Thee human condition / The nature of comedy

[Jake]

Oh man, beware this thread. In the past few days I read Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis, Post Office by Charles Bukowski, half of Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet Murphy, started re-reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, saw the new Spielberg version of War of the Worlds, and listened to a lot of Beatles albums while stuck on a plane flying back from Hawaii with this book in my lap (care of my brother who had taken a Beatles class in school for fun last quarter), and as a result I am caught in the thrall of a massive goddamn hippie/armchair-psychology/pop-culture mental feedback loop concerning the human condition and the nature of comedy. I had nowhere to dump this information except here on the Forums. Apparently I am a sad sad person, and this is a goddamn blog.

As usual when I start reading Dirk Gently, I get extremely depressed that Douglas Adams is still dead. More specifically, the irrational but earnest voice in the back of my head keeps asking 1) why he died so soon, and more ridiculously, 2) if he really died, why hasn't he risen from the grave yet, and revealed the true meaning of life to mankind? Surely he knew it.

Okay, maybe not, but that man had a pretty good idea of what was going on. I am of the mind that of all his books, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is the one that hits the closest to "the mark," whatever it is that "the mark" is. The Hitchhiker's Guide books are all about characters who fly around the galaxy sort of half-assedly searching for the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, but never find it (and maybe never really intend to) whereas Dirk Gently is in a way about characters who manage to successfully stumble across it completely by accident, or maybe on purpose if Dirk is to be believed.

I wondered tonight (in a non-serious way) if Douglas Adams actually did discover the true meaning of life, the universe, and everything, and managed to successfully write it into Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, but unbeknownst to him was dissuaded from fully including it in the final edition by a time traveler who fed him some nonsense about a vengeful space alien to throw him off the scent. The third Dirk Gently book, which Adams didn't finish because he died, focused in at least one of the plot threads on Dirk mounting an official full investigation of himself. That sentence thoroughly depresses me.

In reading that Beatles book, I discovered that in his youth and much of the early days of the Beatles, John Lennon was a fan of a few sort of ridiculous comedy radio programs, and that sort of thing, and also of course wrote songs like "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite," and more humorous and ridiculous things that I can't remember now. Later in life he seemed to decide that all those comedy shows were stupid and bullshit, and that "Mr. Kite" was a piece of garbage. I'm sad that he got shot before he was able to get over himself if that was possible, and go back and re-comprehend the underlying seriousness present in quality comedy, including the stuff he created and later dismissed as tripe.

Comedy and it's relation to the human condition/the meaning of life/the progress of society/yadda yadda is something that has interested me for a long time, and it always makes me sad when people who successfully tap into crucial parts of that relation die or fuck it up or throw it away before they're truly done. I know using Lennon in that discussion is a little bit stupid and hilarious in itself, but whatever. That's surely not "what he was about" if you want to have a "real" discussion about him or his music, but it was there. I guess if the world at large fully understood the fact that real comedy is utterly serious, and comprehended its power to manipulate thought and emotion, to cut to the core of "the truth" only slightly more easily than it can mislead you to believe something is true that really doesn't make sense if you go back and retrace it logically, it wouldn't be as effective which I guess would be a bit of a bummer, but it sucks when people dismiss it. Things that exist in our society as effective tools for cutting through all the bullshit, or boiling thoughts down to their bare essentials are important, but people often don't get it.

It frustrates me when people say "that actor should shut up about his political beliefs, and stick to acting," or "that writer needs to go back home and write" or "that comedian should stop his goddamn preaching and start telling jokes." These are people whose jobs, in my opinion, if done well and done properly, are to distill things down to as close to "the truth" as they can get. An actor's job is to find the center/heart/truth of their character and make it believable, make it something the viewer can relate to. A fiction writer has almost the same job as an actor, while historical writers and journalists strive to boil down facts to "the truth" through their own personal filters and selective editing (surely journalists and historical writers don't write about everything that happened when recounting an event - they just tell you "the important parts"). I don't think I need to continue this repetition to comedians - their entire job consists of pointing out what really happens in real life. "It's funny because it's true!"

