Subject: Re: A Long Overdue Discussion with that "Mount Kilamanjaro" Guy. From: mmcirvin@world.std.com (Matt McIrvin) Date: 1997/10/02 Message-Id: <199710012300282187890N@ppp0a039.std.com> Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself) References: <60ij4k$jfs@saga21.Stanford.EDU> <60kbdf$eof$1@quasar.dimensional.com> <60lb5v$cjm@elaine35.Stanford.EDU> <60mgtg$3o0$3@quasar.dimensional.com> <60uqb8$aso$1@quasar.dimensional.com> X-Face: (?W%^()W#v)$D::#5q#!;XTvB9;qH wrote: > This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a Postmodern > Turing Test. All of the original ideas are gone, and all there is left > to do is pull existing stuff out of the ether and the fiber and turn > it into parody, then make parodies of the parodies, until finally, > somebody decides to sample a James Brown sample from a U2 cover of > some Negativland song to use in the soundtrack for the series based on > A Very Brady Koran, and we're drowned in a FLOOD of onanistic > epiphany, taking homeopathic sacraments containing .0000001% good and > evil in a suspension of Dissociative-Flavored Kool-Aid. Ah ha ha! I get it! She's doing the book of Ecclesiastes! Way cool pastiche! Anyway, I need to explain why I haven't posted anything funny for about a month. See, I've completely run out of things to parody, and in a last-ditch effort to retain some sense of self, I've decided to remove all of the irony and parody and pastiche and compulsive *distancing* from the things I write. I've been having trouble coming up with some form of humor that doesn't rely on any of that, since I had my last three sincere brain cells burned out by David Letterman in approximately 1988. It's been a long, slow, arduous process getting back to that simple place where everyone was before they invented irony in the late fall of 1977, back when everyone was nine years old and fond of "Star Wars," the original and un-recycled version, which was the last movie ever made that was not tongue-in-cheek at all. Today everyone is a hipster wisecracker with no convictions and no message, like that Oliver Stone. But I'm finally there. I know that you don't want to, say, read a long rhapsodic passage about how nice my love life is, or my resume, or something. Y'all want funny. So I have to give you funny. No distancing. No recycling. This isn't going to be a parody or a re-enactment or a fake of the original because it *will be* the original. Old things only seem old because we *think* of them as old: so I have to convince *you*, the reader, to put yourself in a proper frame of mind to perceive the following as a completely new conception, entirely free of prior associations or the aura of irony. If Borges' Pierre Menard had been able to annihilate the semantic influence of the civilization around him, he *would have* written _Don Quixote_, and not a mere word-for-word pastiche. But enough preamble. Relax. Sit back. Close your eyes. Empty your head completely. You can open your eyes now. Ready? Good. O ME -> <|\ | \ |\ / \ == <- BANANA PEEL O ME -> <|\ | \ |\ / \ == <- BANANA PEEL O ME -> <|\ | \ |\ / \= <- BANANA PEEL Big finish coming up-- wait for it-- BANANA PEEL -> == | / /_/ ME -> __/___ - Aiy yi yi! O Whoa! What a knee-slapper! I'm planning on using this at my new project, Matt McIrvin's Old-Tyme Comedy Cowboy Jamboree. We'll sit around a roaring fire and present each other with small and jewel-like nuggets of comedy like this one, and savor each for what it is, not for what it might be when put through some hipster Photoshop filter of reprocessing. And then we'll sing the song that goes "Old Mr. Ford had a puncture in his tire, and he fixed it with a wad of chewing gum." And we'll drink cowboy coffee and eat cowboy steaks as the sunset lights up Chimney Rock and the distant bluffs, and the stars come out. And we will laugh as we have never laughed before. We will laugh *as if* we have never laughed before. Join in and add a joke of your own. Remember, they're *all new now*, by fiat! Only don't use that one about the chicken crossing the road. It's too *meta*. -- Font-o-Meter! Proportional Monospaced ^ Physics, humor, Stanislaw Lem reviews: http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/