crimes against humanity

The coffee thing -- done and done. Two cups this morning, with a 10-pack of diet cokes waiting in the trunk of my car. Thank you, to whoever it was who resorted to caps to preserve my fantastic sense of humor -- I needed the validation.

Secondly, if you are legitimately concerned that I dislike you as a person, or worse yet, you somehow have decided you don't like me, avert your eyes in public and openly avoid talking to me -- don't open an anonymous hotmail email account to extol me in private, that only makes me happier. Even better -- say something mean, along the lines of this:

Me: "Hey, Glen, you're looking awful today."
Glen: "Dude, you're a malignant bastard to the breast of humanity, get masectomied."

And it's done! You see, no percolating social drama, no gossip, just one swift jab that makes you feel clever, and there are no beaches of dead seals to clean up.

This brings me to a completely unrelated point: the pity laugh. Someone will tell a joke, and even though this person doesn't determine your salary, you still laugh, because you think it's the nice thing to do. Well, people, it is decidedly not the nice thing to do. Because if this happens frequently and early enough in a young man's development, he starts thinking, "Hey, maybe I'm funny?" And then humanity suffers. Instead, he becomes a lifelong raincloud to humor, forcing all into bouts of undeserved, promiscuous laughter so that his self-esteem might be redeemed. It's just selfish.

The habits of the tragically unfunny come down to several common traits:

1. Let's start with me. I'll tell a story, use all the proper intonations, get people all riled up and eagerly awaiting a climactic punchline, only to miscarry in a hopelessly necrocoital moment with a just-plain-boring finish. And yet, they still laugh, carrying me along, encouraging me to do amateur standup -- you see how this only hurts? Stop faking it, people.
2. Then, there's the type that enjoys mixing random words, messing with the laws of proper diction. "That was so boring, I felt mauled by a paraplegic mongoose," etc., etc. What is this, 5th grade? Stop experimenting with random words, and just settle with the knowledge that you're not inventive, funny, or effectively crass.
3. Then, of course there is shock value humor. "We're talking about threesomes, wanna join in?" or "Are you the child of a rocky divorce?" in inappropriately public places. I've sinned these sins in the past, and repented. Just turns you into the kind of person that nobody ever wants to introduce to their parents. Which implicitly means you are most certainly not on the wedding invite list (we'll discuss another day).
4. Ah, then there's the meta-humor. Everything is passe. Everything is ironic. And the punchline is a vehicle of backward poststructuralists. These jokes are not intended to be funny as much as they are to make fun of the audience. Example? I'll sometimes tell people I'm a Republican just to see their response. Or I'll say my name is Brian. But as a man who has been alienated more times than necessary to learn this lesson, when you make fun of people in a "smarter than thou" meta way, they tend not to like you when and if they pick up on it.
5. Ghetto humor. Yeah, I think this one is fairly self-evident. Save the ebonic twang for your dumb friends who get a kick out of cultural eclecticism.

So, again, the bottom line -- among the many crimes against humanity stands those who consciously laugh at bad jokes. You create social monsters, and that wastes valuable social energy that could be spent on "deep conversations" or the hunting of marriage material, also the topic for another day.

Well, I'm spent. Paul Reiser, Lily Tomlin, bonding with grad students, and understanding my parents will have to wait for another day.