When funny is being not funny (Geluck)

Humor is complicated. What is hilarious for you is really boring for your brother, and vice versa.

Some guys play with words, or they exaggerate, or they make puns, or they just say (and shouldn’t) what reality is (Dilbert) :

In Belgium, they have a guy named Geluck, who – like often – doesn’t know how to draw, and invented a cat. Its name? Le Chat; The Cat. Voilà.

His system is to invent “not funny” things, which, in a complicated process many people have, makes it funny. For example :

“I invented this clock. The first one gives the time. The second one gives the time it will be in an hour”.

Hahaha. Burst laughing, or not?

Who are other “comicals”, who are fun because they’re not?

Gary Larson about choice

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Let me fall into a quiet clean living space

Inner Travels are cheaper!

Some guys are astronauts, some other astronomers, right?

1. The guy who silently watch stars in his telescope sighs : he dreams he had the nerve to go.
2. When the rocket launches, the other guy swears he should have stayed on solid ground.

In French, for “on solid ground” we say “sur le plancher des vaches” : “On cows’ floor”.

One explores the world and is disturbed by events, insecurity, unknowns, surprises, propositions, and danger and fear – one wants to go home, dreams of silence.

One lives into a quiet clean living space and sighs – though telling they’re happy & shielded, one wants to hunt, know, meet and explore.

Let’s quote the always funny Schopenhauer :

Oh, dang!

What to do what to do?

Tango? Try one then another? Find a way to do both? Explore from your quiet place? An astronomer in a rocket? A quiet moving exploring solid shielded bubble?

Thanks for reading!

When you can’t/don’t divorce, who do you choose?

I’m so sick of sarcasm and irony, I could kill!
Sincerely, the real root of things is love and sacrifice.
Ben Foster

 

 

PREAMBLE

Here’s a little joky conversation I had with a colleague recently :

As a bookseller, I order and receive hundreds of (new or not) books every month. They have their little life, and the agreement with editors is to keep each reference for at least three months (like : “Give our books a chance”). I also order older books on the occasion of (a concert, an exhibition, a movie, etc…).

So a bookseller order books, put them on shelves, and also, continuously, send them back to companies. It’s constant, a constant flow of in and out.

 

My colleague saw me pushing crates of books on wheels (as we all do almost everyday) :

– What do you do here?
– Returning books, silly!
– Sheeesh!
– What?
– You really have a problem, pal!
– And what is that problem, Sherlock?
– You return books, right?
– Yeah…
– That’s what I thought : you are wrong, somewhere, you are a bad bookseller!…
– How is that, tell me?
– You idiot should order ONLY the books that sells!
– Ohhhh! You’re a genius! Thank youuuu! I will now follow that rule!…

And we lolled.

 

ONE

I was amazed how marriage stays a milestone in America. In France, more than 50% of marriages finish in divorces, and more and more lovers choose to avoid this old tradition – the government invented the PACS (a Civil Solidarity Pact) in 1999 : “A contractual form of civil union between two adults for organizing their joint life”.

Well : it’s like legal marriage without all bunkum you say at church, and it works for same sex couples too.

For example in 2013 you got 168,000 PACS and 231,000 marriages in France.

 

TWO

What surprised me a lot when I talked to American women is that, well, you almost HAVE to marry to get a proper life (and it’s the same in many countries). Even today. If you don’t, you’re not real. You have problems with many things, including healthcare… I found out that today 83% of women get married in the USA.

 

THREE

Therefore, as you are a smart young woman, as you watch around you, you probably realized that the guy you’re pressured to marry will probably be a failure 20 years after the fabulous wedding.

The causes for divorce in USA are said : adultery, abandonment, or cruelty, though “No-fault divorce (“irreconcilable differences”, “irretrievable breakdown of marriage”, “incompatibility”, or after a separation period etc.) is now available in all states“) are now evoked.

So people divorce but many others don’t, because it has a social cost, you lose plenty of privileges, it’s boring and loneliness is frightening.

 

FOUR

Like me with my books, you never know in advance what will fail. I just “try to” guess. And I fail (of course, and happily). My little sarcastic article is about this dial :

Who do you choose, then?

The guy who will be :

1. Bored
2. Boring
3. Violent
4. Silent
5. Workaholic
6. Alcoholic
7. Sexaholic
8. Indifferent
9. Dead
10. Stupid
11. Absent because :
12. Unfaithful
13. Garage handyman
14. Sportsman
15. Hunter

 

OUTRO/TOOL

Well, as I can’t guess how many books I have to order, you can’t guess how messy your husband will become. Maybe he’ll collect staplers – that’s not so bad, right?