This sort of thing is why I love pop culture and entertainment. Mainstream entertainment, when done well, can act as a major cultural trojan horse, slipping past peoples defenses (starting with the initial defense of "oh that doesn't look like something I'll like," and, if it's done well enough, slipping all the way past many other weird mental blocks and psychological constructs people keep in their heads) and get them to feel something different, see something they haven't seen before, or at it's most extreme, maybe get them to ask themselves a question they haven't asked themselves before. I know that's asking a lot, but it's what excites me about mainstream culture. I love it when things like Coen Brothers films get picked up by the mainstream. I love that for some reason Steven Spielberg has been given the ability by people to tell whatever story he wants, and everyone will go and see it. War of the Worlds isn't the best movie he's ever made by any means - the story is sort of weak even for an adaptation of a tale of aliens who walk around blowing everything up and then randomly die yielding a happy ending. War of the Worlds' story is stupid, Tom Cruise plays a cardboard character of "the bad dad," the kids are basically cliché "Spielberg Kids," but the movie does a great job of showing human fear. It just has a bunch of little iconic blips throughout it that mysteriously ring true to me. For instance, the aliens shoot these hilariously retro green and purple flashing lightning lasers - oh man, it's impossible to describe. To me they were one of the most funny things in that film because they were the 100% standard classic "invading alien" laser, but Spielberg made them genuinely scary. There is a shot early in the film where the characters are hiding in a basement, and outside the windows and through the cracks in the wall you see nothing but black with intermixed huge gigantic flashes of strobing purple and green that would cause a light-bloom programmer to shit his pants 8,000 times out of extremeness and it's actually freaky. They are terrifying. I don't know at all why this is relevant. I was just grinning ear to ear during those moments (while sitting slightly crunched up into my seat with my hand in a fist on my forehead). I think pop culture at its absolute best (see: good comedy, good Spielberg, etc etc other stuff that I've talked about and stuff you can come up with yourself) is awesome in its ability to actually better society, if only a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny bit.

Pop culture at its worst, or at anything other than its best, is another story I guess. Actually one sec, I'll get back to that.

[Jake]

The existence of "the indie scene" has a tendency to piss me off. Heavy proponents of "the indie scene" are fucking saboteurs. You know who I mean - the people who hate something the moment it becomes popular, who deliberately try to keep things from the mainstream or act generally snobby about them because they think that for some reason they're too good for "the public" who will inevitably ruin them? I don't personally see how people who strive to keep brilliant pieces of "the indie scene" out of public hands are any better than the guided-by-fear Marketdroids who stifle creative projects and refuse to fund things that they think the public won't understand. I can understand wanting to hold something back, to keep it personal because ideas and creations need to gestate and congeal, be fully realized, before they get tossed to the masses for consumption, but it really turns me off that "keep it in the group and away from everyone else" is a carved-in-stone mantra of a very large group of creative people and a larger group of aficionados of their work in our culture. Yeah, some things will probably be ruined by exposure to the public, but isn't it better to have loved and lost than to never loved at all? In the making of an omlette hasn't one got to break a few eggs? Live and learn? Back to the drawing board? You can't "see what sticks" if you never "throw things against the wall." It all feels painfully selfish and backwards to me. It makes me want to stab people.*

I realize that this is completely ignoring the fact that a lot of brilliant work is never given the chance to get mass exposure, which is something I haven't really spent enough time thinking about to successfully rant about for hundreds of words so that will be saved for another time. That said, basically I am disappointed that some peoples response to the inability to get things published in the mass market is to come to the conclusion that "it's better that way, they don't deserve it, they wouldn't get it anyway."

So,

Pop culture at its worst, or at anything other than its best, is another story I guess. Actually one sec, I'll get back to that.

I think marketing and shareholders and the like are a huge virus in the creative process, severely inhibit mainstream culture's ability to be good, and therefore significantly inhibit its slow betterment of society. That came out sounding way more extreme than I meant it. I am generally an optimist. I think despite a lot of minor and major setbacks, society and "the human race" are generally progressing forward. I sort of picture it like a bubbling eruption on its way up a volcano. I don't necesarilly mean that we're heading for the top where we'll explode in a liquid hot shower of enlightenment - I'm more talking about the churning and stuff on the way up. Watching videos of lava shooting up through a volcano (or more commonly, well animated cartoons depicting it), you see that everything is going up on average, but occasionally little bits jut ahead of everything else, and then the rest of it catches up. That's a really simple and stupid analogy, but in my mind that's sort of how it works. Someone like Douglas Adams comes along (sorry to keep using him as an example, I'm just in the middle of one of his books which happens to be one of my favorite books) and manages to jut forward a little bit - a little prick standing above the rest of the flow, sort of paving the way, if you know what i mean, for everyone else to follow and catch up with. I think if we had less people holding back creative ideas that get to "the truth" for various reasons (see: marketdroids, culture snobs), we'd have a lot more little blips showing us the way and we'd move a lot faster. I am very optimistic about life, and about culture, and I am tired of idiots and haters putting it down, writing it off as stupid, or sabotaging the potential benefits out of selfishness, idiocy, or fear.

