Maybe I’m too literal-minded, but I have a hard time getting many types of humor. To me, it’s all personal. I love puns and word play, but have trouble with a lot of the types of comedy I see. Most people have become aware enough to be offended by racist and sexist jokes, but other things that pass for humor slip by without people thinking about it.

I strongly dislike the Three Stooges, for example. To me it’s cruelty, not humor. Poking people’s eyes out, etc. is just meanness, and I can’t help identifying with the victim. My aversion extends to most types of physical comedy, like Dick Van Dyke’s tripping over the ottoman and the Chevy Chase’s pratfalls. Someone’s getting hurt here and people are laughing at them for their clumsiness or some other failure that they can’t help. “America’s Funniest Home Videos” is the worst of the lot. Again, I identify with the victim. What happened to empathy?

Then there’s Lucille Ball’s “wacky hi-jinx.” The scene so many people love is the factory assembly line. She’s helpless and crying, yet people are laughing at her. Her emotional vulnerability is something to be used against her. “Rickie, I want to be in the show.” Of course he knows best and when she connives to be a part of it anyway, she is humiliated. Ha ha.

It’s related to pathos humor. Mr. Bean is another in that category. He’s so gentle and earnest that seeing him crushed makes me cry, not laugh. He can’t win, no matter what he does and I want to take him aside and protect him from the world.

I also don’t get Monty Python and other “men in drag” bits; to me it’s mocking women by making them caricatures defined by stereotypes. In high school, it was a staple at pep rallies and people roared. I don’t see any humor in high pitched voices, prancing around in high heels and exaggerated gestures, things that supposedly mark women as women. What’s so funny about bouncing breasts made of balloons? I guess maybe it’s supposed to be ridiculous that any man would want to be a woman. This bothered me long before I became aware that there are men who prefer to dress in women’s clothing and some who feel they are women. In that light, it’s even worse.

Helpless men under the thumb of women is another staple in stand-up comedy. Women are manipulative bullies, and men are too blinded by their lust to realize it until it’s too late. They don’t want what’s best for someone else–they want to control and exploit. Why would any man want one of these creatures? It mocks both men and women and reduces them to stereotypes.

Perhaps the most upsetting to me are jokes and films that mock overweight and/or older women for their sexuality. The commericals for the “Big Mama” movies break my heart. The idea that a fat woman, or a woman with white hair, might consider herself beautiful is portrayed as hilarious. Even funnier is the idea that she might believe that someone else finds her attractive. The woman is so oblivious to her physical state that she doesn’t know she’s repulsive. Those poor beleaguered men, relentlessly pursued by a disgusting mound of old flesh that revolts them. These women have no right to self-esteem or pleasure. They’re jokes waiting to happen and they don’t even know it.

“Shallow Hal,” with all it’s touching moments, is a twist on this. He’s in love with a fat woman and doesn’t know it. It points out his obliviousness while he learns everything he’s missed before in his inability to see past appearances. That was masterful. What bothered me were the brief scenes of Gweneth Paltrow sucking down vast quantities of food and the image of her tossing her oversized panties at him in joyful abandon. Most people laughed at that. I didn’t. All I could see was her happy embrace of the love and passion she thought she’d never know. With a few minor cuts, it could have been a truly wonderful movie.

I do like gentle humor that doesn’t mock or exploit. I love humor in self-awareness, that “aha!” moment in which people learn and become better people for it, such as the previously mentioned “Shallow Hal.” I liked “Dogma” for how it turned stereotypes on end. I like stand-up comedy that pokes fun at self-delusion, such as routines about the things parents don’t know before they have children. None of it is laugh-out-loud funny, but it makes me smile and feel good.

I guess for me it comes down to the maxim that we laugh rather than cry. I can’t get to that point. I just feel like crying at most things that many other people think are funny, so I don’t rent many movies labeled as comedy. They depress me. Maybe I’m extra sensitive to it, since I fear being the butt of jokes myself.

Or maybe I’m just a humorless old prude.

In freshman ear training class, I amazed my professor with my ability to name any scale or chord upon hearing it. Yet I couldn’t do it with a single note, as someone with perfect pitch can. That’s because I didn’t identify it with my ears–I did it with my eyes.

For a few of us, notes have colors. Note sequences, particularly as scales and key signatures, even more strongly so. For years I thought I was the only one, until I ran across an article in a magazine describing it. No psychedelic drugs involved; it’s just a quirk of how my brain works. (I wonder if the LSD phenomenon may have something to do with allowing people to access that normally undiscovered part of the brain?)

