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Thank you for stopping by my blog. There is no particular theme or topic and no posting schedule either. This is just something I do for my own occasional enjoyment/interest as well as for friends and family, but others are welcome (although I don't go out of my way to self-promote—almost the opposite, in fact).
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Rubes' economic perspective, Steely Dan style
When you analyze humor it often (Usually? Almost always?) comes down to a sudden shift in perspective, a pulling the rug out from under the listener's/viewer's expectation of where a story is going. One person's "up" is another person's "down" and versa vice. The ability to see things differently and then also to convey that surprising shift in perspective to others is a large part of what makes funny people funny.
On that level, I don't think this strip is hilarious. (In fact, given the current economic times it may strike a nerve just a little to close to reality for many folks and therefore
lose some, if not most or all, of its humor value.) But sometimes there are other incidental connections or just well-worn neural paths that add a little something to enhance a joke.
This morning's Rubes (by Leigh Rubin) works more on that level for me simply by it's (probably unintentional) Steely Dannish evocation of
"When black friday comes I'm gonna stake my claim...."
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4 comments:
Reminds me of the Monty Python song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". :-)
I can't resist, Ken Levine has me watching these things. lol
WV: igingra
viagra, 2.1
You're right, of course. My mind jumped to the Steely reference right away, but this is a perfect example of how the same comic can elicit two different yet equally valid thematic connections for different readers. Thanks for sharing!
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Yeah, when commenting around the web I sometimes get a verification word that elicits some internal reaction along the lines of "That's not a word, but if it were it might mean..."
I admit though that I didn't check out the entries over at Mr. Levine's Daffy Definition Kontest. I just knew that would be one of those posts where it would get tons of comments/entries and I'd never be able to keep up. Plus I never for a moment thought that I'd be able to come up with a noteworthy entry, so I didn't even try.
And besides it would depend on the luck of the draw too. I didn't want to have to sit there constantly clicking to comment just to see what verification word might come up, then abandoning it each time it didn't have significantly humorous potential. If I'd been commenting anyway, then that would have been different, but I didn't want simply comment for the sake of maybe entering the contest.
(This blog being my domain, I don't get a wv hoop to jump through, so I can't try it out myself here and now just for self-amusement purposes. Oh well.)
I just clicked to actually check Mr. Levine's contest entry and I see that as of right this moment—and the contest IS officially closed—it has 801 comments. (Yikes!) I would assume that probably about 99% of them are actual contest submissions.
Personally, I think I made the right call in NOT trying to keep up with reading the submissions. I wouldn't want to have to be one of judges sorting through all those.
Yikes is right! I read a few back when there were something like 23 comments. :-)
The contest did make me more aware of the word verification, though.
cluence (tuned into the subtilities of clues)
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