Followers

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Warning: This entry contains nudity, lesbianism, sadomasochism, and semicolons...



I’m only funny when I’m not trying to be funny. When I do try, it smacks of insincerity and desperation. I don’t know how to BE funny, occasionally I just am. My humor crumbles under scrutiny. Like in quantum mechanics, that principle referring to subatomic particles that states that if you dick around too much with shit it fucks it up. As soon as you know why's it's funny, it’s not funny anymore.

When I was a kid, my older brother tried to convince me to be funny in his clown-around-town neighborhood skits. I remember his cajoling and prodding. I also remember feeling decidedly unfunny. I remember HIM getting a whole lot of laughs. Oh boy, do I remember that. I remember hot-faced indignity when I realized the he and I could say the exact same thing in the exact same situation and he'd always get laughs and I rarely did. Surely he delivered it funnier, but it didn't feel like it then. It felt like humor wasn't really as funny when it came out of a girl. Or maybe my family just liked him better. That's a very real possibility.


I don’t know where to start, I don’t know where to go to do research. I'm big on research, but you do too much research as a writer and you end up a plagiarist.

Jesus, you just have to practice. Just write until the words make you want to puke. Yeah, until you can't stand looking at them. You hope you’re being funny, but who’s going to tell you? When you're sitting here typing your fingers down to nubs there's no one to give you the feedback that is essential to comedy.

I don’t think this is funny, do you? Oh, it feels like such a chore, such a burden. When I think about doing this sort of thing for a living my organs start shutting down, starting with my brain- reasonably enough.

I got nothing, I can't make funny out of nothing. Sometimes when I'm telling a story and it's not getting the laughs I think it deserves, I make them come- I start sprinkling laughs in. Sometimes people need to know that what I'm saying is goddamn giggle-worthy. Sometimes they need prompting. But when you're here alone at your desk there is no laugh track and there's no way to gauge what's laughable.


Making people laugh is one of the most rewarding things I get to do in my day. It's instant positive-feedback. Every titter I get from a coworker sounds like "I approve, I approve, I approve."

For 23.8 hours of my day I drink a cocktail of indifference, pity, curiosity, and outright animosity. But for point-2 hours every day I can change it all. I can get them to think of me as something I may or may not be- Funny. Very little else in my world makes me happier.


It's only recently that I've begun believing that I'm funny. Yeah, I guess I am pretty funny- for a girl. In many, well some, girls' lives they reach a point where they mature into something lovely to behold. Some girls later than others, but at that point, for those girls, personality becomes optional. I have a fully unformed theory that the longer the delay in becoming lovable physically- the more likely a girl is to be forced to develop a lovable personality. If not lovable then appreciable, bankable, perhaps commodifiable. There are a few personalty types that girls can choose from. Of course, it's rarely a conscious choice, it's usually foisted on us either by others or by our natural inclinations or our surroundings. We build up, or we tear down, but we cultivate something. I think we're the fortunate ones, us girls that had to work on our personalities, but that's really easy and comforting to say.
A lot of girls don't bother with personality; but that's neither here nor there. I'm not in this business to be a catty slag.


You ever think about why the best looking people are the worst to be around? And the worst to fuck. It's as though at some point they realized they didn't have to try anymore. Or perhaps it's something less damnable. Maybe it's a defense mechanism, and hey, I know all about those. But you gotta figure that after a few times of realizing that the only reason someone is with you is because you're a fine figure of a girl that you'd start becoming less invested. You withhold some of you. And that becomes the person you are. Somewhat cold and far away.Can't really blame a person for having intimacy issues when they get conditioned to assume that lovers aren't really interested in their deeper selves. Only the superficial is coveted. The less you say and feel, often times the better.


Alas, that's not really my issue. I'm certainly not one the beautiful people. I may or may not be one of the funny ones.


I have to be honest, I'd rather try to explain particle physics to my retarded neighbor than try to define funny. So, I won't try, I'll just try to make you laugh.


It goes on like all other days, but semicolons ruin everything.

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