What Is Humour?

Outside, blue skies and a contractor crew pulling cable through the neighbourhood.

Inside, contemplating the news that some associates are pulling together a gathering called the "Unemployed Millions March" on Washington after they figured out which demographic represents 48% of unemployed Americans.  Either that, or organise a bunch of flash mobs and one-day strikes on all the state capitols and the U.S. capitol on 15th April.

I want to rule a well-oiled machine but instead I get a pile of spaghetti noodles covered with olive oil.  Such is my fate, is it not, being a food fiend and not a regular fiend?

What do I do next?  The pressure cooker's getting a little hot and there are some folks who are boiling mad and want action.

At the same time, there are entrepreneurial friends of mine who want to take advantage of this moment and push for more anger action activity in media - bigger and badder fights on TV, more than cream pies being thrown at celebrities, that sort of thing.

And all I want to do is live a quiet, peaceful, retired life, making a pile of dough that I can't spend while I'm alive 'cause it's too hot to handle.

Do I give the go-ahead for the nationwide strike and popup crowds?  Can I be assured these will ease the violent tendencies so we can move on to more constructive maneuvers?

In my hand I have a few tens of thousands of ultra-motivated social beings standing on top of hundreds of thousands of motivated social beings sitting on top of millions of partially-motivated social beings lying on top of billions of unmotivated social beings.

Point made.  We are social beings.

So let's socialise.

How do we constructively dismantle a broken system?  How do we eliminate public and private debt without creating more destitution when eliminating the creditors' credit along with the debtors' debt?

How do we motivate the unmotivated?  Can they be reanimated?  Rejuvenated?

If life if a set of pyramid schemes, some of them declared legal, then how do we resolidify the insolvent foundations?

I am both full and devoid of morals and ethics.  I practice what I've been taught but believe not a word of the teaching.  It is just as easy for me to imagine erasing this planet of all living things as it is to imagine that every living thing is sacred, from harmless minutia to hardened militia.

In other words, every solution to what we call problems is perceivable.

However, I don't believe we want nuclear winter - total, mutual annihilation of life via thermonuclear war.

We obsess about theater-based nuclear war just as much as we obsess about everyone having the "right" to a life of safe, growing standards of living.  Just ask Israel and Iran.  Do either one of them care about North Korea as much as Japan?  What about China and Taiwan?

We are creatures who have developed strong emotional thought sets - avenge a wrong, fall in love, happiness of a new birth, sadness of death.

Therefore, every answer for a problem in society requires thoughtful consideration of our emotional states.  We are primates with nearly hairless faces for a reason, so they say.

So they say!  [I enjoy making fun of people who repeat phrases sardonically]

Every country worries that the Internet will give a new set of virtual leaders the power to call a global strike or demonstrate some other means of taking control from national political/corporate leaders.  Global companies worry that no nation could provide the security services necessary to keep local entropy from growing into worldwide anarchic chaos.

Every system is neutral, providing friends and foes the same tools, with pluses and minuses, positive and negative pathways to the future.

Can a quark think?  Can a quark laugh?  What is intelligence?  What is humour?

You can think.  You can laugh.  You have intelligence and humour in you.

No matter how much I control the virtual world in this blog, Earth spins and its shadow passes over the treetops at sunset when clouds don't cover the sky and Sarkozy watches his reign spin out of control.

I am unimportant which makes you the most important person in the world (since there's only you and me in this universe).  I love every one of you and want you to discover within yourself what it is that makes you important to yourself and others.  I also want you to see why those around you are important and worthwhile to you.

Your opinions are also important, just as much as your laughter.  Express your opinions by screaming at the top of your lungs, if you wish, but give time to listen to the responses of those around you, including those who share your opinions and those who don't.

Make 15th April a day to gather with friends and share your opinions.  As for me, I want to hear what Obama has to say about the American space exploration program when he plans to visit Florida that day.  You may have other important places to gather with your friends and express your opinions.

This Internet thing is a fun tool to use.  For years, I filled up journals with my observations about the environment around me and always wondered what would happen to them since no one besides me read them unless I turned journal entries into poems, short stories or books.  Now I have this thing called a blog, a catalogue of my thoughts recorded on the World Wide Web, that anyone with a computer connection can read.  And all I keep doing is writing about you, like I always have.

The Internet, with its virtual worlds, and the real world in which the Internet resides, all belong to you.  Empower yourself to use this tool to improve your life and those around you rather than spend time tearing down the lives of others to make you feel better.

We don't have to like each other but we can find a way to put our mutual dislike to both our favours.  You'll figure out how if you use your intelligence and sense of humour to enhance your emotional states.

See you in the real world soon, if not sooner.  On a schooner.  Rooting for or against the Sooners, depending on the opponents they plan to route real soon.  All while peaceably listening to Claire Lynch's new tunes and appreciating good, local talent who's just as comfortable singing in front of one as she is when singing with her band in front of tens of thousands.

We live and then we die.  Everything else is up to us, from rooftop living in Cairo to living on the mesa in New Mexico.