I don’t do funny. At all.
I can’t tell jokes, I loathe crass racist or sexist jokes, and my sense of humour is limited to the top of the acid scale.
Which is why I find it strange when people tell me my emails are funny, or my blog posts are funny. They aren’t written to be humorous but they sometimes make people smile. But that’s a good thing. And nice. Even if I don’t understand why what I say is funny.
I read a blog post via a link on a good blog and I found it appalling. Not clever, not funny, not anything. My brain switched right off.
And that made me think of so-called humour or funny blogs. Can’t think of a single one that makes me laugh. But what does, are the comments, not just on my blogs but when I visit other blogs. 1:1 works far better than contrived humour.
Humour and jokes are for specialists and I know that isn’t my forté.
So, I do neither.
On the other hand, I read a different post about how long boring rants are tedious in the extreme. OK, it wasn’t expressed as lucidly as that.
I would prefer a long well-written rant, than a short post about absolutely nothing. Because long thoughtful posts beat short dribble drivel every time.
In the meantime, after receiving an unsolicited email from one of the Misery Engineers at WordPress, I had the following exchange on one of their blogs. Well, it would have been an exchange had my reply been published … Censorship. Love it.
I dropped you a message via email a couple of days ago asking for some more information. We’re happy to fix up any issues you’re seeing. If you didn’t get the message please let me know.
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Hi Andy, I did get the message but it referred to one of my blogroll pages so I was a bit confused. I’ll try and send you a reply, but tbh I haven’t got the time to send you every single URL that I don’t get to see immediately, or that disappears, or that never appears.
Appreciate you being willing to help, but you get paid to work for WP, I don’t. And as all the appearing, non-appearing, disappearing blogs vary, I’m not sure what the added value would be? Is it blog URL related or is it just a Reader bug problem? I would have thought it was the latter.
As you can see, my comment never got published. It’s been moderated for ever and a day.
I don’t do funny and I don’t work for WordPress for free.
But here is funny, funny. By The Sweet.
roughseasinthemed
Clouds moving in 
My hair looked like that too, in the seventies.
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Mine was Farrah Fawcett. Still is!
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My hair was Jenifer Aniston. long straight an blonde,;)
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Hm, I’m not sure I know who she is, but sounds pretty much like Brian Connolly’s too.
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It all depends on what makes us laugh. Fart jokes and such just don’t work for me. Now, a well constructed rant…that’s more like it! BTW–here’s a great ‘ranter’, fellow Newfoundlander Rick Mercer: nobody rants like Rick!
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I think you – extremely generously – compared me to Rick before. But his rants are sometimes serious aren’t they? Or at least that one was, bullying, gays, total victimisation. He did forget to say that when you get older things change yet again, but he’s not that old yet …
I can live with banal verbal humour, but it doesn’t work in writing. Written humour needs to be very clever, and I am the first to admit I won’t even try to do it. And so, supposedly humorous blogs that are just * shivers and struggles for words * contrived, basic, unfunny, choose whatever word you want, leave me gaping in disbelief. I mean, I read posts and think – people really find this funny?
I think rants are different. A well-written one, cleverly done, with some good satire or sarcasm will make me smile. Hell, I even smile at a couple of my own posts. But unless you are Oscar Wilde, I wouldn’t even dream of trying at written humour. It is probably the most difficult type of writing there is.
Incidentally Rick sounds very US American, he has a very strong accent. Canadians I have met have been more softly spoken. Brits obviously didn’t occupy Newfoundland for long enough (another treaty of utrecht post drafted – referring to Canada – and to post at some point). And – you are posting too quickly. Slow down! You move too fast!
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I remember when I had lots of hair 😦
Love the contrived lyrics, funny funny and honey honey. Reminds me of that line from the chorus of “Elenore” by the Turtles, from a similar era:
Elenore, gee I think you’re swell
And you really do me well
You’re my pride and joy, et cetera
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Partner had lots of brown hair a few years back. Now it’s grey and short, because long and grey doesn’t look good. There’s still lots of it though.
I’d forgotten the Elenore song. I liked that. Would have failed miserably on a pop quiz me, I’d never have guessed The Turtles. Reading the name Elenore reminded me of Barry Ryan and Eloise. Why was it sung Ell-Louise??? And my Ell Louisa, I want to please her? What rhyming is that? It took me years to track Eloise down because I could never find the song because of the spelling. But Barry Ryan did big orchestration well before Bohemian Rhapsody.
Thought I had put a link to Eloise on here before but I can’t find it. That doesn’t mean anything. I’ll add one later just because I like any excuse to play it, although not entirely popular in this household on s Saturday evening.
Apparently The Turtles were the only ones to have ever rhymed et cetera in a song.
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Humour is such an individual thing and what makes me laugh will leave others cold and vice-versa. I’ve always been hopeless at telling jokes myself (can never remember the punchline) so i leave verbal humour to others. But I do enjoy good written humour and have some favourite writers, both in books and in blogs, who can make me laugh almost helplessly at times. Obviously not everything they write is equally funny, but the best of them will always keep me coming back for more.
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I used to like Monty Python and Rowan and Martin. Billy Connolly left me cold, as did Max Boyce. Not sure whether it was their accent I couldn’t understand or their humour.
