Bryan W. Alaspa 1Not getting the joke
September 27th 2009 18:12
Sometimes it seems to me that people these days have had their funny bones removed. Now to me, the very wording of “funny bone” causes me to smile. Sure, it’s juvenile, but it is still funny. People have certainly become too serious and this saddens me. Because now, more than ever, we need to laugh at things and more and more it seems people just want to take everything anyone says at face-value and not have a laugh.
It has been said that if you can’t laugh at yourself then you really shouldn’t laugh at anyone. Or, at the very least, that is the way the saying should go. I am not really sure of the exact wording and I am too lazy to look it up. Google takes all of four seconds and that is four seconds I could be using to finish this column to try and get it up on the blog in the hopes that some of you will click through the ads and I will finally make a dime through Google Adsense.
I wrote an article back when I first decided to start writing for a living. It was directed primarily at a friend of mine who thinks that hockey is the end-all, be-all of sports. He believes, and has stated (albeit half-jokingly) that there really should be no other sport besides hockey. Now, me, I am a fan of choice. Sure, I like hockey and now that the Chicago Blackhawks are playing better than your average Pee-Wee team, there is finally some exciting hockey to watch here in Chicago. However, there is also baseball, of which I am a fan. There is also football, of which I am a huge fan.
So, I wrote an article making fun of hockey. I had my tongue planted firmly in my cheek when I wrote it and then, I thought, made claims about the sport so ridiculous and outrageous, I figured everyone would get that it was a joke. I mean, I started the entire article making a truly awful, tasteless and horrible joke about Ernest Hemingway committing suicide! I mean, I couldn’t have sunk any lower without actually digging the man up and making him talk like a ventriloquist’s dummy on my knee.
My friend seemed to get the joke. We made a lot of verbal spars on some of the blogs about it and then moved on. Then, however, I had the opportunity for this article to end up on a site that would pay me for it. I submitted it. The editor loved it. I got paid and the article went up. To my surprise, the humor in the article seemed to vanish.
My sexuality has been questioned numerous times by angry hockey fans with little to no sense of humor. Exactly what my sexuality has to do with why I would or would not want to watch hockey is unclear to me, but then again, those who have problems with homosexuals and who use those terms are probably latent homosexuals themselves with unresolved issues they are dealing with. I do hope they get the help they need.
The fact that I do not and have not played hockey has been brought up. Sure, but I have never played organized football either and I love watching that. I did play exactly one season of little league baseball and it was such a disaster, and I was so bad at it, I never played again. Yet, despite this, I still like both sports.
Finally, in an attempt to quiet the furor, I wrote an article where I admitted that it was all a joke. This is something no one who has a sense of humor ever hopes he or she has to do. I wrote about that fact that hockey is exciting and fun and I quite enjoy it. Wouldn’t you know, that article is so much less popular than the other one, that hardly anyone who has complained about the joke has read the one where I come clean.
Some things in life are serious. Sure, we really do need medical care for all people and there really are two wars going on right now (one just and one not). But we also need to learn how to laugh. Sarcasm can be a great release. Try it. Lighten up. Please.
It has been said that if you can’t laugh at yourself then you really shouldn’t laugh at anyone. Or, at the very least, that is the way the saying should go. I am not really sure of the exact wording and I am too lazy to look it up. Google takes all of four seconds and that is four seconds I could be using to finish this column to try and get it up on the blog in the hopes that some of you will click through the ads and I will finally make a dime through Google Adsense.
I wrote an article back when I first decided to start writing for a living. It was directed primarily at a friend of mine who thinks that hockey is the end-all, be-all of sports. He believes, and has stated (albeit half-jokingly) that there really should be no other sport besides hockey. Now, me, I am a fan of choice. Sure, I like hockey and now that the Chicago Blackhawks are playing better than your average Pee-Wee team, there is finally some exciting hockey to watch here in Chicago. However, there is also baseball, of which I am a fan. There is also football, of which I am a huge fan.
So, I wrote an article making fun of hockey. I had my tongue planted firmly in my cheek when I wrote it and then, I thought, made claims about the sport so ridiculous and outrageous, I figured everyone would get that it was a joke. I mean, I started the entire article making a truly awful, tasteless and horrible joke about Ernest Hemingway committing suicide! I mean, I couldn’t have sunk any lower without actually digging the man up and making him talk like a ventriloquist’s dummy on my knee.
My friend seemed to get the joke. We made a lot of verbal spars on some of the blogs about it and then moved on. Then, however, I had the opportunity for this article to end up on a site that would pay me for it. I submitted it. The editor loved it. I got paid and the article went up. To my surprise, the humor in the article seemed to vanish.
My sexuality has been questioned numerous times by angry hockey fans with little to no sense of humor. Exactly what my sexuality has to do with why I would or would not want to watch hockey is unclear to me, but then again, those who have problems with homosexuals and who use those terms are probably latent homosexuals themselves with unresolved issues they are dealing with. I do hope they get the help they need.
The fact that I do not and have not played hockey has been brought up. Sure, but I have never played organized football either and I love watching that. I did play exactly one season of little league baseball and it was such a disaster, and I was so bad at it, I never played again. Yet, despite this, I still like both sports.
Finally, in an attempt to quiet the furor, I wrote an article where I admitted that it was all a joke. This is something no one who has a sense of humor ever hopes he or she has to do. I wrote about that fact that hockey is exciting and fun and I quite enjoy it. Wouldn’t you know, that article is so much less popular than the other one, that hardly anyone who has complained about the joke has read the one where I come clean.
Some things in life are serious. Sure, we really do need medical care for all people and there really are two wars going on right now (one just and one not). But we also need to learn how to laugh. Sarcasm can be a great release. Try it. Lighten up. Please.
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