How could you guess? Astrology? Give him a try for a few years before getting married? Listen to your friends and family who watch him? Listen to your guts? Your brain? Watch the slopes he’s taking with you about free time, sex, conversations, food and culture? What are the criterions you could watch?

What’s the process, from now on? Marry then watch the predicted slopes? Well : it does not work. Sadly you can’t return him to the company, in a crate on wheels. Or a wheelbarrow!

Thanks for reading!

 

Painting : Levitan

 

Love is when the other person’s happiness
is more important than your own.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

 

 

26 Worst Ways to Wake Up

Well, hi. I woke up with this title in head, therefore I had to write it…

Why 26? I don’t know, but I kept it, though there’s not 26 ways here. It’s like the traps on Facebook : “11 elements which proves you’re more intelligent”. Yeah yeah yeah.

You can add some in the comments!

The 26 Worst Ways to Wake up are :

1. There’s no coffee anymore
2. The cat puked everywhere in the house
3. You had insomnia all night and you slept at least… ten minutes before your alarm buzzed
4. You walk on and crush your glasses
5. There’s a spider on your pillow
6. You shower and go to work and when you’re there it’s your day off

 

 

Your turn!

 

Have a nice day!

 

Instagram : vzcomood

 

You should hear a French classroom trying to pronounce LE English!

I learned Latin and I hated it. To translate Latin is like to open a clock and take it to pieces. In a minute there’s a mess on your desk, and you want to chuck everything in (which doesn’t help at all). Then, have a beer and watch the sky thinking about the Romans. When in Rome…

I learned German. Pronunciation was fun (ahh the ch sound in “ICH”!), but their sentences are bags of knots with the verb at the end – “I know that Kansas in the USA is” – and words are too crazy for my Frenchiness. Try to say Schlittschuhlaufen (ice-skating) or Streichholzschächtelchen (little box of matches). OK. Bye bye!

 

I began English at 11 years old and I liked it. As kids already, we were training our American accent on recess time, playing indians and cow-boys, with a faked and imaginary drowning nosy duck John Wayne accent. Imagine us in short pants running everywhere like crazy swallow birds, saying in loop “wayne right wayne right way yeah I kill you right okey” in a pinchedy nose tone. Yeahhh.

The first thing we struggled with is the ze. Well : THE. We don’t have this “tongue between teeth” thing here. So, well, ze French often tell ZE, and with consequences : Zat music, Zhere it is, Zis is gonna be hard. EVERYSSING will be!

Then, as we like to say the “R” differently, we struggle with your way of saying it. Strrrrruggle is a good example, by ze way. Romance is pronounced RRrromance here, we had to learn Wwomance (oh, this makes suddenly sense!). We had to get used to it, including the ending R, like in RIVER. Hear this classroom munching “Rivehhhwwwaow“, oui?

The first time I read the word “River” out loud in the class stays a trauma for me. I was 11 and I said “Ryver” (because I knew that “Life” was NOT pronounced “lif” but “life”).

– “Not Ryver, River, Jean-Pascal”.

What ze?????!
Today, what stays difficult for me is : the accentuation in words (what, you say “Word Stress”? Really??). Therefore, I don’t know what to do with PREsent (the gift) and to preSENT (the verb). You’re all crazy, that’s what I say 🙂

Where’s the accent on TELevision? TeleVIsion? Eekkk! OK I can say Tivi.

I had difficulties with words like Flaw of Law (we always pronounced this one “Low” in class) – this is such a strange sound, and I hate to open my mouth like that. For Christ, it seems I’m about to drool, being astonished and to swallow a fly at the same time! The LAAAH.

We said NEW like niouw, and I never would have guessed that American people say Noo York for the city. And if you don’t say the k letter in knife… why is it needed?! Nife would do the thing…

Little by little, I make progress though. I know that English blogging for a French is absurd, in a way, but it is not :

•  French Blogging in English : un Songe
• Patterning Unusual : thus my own casual blogging
• Writing in another language

 

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day. Look : it all ensnowed! :

Snow in America

Nipplet Cork Pacifier Drama

In French, we call a nipple “un téton”. And a pacifier is called “une tétine”.

Therefore, you can imagine that we almost say “a nipplet” instead of “a pacifier”. Une tétine.

Makes sense, oui?

I have two daughters, they are 16 and 19, and they never had a “pacifier”.

The reason is : I am sure a pacifier is useless, and vulgar, even harmful.

A pacifier is a cork. Baby’s crying, cork him! Shut him off!

And more : A pacifier, for a baby, is an external solution. Therefore this future human being will never find a way to cope – out of a “thing”.