I am apparently majorly hippying out, except minus weird eastern enlightenment and pot, and instead with the internet. Sorry about that. It all makes sense and sounds less stupid in my head, and there's more to what I'm trying to say than what I've figured out how to mumble out onto this page, but maybe that just means I'm insane and/or mentally retarded.

Anyway thanks for reading this, or, thanks for scrolling down to the end to see how long it is! Also I don't think I managed to ever get to the "human condition" or "nature of comedy" parts, in any direct way. There was some stuff from "The Road to Mars" by Eric Idle that I meant to mention that sort of tied it all together but I couldn't work it in, in part because I don't have that book anymore and can't find the quote on the internet. It was about a robot butler who was trying to discern the mathematical formula for comedy and somehow decided that comedy was a huge essential force in the universe which held it all together a bit like gravity, except since it was Levity it was the opposite of Gravity. Erm it makes sense in the book. The quote "Levity is the soul of wit" appears at some point. Errrrrrmm... Failure! My apologies. Thanks you've all been lovely.

[Jake]

If I was Walter I would have deleted this thread by now.

[Roderick]

Thank you. Sometimes I'm guilty myself of trying to keep things for myself (also see the topic on AGS about anime, where I tell that I will deliberately aviod hype so as to not get influenced by it), because it rings so very true that something is more special if you're the only person knowing about it. But I see your point. And I don't think I would 'hold something back' for everyone to see. It's a fine line one walks, but in the end I'd make a decision for the benefit of the work.

And humanity, in keeping with the tone of your bloggish rant.

[baconian]

Maybe Psychonauts is just too good for the world outside Idlethumbs.

http://forums.idlethumbs.net/showpost.php?p=44043&postcount=93

Cheers Jake.

You can't help feeling depressed and disillusioned with the mainstream when they reject such a gem of brilliance. I just don't get it. Maybe Psychonauts doesn't have enough camouflage to sneak in past people's mental blocks.

[Duncan]

I feel like I can't properly respond to this thread (possibly because you cover many topics). I don't know. Even though this is a thread about comedy and I guess then the appropriate response would be something sort of quietly funny which cuts to the heart of the issue, it does demand a certain sincerity and that's not something I'm good at. Not that I can't be honest, because I pretty much always am, but I don't think I've ever been able to write or say something which is really meaningful or thought-provoking. And considering I am an almost-writer, I feel like that really ought to be something I should do.

Except it's much easier to be funny, even if it's not working. I don't know why, well, I mean, if you get past the men can't express emotions blah blah blah thing, I don't know. I feel like most sentiments that one would typically express in any given social situation are much better when they're funny. Does that make sense? I don't know. Even if it's that kind of quiet funny which doesn't actually make you laugh the sentiment still means something even though it's a joke. I think when I complement someone or ask someone out or anything along those lines it goes over much better when it's funny than if it was earnest. Actually I always do that by self-deprecating myself to the max. I guess you have to laugh at yourself?

I realise now that I've never really been in any deadly serious situations in which humour is really inappropriate and when sincerity is called for. I hope I would still be effective and helpful but I don't really know.

I also don't know how this relates to your post (essay?) to be honest. The parts about comedy (and human condition maybe?) stuck with me the most and of course I started thinking about that in relation to myself, because I am thoroughly neurotic.

Should this really be in Site Feedback?

Also, despite all the shit I was proclaiming earlier in this post, this turned out remarkably unfunny.

[DanJW]

Joseph Campbell, who regular readers will know I am a huge fan of, had some interesting things to say about comedy. Namely, that comedy is merely tragedy from a birds-eye view (although not in those words). Look at this man. His life is crap. Tragic. Now zoom out. His world is about to be destroyed, but he's still sweating the small stuff. Comic. Yes, I have indeed described the beginning of Hitchhikers Guide, but also the Greek tragi-comedies that Campbell uses as examples. Comedy is the feeling that your personal tragedy is part of something much bigger. Laughter is bitter-sweet relief.

