Sometimes I don’t have witty things to say (surprising, isn’t it?) and these are the times when I like to say random things. And that’s funny! No? It’s gotta be! The randomness of a statement contributes heavily to its humour quotient. Vectoresque, the two components of any statement are first, its intelligence and second, its relevance to the current subject. Simply adding the two together does not give you the funnitude of the quote. It’s a much more complex relationship between the two and each is worthless without the other. And yes, I already know “funnitude” is not a word, but I have the right. Or “rights”, whatever. Deal with it.“This morning I found the longest hair on my body!” Insert this as a follow up to anything anyone has ever said to you and then imagine their next words. Very low intelligence component and unless you’re in the habit of having interesting conversations with your barber, the statement does not even possess relevance.
And for those taking notes on icebreakers for their next party, Get Out, this is not a class.
Sheer absurdity is stimulating. Intellectually, that is. It’s not all that easy to be absurd. Words don’t jump out of your mouth unless there has been thought behind them, so the depth of absurdity that you scrape is inversely proportional to the thought that contributed to its creation. It’s easy to ask a question or give an answer or pass your opinion, but not easy to suddenly change direction to a tangent. There are always three directions to any response: the right one, the wrong one (which is the opposite of the right one; and now don’t tell me the opposite of right is actually left) and the irrelevant one.
Before you go any further, a word of caution. The things you have read here so far and everything you will continue to read for the next two or so minutes, will test your ability to explore how far you will let yourself go before walking hurriedly back to what is generally accepted as normal/not-crazy, while looking over your shoulder at the strange place you almost stepped into. And if you already think this is just some try-too-hard, pseudo-intellectual crap, then I must shake your hand. Exit this way. (Insert here: some sort of text symbol for a raised finger that comes after the index one)
By irrelevant I don’t mean answering a request to know the time with “Red”. That’s just stupid and/or insane. By irrelevant, I’m referring to a point that lies as far as possible from an expected response and at the same time, not totally opposite to it. The locus of these irrelevant points would form the circumference of a circle which is perpendicular to the circular plane on whose outer edges the best acceptable response and its opposite lie, with the centers of the two circular shapes coinciding at the exact same point. Thus, every irrelevant point is always equidistant from the two known extremes.
Having just read all that you may think that I’ve really spent some time thinking about the whole thing. On the other hand, you may think that I’ve either dropped anchor at the line between genius and insanity or allowed someone less talented than myself to do a post for me. But I will not consider the other hand. The truth is that it was all on the fly. In the time that it took me to type these last few sentences, I had the whole geometric view mapped out in my head. Exactly how absurd? This is the right kind of absurdity, not talking about goldfish bobbing for apples. Spouting randomly incoherent shit just because your brain is running dry doesn’t qualify.
Anyway, if you’ve understood one iota of what I’ve been going on about, many congratulations to you. It’s hard to find someone who will appreciate or even accept the creatively abnormal (creatively abnormal != lunatic pissing on his neighbour’s front door) without scoffing at its non-conformity with easily-understandable rules.
All through this post, I’ve pranced about in the realm of strange and not-normally-thought-about, uneasy abnormality, leaping through varying degrees of the awkward and absurd and now we’re back where we started from, shuffling into line behind that other guy who also lost his shoe while trying to fish his keys out of an overflowing storm drain.
Most people tend to dismiss any and all straying from the norm as incorrectness. If only they would take a little time to appreciate what they do not understand or at least try to understand what they cannot appreciate, I’d feel a whole lot better. And that’s bound to make all of you just so damn happy!
Michael Bublé – Home
Crowded House – Fall At Your Feet