In compositions, the colors I see have subtle hue and density variations based on the key, the structure of the music, the texture and the orchestration. For example, most Egyptian classical music is a rich burgandy purple, because of both the traditional modes and the common lown.

So I was thrilled when a friend alerted me to a program–Colour Player–that will allow me to assign colors to songs and sort them based on it. Most of the music I listen to while working is red (E major) and is driving simple rock. So instead of building long playlists, I could tell the player to pull up everything red in my collection, and let it run.

It’s so exciting to think there are enough of us out there that someone would create this. It’s going to take me awhile to import all my music into it, but I’m looking forward to it. If you’re curious, download it and give it a try.

From Warren Ellis can see what you are doing:

Jhayne Holmes says this:

What with the Washington State Supreme Court handing down its anti-gay-marriage decision several weeks ago and the ever-hearing more about attacks on reproductive rights down south, I’m feeling that the States is tripping a bit too merrily down the Handmaid’s path.

This week, I found a way to strike back.

Focus on the Family, the horrid anti-gay evangelical church based in Colorado Springs that wields too much power for anyone’s good, has a store on their website that will give you books, CDs, and DVDs absolutely free of charge. Usually people pay for their items by donation, raising millions of dollars to help Focus on the Family produce more hate-propaganda featuring “experts” on homosexuality who claim it’s a curable “sickness”. (They’re practically defined by their book A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Course, there’s no mention of having less kids, which is the only proven method. No, no, you shouldn’t use birth control, that would be wrong. They need more worshippers, how dare you prevent god’s will.)

It’s a little bit time-consuming, but not enough to deter me. (Nor should it you). The chance to take money out of their pockets is too useful, not to mention satisfying.

Follow the link to find out how to do it in 10 easy steps.

I’ve been smoking since I was 13 years old. That’s 33 years. Originally I did it to look tough–not cool or sexy as the anti-tobacco commericals focus on–and it worked. A lit cigarette was a weapon and that was a good thing in some of the places I hung out. But I quickly found that smoking soothed my raw nerves, taking the edge off the depression that haunted me and buffering the anxiety that came between the down times. It made me feel better. In the back of my mind, I knew it was self-destructive, but so was most everything I did back then. What was one more? My shrink would say I was self-medicating, and he’d be right.

Two years ago, I quit. I got pneumonia and was in bed for a week; by the time I was up and around again, the urge to smoke was gone. I’d made it 8 months when Serzone was pulled off the market and I was thrown into withdrawal. I went thoroughly and completely manic, banging off the walls, furious at the drop of a word, scratching my arms and legs until they bled so badly that it left scars, feeling overrun by complusions I couldn’t control. In my lucid moments, I felt my mind slipping away from me and feared I was going permanently mad. None of the drugs my GP gave me–Rispirdal, Effexor, Xanax, Klonopin, Buspar–helped. So I bought a pack of cigarettes.

That first cigarette choked me. I felt as if I were going to throw up. But within minutes, the calm came; my hands stopped shaking and the terror abated. The peace only lasted about an hour, so I lit up another. And another. Within a week, I was hooked again.

I told myself it was just until my meds were straightened out, that once I was stable I wouldn’t need it anymore. Of course, it didn’t work out that way. I’m still smoking. Every single day I tell myself I’ll quit as soon as I finish this carton. I remind myself that there are people who care about me who worry and want me to live a long and healthy life. I feel guilty about that, but I still buy some more.

Part of it is that I fear being crazy again. Smoking made the clouds lift when I needed it the most and I haven’t been able to break that mental connection. Sounds like I’m making excuses, doesn’t it? I guess I am.

I’m thinking of all this today because of a piece I read on How Stuff Works about nicotine.

Stimulation of cholinergic neurons promotes the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the reward pathways of your brain. This neural circuitry is supposed to reinforce behaviors that are essential to your survival, like eating when you’re hungry. Stimulating neurons in these areas of the brain brings on pleasant, happy feelings that encourage you to do these things again and again. When drugs like cocaine or nicotine activate the reward pathways, it reinforces your desire to use them again because you feel so at peace and happy afterwards.

This makes a lot of sense to me, and explains why it’s so hard for me to quit. Maybe one of these days I’ll tackle it with a daily countdown the way I have my diet. Right now, I’m just trying to understand it. For me, that’s the first step.

