising. And that means that you either have to come up with new material all of the time, or come up with a different audience all of the time.

And this reminds me of a joke....

A man goes to prison, and soon finds out that at night, the other prisoners shouted out numbers, after which all of the other inmates would start laughing.

After a few nights of this, he decided to ask one of the other prisoners about it.

"We've already told all of the jokes there are a million times, so we numbered them," was the answer.

So, the next night, he shouted out "47!"

Nobody laughed.

The next day, he asked another prisoner why nobody had laughed.

"You didn't tell it right," was the reply.

February 26, 2005 04:00 PM

noaktree

Quote:The problem with funny is that it requires surprise, and the problem with BEING funny is that you always have to be surprising. And that means that you either have to come up with new material all of the time, or come up with a different audience all of the time.

I agree and also don't doubt your ability to do either. My concerns lie with personality types that feel the need to use their audience as a source for their new material.

Quote:And this reminds me of a joke....

I love that one. But what if those numbers represented people's personality traits? I think I prefer humor that everyone can enjoy vs. humor that sacrifices one or more for the benefit of the group (Is this utilitarian?). Of course if we're all good friends... Then it's open war. [smile]

Here's one...

Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?

It was dead.

February 26, 2005 05:37 PM

johnhattan

Quote:I think I prefer humor that everyone can enjoy vs. humor that sacrifices one or more for the benefit of the group (Is this utilitarian?).

But my pet monkey died this morning, you insensitive clod!

Fact is, I don't prefer humor that "everyone can enjoy" or any other activity that first requires me to interview all parties within earshot for quirks that would cause them to be offended. I prefer humor that is so devastating that it reduces one or more (but ideally one) member of a group into a viscous paste in front of everybody else, but then invites the paste-ee to return the favor to the paste-er. Unfortunately, that never seems to happen given that the paste-er (otherwise known as "me") is generally far sharper of wit than the blathering dunderheads in whose company he usually finds himself.

It's a technique I'm teaching my daughter --that one is encouraged to tease as long as one does so with the expectation of being teased back to an equal or greater degree. It's a technique that doesn't always work (when done with my immediate family, for example, I inevitably receive emails explaining that I'm an insensitive clod), but I yam what I yam. And if you can't take being fricasseed and plan to fricassee right back, you should avoid my company. I probably won't much like yours either.

Oh, and my daughter's getting quite good at teasing back, although they tend to be on the level of "daddy, you are a porcupine. SHMINKEY!", which is about the best you can expect a 3 year-old to muster up.

February 27, 2005 08:36 AM

noaktree

Quote:But my pet monkey died this morning, you insensitive clod!

Sorry to hear about that. I'll be sure to let the humane society know about that right away. And it's Klahd not clod.

Quote:It's a technique I'm teaching my daughter --that one is encouraged to tease as long as one does so with the expectation of being teased back to an equal or greater degree.

It's one I have taught to my son as well. But with the exception that it's done only between friends - unless attacked first. It seems to have worked for him. He's 10 now and seems to have a fairly decent social group about him. I notice he does stand up for those who are incapable of defending themselves. Which I consider to be an honorable practice.

Quote:I inevitably receive emails explaining that I'm an insensitive clod

I too have the same problem with immediate family. Mostly from my wife's side.

Quote:And if you can't take being fricasseed and plan to fricassee right back, you should avoid my company. I probably won't much like yours either.

Oh, I'm sure we'd get along just fine. I have more respect for people who speak their minds and expect you to do the same.

Quote:Oh, and my daughter's getting quite good at teasing back.

I'll tell ya what..In a couple of years we'll test out our parenting skills by making our kids face off in a battle of wits. I'll make sure he brings a big fly swatter.

February 27, 2005 04:14 PM

johnhattan

Quote:I'll tell ya what..In a couple of years we'll test out our parenting skills by making our kids face off in a battle of wits. I'll make sure he brings a big fly swatter.

Yeah. He'll be in seventh grade, and she'll be completing kindergarten. That'll be balanced :)

February 28, 2005 07:10 AM

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TANSTAAFL

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Bursting Bubbles

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