Heavy man.

[Simon]

Great essay, Jake. I especially liked the two paragraphs from 'The existence of the "indie scene"...'

I have known people to be a little 'indie scenester' in their approach to culture, hating something once it becomes popular, as you say. I don't think that's actually anything to do with their appreciation of art or a concern for its progression, rather they just like to define themselves by something little-known in an effort to construct a personality. I think that explains why someone might wear the T-shirt of their favourite little-known band until the band break through on their third album, get on MTV and everyone else loves them. Even if the music's still great, the fan's T-shirt doesn't mean so much anymore because other people like them, and it doesn't define the fan alone. He has to find another little-known band and tell people that other band aren't as good as they used to be. Of course, sometimes that's true, but making an omelette and all that.

It sounds like a horribly warped approach to music, but it increasingly seems to me that there's something in our modern mindset that leads us to that "Look at me, I'm alternative/indie" silliness. Increasingly you're defined more by what you like than what you're like. A mainstream and a non-mainstream do exist, we don't have to be that childish about them. A little common sense leads us to your view of inclusiveness and sharing of culture.

Maybe you should have a blog. Or alternatively, this could have been on the Thumbs front page. Not strictly to do with gaming, but certainly relevant.

[Oath]

It frustrates me when people say "that actor should shut up about his political beliefs, and stick to acting," or "that writer needs to go back home and write" or "that comedian should stop his goddamn preaching and start telling jokes." These are people whose jobs, in my opinion, if done well and done properly, are to distill things down to as close to "the truth" as they can get.

This, and the rest of the post, got me thinking about Bill Hicks. Mostly in the sense of comedy-that-has-something-to-say-about-life-and-not-just-airline-peanuts. He was funny, as well as brutally honest, when he said what he felt about the way we lived life. I feel that he managed to embody the point that you were driving home in the first part of the rant, that comedy can be funny while still having a point that is actually is worth something.

Another reason I'm reminded of Hicks is probably that he died an untimely death, much like Adams. Anyway, I liked the thread. Add some art and spruce up a few parts and it's fit for the front page, as it holds some significance concerning games as well.

[Twilo]

I have known people to be a little 'indie scenester' in their approach to culture, hating something once it becomes popular

There's a lot in favour of that sort of attitude though. Sure, a lot of it is posing, but when I look at the music that I listen to every day, I notice a lot of it isn't really big stuff.

A big part of this is that for a popular or well-known band, there's no need for me to tell anyone about it, the band is going to do well on its own. A lot of people who stick with the stuff you hear on MTV or whatever don't get to hear a lot of music they may well like and someone who tends to look for a lot of music that they wouldn't come across by accident like to tell their friends about it.

It's not like I would go around telling everyone that (say) Bjork makes good music, because you could turn on the tv or the radio any given day and hear some.

Another thing is that when bands "make it" (ie get themselves onto one of the big four labels, "sell out" as some have it), suddenly all the money you might have spent on tshirts and cds and gigs is going to Sony or Universal or whatever, who frankly have plenty of money as it is.

There's something satisfying about ordering a Silver Mt Zion cd from Constellation in the mail, knowing all the money is going to the people involved, rather than to a company who's main drive for releasing music is commercially or market based.

[Duncan]

I don't think that's actually anything to do with their appreciation of art or a concern for its progression, rather they just like to define themselves by something little-known in an effort to construct a personality. I think that explains why someone might wear the T-shirt of their favourite little-known band until the band break through on their third album, get on MTV and everyone else loves them. Even if the music's still great, the fan's T-shirt doesn't mean so much anymore because other people like them, and it doesn't define the fan alone. He has to find another little-known band and tell people that other band aren't as good as they used to be. Of course, sometimes that's true, but making an omelette and all that.