I got so distracted thinking about old Brit humour that I ended up watching Morecambe and Wise (on YouTube), which my parents watched so therefore I was ambivalent at a young age, but I ended up in hysterics the other night at all the old sketches so never got around to replying to this! Does humour change as we age? Perhaps.
I’ve read a few funny books, Bill whatsit taking his fridge around Ireland did make me laugh. Helen’s aerosol blog post also did, but most writers elicit a smile from me, not a sheer laugh. I also laugh at seriously crude humour sometimes though, but it has to have some wit about it.
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I think a lot of the old ones are the best and we’ve had fun listening to some of our old favourite radio shows on Radio 4 Extra. A lot of modern humour leaves me completely cold.
One comic writer I always enjoyed was Alan Coren. The best of his pieces have had me almost weeping with laughter.
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I’m glad I’m not the only one to furrow my brow and wonder what is ‘funny’ about modern humour. But you know you are old when you start listening or watching re-runs or clips because they are still funny now (or maybe because they were funny then) instead of trying to understand so-called modern humour. The mid-morning comedy programmes (depending on the day) on R4 were excellent were they not. Have to say I was also a huge Just a Minute fan. Such a clever game. And depending on the combination of panel, sometimes hilarious. My favourite shows were usually when there weren’t any guests, so just Nimmo, Williams, Freud, and Jones plus Parsons of course, just because they were so expert at it.
I liked the News Quiz, and as for writing, when I was working for a govt press office – Punch was standard reading because they always sniped at the government. There was usually a fight to read it on Thursday (don’t think it always came on a Wednesday), but the same person always one and wandered around the office reading out titbits to everyone, the funniest always being about our organisation. (It was in the Coren years).
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Interesting, both the post, and WP’s response. Surely you aren’t the only person experiencing Reader issues. Vicky mentioned similar in a comment to me. Surely, they can’t require that kind of detailed information from everyone who reports the issue… But, it seems they do.
Humour is like love. What I find hilarious, another person doesn’t. Where I feel love, another person will feel indifference. I wonder if you inherit sense of humour – nature or nurture? Dad & I have similar a sense of humour, so whenever I doubt myself, I blame him.
Ah, The Sweet… great memories there. I have a cassette album of The Sweet somewhere. It’s so old it probably doesn’t work now. YouTube is great for trips to the past.
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Apparently I am not the only one with R issues. But I have better things to do than collect a whole load of urls that haven’t posted immediately. EG I now have a clean shower, and while I might find that tedious to clean, it beats copying a load of urls for someone else who is getting paid to probably do stuff all about it anyway.
Odd, my dad and I tended to watch the same whacky humour (BBC) progs and enjoyed them too.
I have either one or two Sweet singles (45rpm). Definitely CoCo, not sure about the other.
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I could have written the first two sentences about myself too.
I think there are many glitches in WP. I was only saying the other day, I didn’t appear to be having any trouble with ‘reader’ when I suddenly discovered I was 😦
Have you had a response from them yet, or are you still awaiting moderation?
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So pleased I am not the only one with a limited sense of humour and who can’t create it either verbally or in writing.
No response so far. 🙂
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I wrote to WP recently to suggest that they didn’t keep messing about with things quite so much or to at least forewarn users of changes and give the reasons. I got a standard FO response which directed me to an information item that simply said that they were continuously improving the product. I was tempted to respond and tell them that they were failing badly in this objective but then decided that there really was no pint.
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You mean you wrote on the forum? because you can’t contact support anymore unless you are a paying member, and I can’t quite see you doing that anymore than I would.
I swear (puts on ageist hat) they are staffed by young idiots who are brainwashed into churning out party rhetoric and haven’t an original brain cell between them. Reminds me of a call centre, where when you ask a difficult question that isn’t on the list, they get really confused and try and find the nearest appropriate one. It would be funny if it wasn’t costing me money to ring, so I no longer deal with them.
I discovered a blog today where I had missed three posts over the last fortnight. In fact, I am vaguely thinking about doing his job for him and saving a doc so that everytime I find something I have missed, I can just add it under – never appeared at all, or appeared hours, days later. I could even take screen shots of the varying postings. Whether or not I will is another matter. I have a block to run, books to read, blogs to read and write, and a flat to clean, plus a finca. Which is why I thought it was a bloody cheek asking me to compile a list.
Foreign Office? Didn’t know WP was involved with the FO 😉
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You guessed right! I wrote on the Forum! Just got a sarky response from TimeThief!
WP seems to be run like a 6th Form Project with all sorts of random changes and I am sure that it will all just all fall over one day!
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Yes but TT is a volunteer and not a Misery Engineer. I got to know a few of them when I commented on Off Topic before they got rid of it, presumably because it was full of lippy individuals, so I tend to read her blogs. But yes, I think some of the comments in general on the forum can be really patronising and unhelpful, bang head against wall sort of thing. I’ve not looked for a while as that’s one of the first to go when I cut down on internet time. I did have a laugh at some freshly pressed highlights though on the WP blog. Too funny.
There is a reason why I have retained my blogger blogs …..
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