The media loves a tragedy. They got one in living and dying color yesterday morning when Comair Flight 5191 crashed on take-off in Lexington, KY. Of 50 passengers and crew, 49 died. CNN lost no time in intruding upon the families’ grief. Note these quotes from their article Honeymooners among crash victims POSTED: 10:48 p.m. EDT, August 27, 2006 on their website:

“It’s so tragic because he was so happy last night,” said Keith Madison, who coached Hooker’s baseball team at the University of Kentucky and attended the wedding. “It’s just an incredible turn of events. It’s really painful.”

…

Williams began his career working with polo ponies in Dayton, Ohio, and was hired as an assistant trainer at Woodburn Farm. He worked with 10 stakes winners for the farm, including Astrotot, Ohio’s 2-year-old champion in 1985.

Larry Turner of Lexington, also aboard the plane, was the chief officer overseeing the University of Kentucky’s extension service, according to a statement from the university.

Pat Smith, a member of Habitat for Humanity International’s Board of Directors, was on his way to Gulfport, Mississippi, to work on rebuilding houses, Habitat spokesman Duane Bates said.

Mike Finley, 52, who lived in Corbin and owned the Finley Fun Centers, was headed to Reno, Nevada, for a rollerskating convention, said his son, David Taylor.

“I’d say there’s thousands of kids who grew up with our father,” he said.

Would it have been less tragic if he’d been depressed? If he wasn’t newly married, or wasn’t married at all? If he didn’t have a lot of friends or an important job?

But here’s the telling quote:

A woman who answered the phone at Lykins’ home said she was aware of Lykins’ death and didn’t want to talk.

What if she’d said, no, she hadn’t heard about it? I’m sure that would have resulted in a lovely quote for the story.

What the hell were they doing calling the families when they’re most vulnerable? Worse, they’re placing value on individual lives based on their relationship to others and defining their new-worthiness based on crap like “He loved life” and other banalities. And what of those who had no one to publicly mourn them? Their deaths don’t rate a passing mention.

I’m disgusted. Sherry Chandler coined the term quoted the phrase “pornography of suffering” in reference to poetry. It’s rampant in the news and it’s exploitation, pure and simple. How do reporters justify this to themselves? “The people’s right to know” is bullshit. We do not have the right to be inside someone’s head in their grief and I don’t want the media claiming they do it for me. It’s not just bad taste — it’s obscene.

There’s no honor in this type of reporting and those who demand it–as well as those who do it–are pornographers.

Enough is enough.

The first of my romas are ripe. By the end of the week, I’ll be making sauce.

Last 10 tunes on my Musicmatch Jukebox playlist while I work this afternoon:

1. Second-hand News - Fleetwood Mac
2. Harder To Breathe - Maroon5
3. Why Don’t You and I - Santana and Chad Kroeger
4. Flirtin’ With Disaster - Molly Hatchet
5. Magic Man - Heart
6. Brother Jacob - Head East
7. No Sugar Tonight - Guess Who
8. I Just Died in Your Arms - Cutting Crew
9. Bring Me To Life - Evanescence
10. Cry Baby - Janis Joplin

It’s not a coincidence that only 3 of these were recorded in the 21st Century. That’s a higher average than I usually run. Most of my collection averages 1972-1977.

Anyone else want to play? What’s on your music player? Post your list in comments.

From CNN:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Bruce Gary, the rock drummer who worked with George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Stephen Stills but is best known as The Knack’s original drummer — the man who played on the group’s No. 1 hit “My Sharona” — has died. He was 55.

My Sharona was a #1 hit in 1979, the spring of my freshman year in college and I wore out a copy of the “Get The Knack” album. I can’t hear it without feeling 18 again.

Eudora Welty, that is, not the Qualcom email client named in her honor. In 1973 Ms. Welty won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel “The Optomist’s Daughter,” considered one of the best southern novels on the 20th century. The National Endowment for the Arts has discovered 5 hours of color footage of the author reading and discussing her work in its collection and is returning the film to her historic home in Jackson, Mississippi for display. The NEA has allotted $10,000 for preservation of the film.

“There is no place in the world where this addition to the Welty Collection will be more appreciated or more properly taken care of than in Jackson, Mississippi,” said former Gov. William Winter, president of the board of trustees for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Via the Jackson (North Carolina) Daily News.

I did it. At 7:00 tonight I made my deadline and took the site live. Zero to 60 in 15 days. Tomorrow I’m going to sleep until I wake up - no alarm clock–then start right in on stage 2 Monday morning. The sprint is over and now I settle in for the marathon. Maybe I’ll even find time to blog again.

I’m exhausted, but I feel good. Very good.