Yeah, this is interesting. With the the fan who wears the t-shirt of the talented-yet-fortunately-obscure band, I think a major motivation is superiority. Someone sees the t-shirt and has no idea what that's about, and the fan gets to act a little smug because he's one of the select few who knows about this great band, like an "oh, if only you knew" type of thing. He gets the feeling that everyone's looking at this t-shirt and thinking he must know something that they don't. I don't think I'm explaining myself very well, but whatever. But then when this band gets super popular and this guy is still wearing the t-shirt, everyone knows what it means now. The whole thrill of being in some isolated pop culture bubble is gone, and now people don't know that this guy was one of the first people into this band back when they were edgy and undiscovered. Now they just think he's on the bandwagon and he only likes them now that they're popular. So I think that in some cases the fan hangs up the shirt not because he can't like what's popular, which is the usual stereotype, but instead because he doesn't want people to think that he's shallow and only likes what's popular.

[Roderick]

I think this particular behaviour has got more to do with the fact that because of the global village/internet-thingy, all of a sudden we find we're not that unique anymore. Even if there used to be people sharing an interest in social networks of yore, the sheer size of that group is so overwhelming now that we feel like we're all cookiecutter in our interests. That's what leads us to take an even more aggressive approach in trying to be unique. This is not a bad thing in all respects. It's a logical result of becoming exposed to the entire world and the urge to define yourself as an individual becoming emphasized accordingly. I see the bad sides of this. But you can't stop that. The only thing you can hope for is that the smarter ones will either grow past it and Do The Right Thing.

I'm sorry, I'm making little sense.

[ADD]: Also what Duncan said. You rock.

[Simon]

Twilo: Love of music is one thing, and being open-minded and taking risks on things has led me down a few exciting roads the mainstream might not have exposed me to, but my satisfaction comes from the music, not from the fact that the band is small and other people might not have heard them yet. Certainly some satisfaction comes from knowing that more of the money would be going to the actual artist too, as you say.

It's that posing part of the attitude that I find snobbish and childish. I am all for exploring the cultural fringes, it's essential. People just shouldn't be losers about it, share it in a cool way, not an 'I liked them first' way, or the 'if only you knew' way, which Duncan describes better than I could.

Rodi: I think that kind of hits the nail on the head, or at least one of the nails. People do want to be unique, it's natural, and that becomes more aggressive when we see other people a bit like us on the Internet. But there's a balancing act involved when you consider Jake's common-sense/hippy views too.

[Oath]

Love of music is one thing, and being open-minded and taking risks on things has led me down a few exciting roads the mainstream might not have exposed me to, but my satisfaction comes from the music, not from the fact that the band is small and other people might not have heard them yet.

Can't the fact that the band is small and unknown go hand in hand with the quality of the music though? That you, on some subconscious level, enjoy the music more if you feel more unique while listening to it?

My point is really just what Duncan said, but I'm too afraid to show that I like his post.

[Twilo]

People stay away from mainstream stuff not out of outright snobbery (that the music is bad) but because they don't want to support it. One becomes very cynical about mainstream music when one sees it being marketted with millions of dollars behind it, expensive videos and marketting shenanigans. If the "underground" music is as good, or better, without all the marketting, then what's the justification for it?

There's a lot of two-facedness with that sort of thing, a good example is the band Rage Against the Machine; an anarcho-syndicalist anti-capitalist band that's signed to Sony for chrissake. There's a loss of trust, and the argument about getting your music to more people doesn't hold water anymore. Considering how much music isn't in that mainstream sort of thing, it's pretty easy to completely bypass it and stick to the "underground" stuff.

It's also a happy coincidence that almost all my favourite music is non-mainstream. Lucky me!

but my satisfaction comes from the music, not from the fact that the band is small and other people might not have heard them yet.

This is not my point at all. What I said was that I would tell other people about the music they mightn't know about rather than the stuff they almost definitely do know. This is different to limiting yourself to that music or deriving enjoyment from that obscurity. It's the explanation I have for the obscure-bands-t-shirts thing.

[Simon]

This is not my point at all. What I said was that I would tell other people about the music they mightn't know about rather than the stuff they almost definitely do know. This is different to limiting yourself to that music or deriving enjoyment from that obscurity. It's the explanation I have for the obscure-bands-t-shirts thing.

Okay, I get you. Sorry, I wasn't connecting what you wrote with the T-shirts thing, so I might have got confused. Obviously people will have different reasons for why they wear band T-shirts. T-shirts as 'spreading the word' makes sense too, there's a logic there.

