Tears of bitter amusement

Facebook, it used to be as controversial and confusing as twitter is now in the media. Albeit I never heard 'PBS is now on facebook' as corporations couldn't have a facebook profile.

Anyway, I don't know about you, but I am far closer to 'never' looking at anyone elses profile or photo albums than 'sometimes'.

But recently I was inspired to actually traul through some albums (and it looks like I've caught the appauling engrish that I found there).

You see I started from more or less the beginning and am now two days in and 6 photo albums down. 3 albums a day is more than plenty for me.

But after a somewhat boring start I began crying, crying from laughter, then implausably crying at the fact that I was laughing, then laughing from crying and so on and so fourth.

There were comments written in a distinctive and surprising style that is the first time I've laughed at shit in these albums.

Throwaway comments like:

mmm, the river under the highway, I'd guess you'd have to offer me a handjob from rough-hands-dan to get me to swim in there.

but then your army has to turn a corner soon as you get in. I'm guessing this is the first 'im' in impregnable like a smokers black ovaries.

wtf? how random. Rough-hands-dan? impregnable like a smokers black ovaries?

I'm not laughing now because well, the element of surprise is gone.

But what is truly tragic is that I wrote them. It's taken me a year to actually forget them too. Which means now I have yet another way to amuse myself, but this one doesn't involve any rough-hands. Well I guess technically it does.

But truly it is tragic, I find something degrading about finding yourself funny. The concept of being able to make myself laugh just seems strange, alien and sinful to me.

Sure sometimes when I think of something that is just so inappropriate that I end up suspiciously chuckling to my self and laughing out my nostrils in the midst of a Eulogy or ANZAC day service or Ann Frank's house, it is true to say that I made myself laugh, except that I'm actually laughing at the horrified reaction of whatever 'audience' is there. Only Micheal Jackson's dad has the balls to do something this inappropriate.

But the idea of me strolling down some boulevard, hand in hand with myself as a crack jokes that make me chuckle and giggle is truly repugnant. It is only slightly worse than the idea of me practicing standup material in the mirror.

But then you see performers like Billy Connelly laugh at themselves on stage all the time, except I think in that case it reveals more the inner workings of the human mind, unlike the sad state of affairs that led me to think myself funny.

Billy Connelly gets amused at the images his mind is constructing to illustrate a point, or empathising with the audience.

Me I was all alone, in a dark room with a computer. It was a real guilty pleasure. Worse than masturbating, and one of those rare insights into my own life, and more bizarrely the lives of those freaks that actually find me funny from time to time.

Because perhaps one of the most inaccurately applied statements of all time is the 'you think you are so funny' which for me there is no less true statement. I actually have never found myself particularly funny. And even when I do, in a banal, tired and formulaic way. It is hard to accept compliments about being funny, unlike say being told you are handsome.

If someone tells you you are handsome it is plausible that you would go to a mirror and say 'shucks I am a bit of a knockout' stand in front of a mirror and try and make a witty quip and you won't laugh, I almost guarantee it. You'll probably say 'what the fuck are you doing?' and throw your hands up in disgust.

It's as physically impossible as tickling yourself. Because the anticipation, the surprise the 'prestige' if you will is too knowable.

Except I found this amazing ability that you can actually just write stuff down and it will lay in wait, crouching low ready to ambush you from the long grasses of history. You can't do that with a tickle, tickle some air so vigorously, that when you walk past it later it tickles you back or something.

But yeah, I feel dirty. But I kind of like it.