Later, as an adult, it’ll stay the same. Something else – or someone else – will be the fix. He’ll need a cigarette, or a bigger car, or to buy things, to try to get better. Or eating. Or pills.

A cigarette is a pacifier. Bulimia is a pacifier. Etc.

I stop here. All this cork thing is overboring. Almost as boring as paying someone to drill your nose to put a ring into it – and then you do look like a cow. Feel better now you have one? Happy? Corked?

Sucking to feel safe, it is insane. It’s deep inner drama. It creates a disastrous brain : “I need something to calm down”. Drama, problems, money, intoxications. No pacifier, it’s better. They’ll survive… You’ll survive, and find solutions from the inside of you. Knowledge.

And realizing this : there is no “solution”, eventually.

This is wisdom!

 

Dial : You had one as a kid? Thus now what is your pacifier made of?

 

Instagram : _bodylanguage_

“Ways of hiding intentions”, the Humor example

I read an interview of François Damien, a Belgian actor who just directed his first movie, a comedy. He talked about the editing process, saying he was afraid of comedies, in which each part “has to be funny”, which is boring and dangerous.

He said, therefore, that each time he felt “a will to make people laugh”, he cuts the sequence, then concluding with this : “Humor must be an accident. Thus even you build it, you have to build it like an accident”.

You can also read :

Intention of effect kills effect

I do agree with him. When the audience notices you “want” to make them laugh, most of them won’t! Or maybe they do, if they’re polite, haha…

Tool :

What does that mean? That humor is like elegance (don’t show off, make it a feeling)? How will you do to “not show” you’re preparing something? A sudden thing (the accident type)? Something climbing under? A complexity, detected only by smart brains (and then you put your audience in your pocket)? What else? What’s the speed dial, in humor?

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

#smile #Snoopy

By Jove ! GILES is a genius cartoonist

Giles was a cartoonist best known for his work for the British newspaper the Daily Express.

He drew mainly single but highly detailed panel, about British life.

I bought dozens of books in UK on ebay for nothing : he’s absolutely unknown outside of Great Britain because his “jokes” were often linked with British events. It’s now outdated, but what remains is so gorgeous that… I had to write about it. I’m thankful, in a way!

I admire him for his sense of space, light and scenery. There are often plenty of funny little details to look for. This gives you a special smile.

He invented a British family, and the star is “Grandma”.

I chose here three panels linked to bad weather. I love the three characters trying to hide from the cold wind in 1, the perspective and the wet road in 2, and the contrast of the guy sleeping and the rain outside in 3.

In a single drawing, you have a whole British mood. You will find plenty on Pinterest. Really, give it a try, watch his sense of image. This guy always knew where to put his camera…

Bloody rain! By Jove!

8 little Concerns with no name

Le Baleinié is a French little book, a dictionnary of 454 INVENTED WORDS about “les tracas”, concerns and bothers and fusses. I offer some examples for you pleasure.

Azog : your right shoe laced up tighter than the left

Bahan : a simple word you always forget

Chouir : to act as if you didn’t get the splutter

Dadu : impolite noise the chair does when you sit on it

Miasliquer : to sit on your cat

Flomper : to gain pounds when after you stop smoking, and then keep the weight once you’re back on smoking

Grucinelle : space between you sock and the bottom of your trousers, in which an icy wind can blow

Igourie : the gift you have to “search first in the wrong pocket”

See? We have a whole book of these little concerns, in France.

Have fun!

Faire à manger (to cook), Faire pipi (to pee). In France, we “faire” a lot…

In France we make love, but we also make food (faire à manger), make some jogging (faire du jogging), and we make some boat too (faire du bateau).

I really don’t know why we French do this, the “faire” thing, and I wonder if there’s another language with this mess.

More : we all know that our “way of thinking” in the world is like built in the language. What does it imply?

A few more examples to play with :

• Faire du gringue : to flirt.
• Faire fi : to ignore.
• Faire du vélo : to bike.
• En faire une maladie : to have a fit (oh?).

Strangely enough, in France we say “prendre une douche”, like in English “to take a shower”. Italian people, though, “fare una doccia” : to make a shower”!

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : francescasomavilla

“Do you, Herf, take Bosha to be your wife?” – “Absolutely!”, or “Hell, yesss!”?

“Do you, A, take B to be your wife?”, I think it’s the way this guy asks you that in church, right.

But you HAVE TO answer “I DO”, right?

What if you could answer what you want?

• Oui
• Hell YESSS!
• OMG, of course…
• Why not?
• Yep
• Ohlalaaaa
• Obviously!
• …
• What do you think?
• No. Yes! Just kidding
• Interesting question…

What would you add?

 

Instagram : birdsnakes

 

#giles #grandma #hunting #ducks

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