HE-LARRY-OUS

FULL OF IT

Jul 23, 2026

Funny. It depends on where you are standing. Are you over here, or over there? The left “can’t meme” and the right can’t be artists. It’s a sad state of affairs, and that’s really funny. If you have to explain it, you don’t get it. Preaching to the choir is stand up to the converted. It’s just a joke. Sometimes it’s the only way to tell the truth. And not get beheaded by the king. Or cancelled by the crowd. What does that mean anyway? Those people are all terrified. Frightened by death, life, failure, success, whatever. Turn your cheeks, the ones on your face, or the ones on your ass.

You know what makes a great comic?1 It’s not the punchline.

You have to laugh at yourself, but that doesn’t count as funny. Someone else has to think you are funny. Someone else has to think you are a genius. Mostly when you confirm what they already know, or want to know. The pain of being laughed at when you aren’t being funny is a fearful situation for most people. Imagine inviting it, because something inside you screams “I deserve this.”

BOMBS AWAY

I’m not funny. Things that are happening aren’t funny. How dare you laugh. So much heartache in that graveyard, and there you go whistling by. Humor as an act of aggression. Overkill. Saturation bombing. You never know what to say to what I say. It’s all part of the plan, to put you in your place, to put me in my place. The compulsion to myself on your world view, to shake your foundations, to get you angry, to make you feel. I don’t know why I was compelled to insert myself into your world. I don’t feel that way anymore. However, I still need to let you know that I’m alive. And maybe that bothers you. Who knows?

I don’t know. I just don’t. Who does?

I’m not being sarcastic. I have those tendencies, but I’ve lost my taste for it. I haven’t got time for the pain. The world has made it clear that sarcasm is a crime punishable by cancellation, the kiss of death in a connected world. Irony is dead. The internet killed it, like it’s killing the apostrophe. It takes a common language, and the ability to think critically. These things are not valued in the modern media ecosystem. Nothing is valued in this fractured polity, and to the Globocapitalist2 every belief system is equally valid. As long as you don’t actually follow through and try to change things. That is double-plus wrongthink. Get with the programming.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS/THESE ARE YOUR RIGHTS ©️STRUMMER/JONES

My man, Stan Goff, thinks tactically about most things, being a former grunt, peace activist, a fisherman, and a catholic ( large C) and thinks the way to combat the current regime is ridicule, because these thin skinned weenies hate to be laughed at. They love to laugh at you, though. These bullies just poke and poke, until someone on the other side reacts in fury at the provocation, and then it’s on. You won’t be winning that battle. But it makes me wonder.

So much humor is thinly veiled aggression, and it works for some people, at least it has the desired effect. Which, I guess, is to make people feel as bad as you do, or feel your pain. Now, you have the option here, to go deadpan. To ask them what it means. Get them to explain it. Or better still, repeat it. It can really deflate the process. Nothing is worse than a joke cop. But it can be used to your advantage. Does it matter? We are dust, to dust we return.

I’m not suggesting that you be a mealy mouthed, passive aggressive faker. Maybe you are right. Maybe they do deserve your lacerating wit, your cutting observation, your hilarious comment. Human beings are pretty ridiculous as a general rule, and deserve to be reminded of just how inconsequential their puny lives are. Just ask yourself if you want that job. And apply it to yourself first.

That is true freedom. To embrace your foolishness. To realize we are completely capable of laughing at yourself first. To beat them by their own playbook. Right up the middle. And run it until they can stop it.

life ends in a tie.

MAN IN HIS SIXTIES POINTING AT A GAP IN HIS TEETH. HE WANTS YOU TO VIEW HIM AS RIDICULOUS, BUT REALIZES THAT HE HAS NO CONTROL OVER THAT — **THE GAP AND THE GROUCHO NOSE**

THE MONDAY POST THAT SOMETIMES HAPPENS ON TUESDAY

I made a plea, wrapped in obfuscations, which is my stock in trade. Except, no-one is buying. I’d like to sell out, but I need to accept myself first. In any case, forgiveness is not an abundant element in our lives. Everything good is on the other side of hard. But, as I am reminded by your bumper sticker, “NO BAD DAYS”