A Funny Joke

Can you make yourself laugh? Is it possible when walking down a sunlit street (for example), pleasantly contemplating a particular stream of inner thought, to be so struck by a passing reminiscence of an amusing incident; or, while reflecting on a train of thought, putting 2 and 2 together; or when extrapolating some situation that has occurred internally and seeing something new and amusing; or old and amusing, and it strikes you so irrepressibly droll that you actually laugh out loud?

This happens to me. Not as a regular occurrence, but occasionally. And I love it when it does. It’s a free laugh after all, and where would the world go if there was no free laughter? (Probably the way of ISIS)

Last night I made myself laugh. OK it wasn’t an instance of private cogitation gone haywire- I was actually telling a regular joke. But you’re not supposed to laugh at your own punchline are you? If it’s not bad form, it’s a practical impossibility. A joke relies on the unknown surprising you.

Someone once produced a theory of laughter which claimed it to be something akin to a fear reaction. Animals show their teeth when afraid don’t they. Laughter, then, is a sign of fear replaced with relief. We are demonstrating that the situation is ok; we were surprised but now know there is nothing to fear.

So how can you laugh at your own joke when you are fully aware of the coming punchline? Well, all I can say is that the joke I told was a funny joke. So, I told it, and I couldn't control my laughter. Perhaps you want to hear it. I heard Barry Cryer tell it on the radio a few nights ago. That’s how I managed to remember it at all, a feat I generally fail at with unparalleled certainty.

There’s this guy and he’s learning to be a lion tamer. He’s in the cage every day with the lion and the master who is teaching him. Well he’s doing well and feels fairly confident that he can persuade the lion to behave; but he’s thinking about what might happen when he’s out under the lights. So he speaks to the master and he says: “Listen, I can perfectly well control this lion here in training, but what will happen when I’m under the lights? I’ll perhaps get nervous and the lion will sense this and he might decide to attack me.”

“You don’t need to worry about that” say the master. “If the lion starts to attack, you just need to reach behind you and pick up a bit of poo and throw it in the lion’s face- that’ll stop it instantly.”

“OK,” says the man “but will there definitely be a bit of poo behind me?”

“There will if the lion attacks you, trust me”

Their Royal Heilnesses

Not that I have an agenda for the The Sun but It does strike me there is a lot of guff blowing around concerning the 'Heilnesses' film. The only 'motive' I perceive is the bottom line- they want to sell papers: they do it with scoops.

There is no doubt that the film is a scoop, can anyone deny it? Any paper which came into possession would publish. Indeed all the other papers did publish- after the Sun.

Everyone is falling over themselves trying to absolve the Queen, which is beside the point; of course the Queen is blameless. What they fail to note is that the film is newsworthy- the reams of content written in the wake of publication are testament to that!


I’ve not read the Sun’s copy on the story but from what I hear they have laid out the context in full, exonerating the Queen from any Nazi posturing. As you say this was the early 30’s. Even if they were being serious (highly unlikely) they are still just aping an interesting, novel German salute. Anyone who discerns any intention political or otherwise in those individuals pictured has to be a mind-reader. There is nothing at all problematic or otherwise controversial that can be discerned from the images. But (and this is surely the point) it is still newsworthy- simply for being interesting footage of an interesting public person. The fact that it is de facto newsworthy is demonstrated by the huge response. I’m not saying it was right to publish (the manner of its procurement is suspicious enough), just that to publish such stuff is the business of tabloids (and indeed all media).

States of being

Currently I have a song going round and round in my head. It happens to be a song by Chris Wood called Bleary Winter. I think I had the CD on in the car two days ago. Why is it resounding in me now (it’s early morning)?  I don’t know. Why this song, what state of my brain led up to its being fed to me in this annoying manner at this precise time- these questions are not worth asking. 

The earworm- the persistent tune -  is just an instance of a more pervasive phenomenon: the obcure train of thought. With me it is more often than not tunes, but it has been other diversions. When we direct the eye within it can be depressing what mundane banalities are being played out in our consciousnesses.

But there is something odd here. Oftentimes we don’t really know what is being hashed and rehashed in our mindscape until we consciously direct our view within. Does this mean our consciousness is often unconscious? I think it does- we are often unconscious of what goes on in our so-called conscious mind.

Is this a paradox- no not really, just a problem with terminology? We are most often unconscious- although we call the state consciousness to avoid all the disturbing questions it throws up. We live our lives in pervasive unconsciousness. When we catch ourselves doing it we retro-fit an insinuation of consciousness as a veneer over our unconsciousness which acts like a prophylactic salve sparing us the existential angst we would otherwise feel.

For various reasons I don’t believe in freewill. I think conscious control over our inner states and our actions is an illusion. Partly as a result of this I think selfhood, identity as individual consciousnesses is a problem too, or, rather, not a problem.  There are plenty of paradoxes involved in this to explore, but not here.

Motes

Our bathroom is bathed in light this morning. As I stood in this stream of photons, my head turned slightly towards the window, I saw a phenomenon commonly seen during summer days inside. There they all were, the usually invisible, the usually discreet, the usually unthought of; now picked out with alarming clarity: the dust motes. Hundreds and thousands of them, drifting down and rising up to fall again inside this particular zone of air illuminated in that moment. This air that we move through, breath. 

A brand of vodka - perhaps Smirnoff (I don’t drink Vodka) - brought out a special edition which features flecks of gold suspended in the alcohol. This interested me, when I first noticed it on the shelf of my local Tesco, because the gold flecks didn’t appear to be affected by gravity.  They just hung there. I reached out and turned the bottle- the flecks were reliably informed by inertia; they remained with the liquid as the bottle turned. It was as though the vodka was strangely viscous. I’m not sure what the process was, or how long it took the boffins at Smirnoff to perfect it. It impressed me though. I wondered what ingesting the gold would do to you. 

I thought of these gold flecks as I stared at the swirling motes of dust in the bathroom. We are masters at forgetting the nitty gritty of our organism. We’ve all seen the phenomenon. We know that we are constantly breathing randomised particles into ourselves. No doubt the nose, somewhere along its convoluted pathway, filters a number of these out- let’s not dwell upon the processes of bodily expulsion.  Our bodies are masters of management, we don’t need to know how it protects us; it just does it quietly. When we are reminded of the enemy though it leaves one with a strange feeling of besiegement. 

I had a flatulent roommate in my first weeks at University. Considering this sad fact one day I came to the disturbing realisation that actual particles, however infinitesimal, of his faecal matter were entering my body. I’m not the OCD type, nor even particularly hygiene conscious (nor indeed am I unhygienic- just normal I suppose) but this conclusion rattled me.

It takes illumination to see them, the motes.

Small Beginnings

Hello.

I thought I would start a blog on writing. I know the internet doesn’t need one, there are plenty already; this is something I need.

I will cover any subject explicitly, implicitly, tenuously or contrivedly connected with writing. I like to provide myself with the widest possible pool to draw from.

A word about my situation. I am attempting to write a novel; a fantasy type thing with a detective mystery at its heart. I have tried many times to get past the first burst of writerly inspiration and complete a project; so far with little success. I procrastinate shamefully, I get repulsed suddenly; I always end up bored and ditch after a promising start.

I feel the way around this is to write every day. To that end I commit now to blogging. A post a day. I will try to get it written in the mornings, straight after I get up; a time I usually dedicate to Facebook. I will steadfastly abandon the multitude of benefits I derive from looking at cats, dinners and self-aggrandisement and instead crank out words and thoughts on the writing process as filtered through my own experience.

Clearly I will be the main beneficiary of this, however, dear reader, I hope you also get something from it...

All the best

Si