[lailoken]

Ok I read all the other posts, but at this point it seems impossible to actually get into all of it. I think in a lot of ways it's really about a sense of self that is missing from popular culture to a large extent. A lot of people define themselves through media of any given type. "Advertising has us chasing cars and buying shit that we don't need." Music is just music and I can honestly say that my taste in music is guided by two things.

1. If it's good.

2. I have to be exposed to it at some point. I have other things to do with my life and can't spend so much time looking for one good record.

As far as humor is concerned, Douglas Adams is truly missed and I don't feel ashamed saying that I was crying as I read the note by Steven Fry at the end of "Salmon of a Doubt". A great man and truly unique perspective on life that now only exists in his books. Seeing the humor in life to me is true wisdom. It means being able to step back and seeing things the way they truly are.

Humor means being able to laugh about yourself first and foremost.

[Chris]

Nice post, Jake. A lot of interesting points that I'll hopefully come back and actually respond to.

I really don't think the "indie scene" bit was thought through, though. You seem far more willing to overlook the retarded bits of mainstream pop culture than you do the retarded bits of indie culture, and they both have their fair share of completely retarded bits. I mean I guess that's fine; everyone is going to have their biases, but I think you're confusing the hardcore indie scenesters with indie culture as a whole. You might argue that those things are inseparable, but if you're really unwilling to distinguish a scene or culture from its most retarded and hardcore constituents, then honestly pop culture would be the most worthless and aggravating thing of all time.

[MrHoatzin]

I read this whole thread. If a lesser person had started it, I probably wouldn't. Before it espouses any more more immediately relevant reactions, this essay makes me wonder why Jake doesn't write more proper articles.

No matter how extreme and leftist they may think themselves to be, the people loitering around the indie scene only mimic the elitism of the top layer of the free-market society with their, "I only buy shit from them most obscure awesome bands that are holier than thine aural crack cocaine of the mainstream." They crave a commodity that few people have access to and they identify themselves with this commodity, much like the richest of the rich with their solid gold toilet seats and their fine art (but I repeat myself). In other words, the indie scene aficionado-ism is often a load of hypocritical bullshit as old as castles, fine tapestries, solid-gold coffins and the caste system -- only more naive, pathetic and gimpy.

[Chris]

I'm not sure, Kingz, if your indie stuff was in response to part of Jake's post or to my post, but either way I guess my response would be the same: again, don't confuse a small part of the indie scene with the general reason behind the existence of indie stuff. Honestly, doing that (and this could go for Jake or Kingz) is just as unfair and judgmental as you are accusing indie scenesters of being.

[Jake]

Thanks Chris I'll think about that and try to respond if I can. I may fail to. I don't want to post anything that's more half-cooked than what I've already written, as you would leap on it and mutilate it before I had a chance to make anything resembling a point But for the record I agree with you, though I think I'm slightly more right than you're implying I am. I think the attitude I described is present throughout the whole scene, just to very varying degrees, and for different reasons from person to person or group to group. I meant to write about the fucked up side of "the mainstream" too but I couldn't be bothered in part because I figured everyone already thought about that plenty.

[MrHoatzin]

I am referring to the people who appreciate the stuff worth appreciating for the wrong reasons and stop appreciating it when more people come to like it. A lot of the underground community-philes are like that, that is not to say all underground and independent stuff is shit.

[Chris]

Thanks Chris I'll think about that and try to respond if I can. I may fail to. I don't want to post anything that's more half-cooked than what I've already written, as you would leap on it and mutilate it before I had a chance to make anything resembling a point

Heh

But for the record I agree with you, though I think I'm slightly more right than you're implying I am. I think the attitude I described is present throughout the whole scene, just to very varying degrees, and for different reasons from person to person or group to group. I meant to write about the fucked up side of "the mainstream" too but I couldn't be bothered in part because I figured everyone already thought about that plenty.

Well, possibly. I keep trying to respond to this but it's very difficult to do concisely for some reason and I have to go to work so I'll probably just bug you on instant messaging or something.

[Erkki]

Namely, that comedy is merely tragedy from a birds-eye view (although not in those words). Look at this man. His life is crap. Tragic. Now zoom out. His world is about to be destroyed, but he's still sweating the small stuff. Comic.

I haven't heard it put like that before, but I agree. Lately I've been doing just that sometimes -- zooming out and finding everything in the world ridiculously funny.

[toblix]

...thought through, though.

That was pretty cool.