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| This is sort of what we did. |
Hэлло Woялd
I find this world to be absolutely hilarious. A realm of absurdities and ironies, it's like walking along a comic strip. I find myself being amused quite often. You come across all sorts of people, policies and fanatics.
When I came to this country I was 2 feet tall, now 20 years later I’ve tripled in height. I'm a Berlin Wall Baby, born on the eastern front of that barricade in homeland motherland: the Soviet Union. No wall, immigrant status, or propaganda could stop our family from making a run for it. It was 1989. Screw the moon, the race was for the American border (or any free country for that matter). As we were making our way through middle Europe, it seemed like we were orbiting in zero gravity. Our Soviet citizenship revoked, our passports read: Status-refugee; Destination:_______. We had no where to go and no where to return. We had 2 steps in our emigration. Step 1: get out. Step 2: get in.
I wouldn't be surprised if my parents took a course at the local community college called "C2C: Making the Transition from Communism to Capitalism." It was a shock to learn that you actually get paid for the work you do.
That being said, cars crash, people die, economies collapse, Berlin walls go up and down, dictator's blossom and burn, and crime is in fashion. Welcome to Earth: the most hazardous planet to live on.
In his novels, Dostoevsky is known for putting a handful of crazy characters into one room and watch what may come of the situation. Likewise, it is this model that I will emulate in my blog. Similarly, the Man himself once said something along the lines of "by taking something to its extreme one is able to determine the truth of the matter." Earth is the only planet that is inhabitable due to its atmosphere. It is because of this very atmosphere that keeps living things alive and stupidity thriving. My aim is to sniff out this stupidity, call it what it is, and present the insane in a sanely fashion; all to bring out the truth of the matter.
I've been in a number of disconcerting situations, and they are my favorite kind. I find solace in chaos. If I were to be a CEO and walk into an office and find everyone sitting calmly, I would say to myself "the work here is done! Give me the tyrannical, your problems, your stubborn jackals yearning to break free, the weirdos in your team." I need to solve chaos. I make sense of chaos.
I will not stray too far in the recesses of my mind to bring forth the comedic, satiric, and the absurd, I have not to look far but only that which occurs between the sun and the moon. The world makes a joke out of itself, is self-satirizing, and hilariously absurd. In short, I will create absurd situations and fill a room full of crazy characters and make the following clear: where there are people, there are problems. A room full of idiot’s makes stupidity go round. Can you imagine a world full of idiots...
Naturally the physiology of the human body adapts to whatever environment it lives in. So does our psychological mentality. By surrounding itself with intelligent things, it becomes simply that: intelligent. Conversely, by surrounding itself in base things, it cannot help but absorb and become less than desirable. It naturally adjusts to the pollutants that are afloat en masse media (also known as propaganda).
A recent study indicated that the amount of idiots per million over the years has risen, to toxic levels. There are too many lies in the atmosphere; I am deeply concerned about a worldwide epidemic that is taking place: Global Stupidity.
Please, let's stop using coal minds to extract cheap humor, vile art, and trivial literature. Cheap minds of elementary value only pollute the airwaves; literature, news, music, and art is becoming too hazardous for us to be exposed to.
People think I am funny, however I am not of the same persuasion, on the contrary I think everyone around me is rather dull. I cannot help but interpret and express the world the way I do. Here you will find ideas, people, events and such taken to an extreme. All for the purpose of finding the truth, motive, underlying reason, etc. I have been considered as "being very observant." Let us see.
A kopeck for my thoughts, a rouble for my troubles...
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| I don't know, but it's true. |
Laughter: it's good for the heart, it's good for the soul.
After a frustrated search for a praiseworthy satire/parody/humor blog to profile, I stumbled upon funnyandjewish.com (formerly shylockslepthere.com). It was a good feeling finally landing on a satire blog that has a clear idea of what it is, and what it is writing about. The blogger of “Funny & Jewish” is not explicitly named, but on his former blog, he referred to himself as “Shylock”.
Shylock is a Jewish male who has a “wife and kids” and establishes his credibility as a Jew in one of the posts, saying “I propose that humor is an integral component of every Jew. It is embedded in our spiritual and physical DNA”, thus, being a Jew Shylock has relevant first-hand experience to the in and outs of the Jewish culture. This gives him the ability to effectively do the following on his own people: “Satire, Parodies, Jokes & Featured Funny Stuff” (as written in the blog description).
Browsing through his posts, I notice that it is being quickly and constantly occupied by clever observations, witticisms and light humor. The most recent blog post was 27 October 2010 and previous posts have been made once or twice a month. Technorati.com was not able to locate this blog and using Alexa.com, I determined his fandom. The popularity of the blog according to alexa.com as of November 18, 2010: Funny & Jewish is 5,272,814 in the Alexa Traffic Rank, but is 36,428 in Canada. Due to it being greater than the 100,000 rank, Alexa cannot provide any further statistical information. He is gaining traction in Canada and perhaps is picking speed on the global front.
Shylock’s vision for his blog and personal POV on the world are nearly identical with my own. It appears that the reason why he started writing this light satirical humor is because he wanted to shake up the stiff-necked and rustle the feathers of the up-tight. Like him, I also find it hilarious when people take themselves or an idea too seriously, and so, I always make it a point to (whether in speech or written prose) stretch the idea until it becomes so ridiculous and comical, that eventually the “tight-wads” can laugh at themselves. I do this because I care, I want people to lighten up a bit, and learn how to live. Shylock is outlandish, but knows that jokes, like everything else in the world, has its borders: “Don’t get me wrong. Religious Jews love to laugh. But there’s a fine line (I’m told) between funny and offensive...”
To my understanding, this blog is neither scholarly, academic or professional. Perhaps it may be considered professional in the sense that he may be receiving advertising revenue by writing professionally on a subject he knows best: being Jewish. His posts are short enough to be able to gulp down in one serving, but long enough to which the subject matter is inclusive of every possible facet of satire, clever, humor. One great example is in the post “Goliath's Report Card” where a principal writes to the parents about their behemoth son Goliath, recommending “The Army. He’s his own platoon. His love for taunting children with “sticks and stones may break my bones” is music to a recruiter’s ears. Because his promotion through the ranks is a ‘gimmie’ (would you say no?), I am in agreement in recommending a career as a Philistine warrior. Goliath’s arrogance will make us all very proud.” Even Shylock's enemies still need a good laugh at themselves.
He primarily “serves the greater community of 600,000 Jewish root souls” and targets them, although all walks of life can enjoy a good jab at another culture. This blog will feed my work in that, when I hit a blogger block or any other overused metaphor, the simplicity and directness of Shylocks blog will guide me to sniff out the sharpest satire/humor.
Though we stand on the same ground in our blog topics, my site will differ in the content I will choose to mock. There is a whole world of people that are begging to be satirized, I will pull out the ridiculousness of the things the “world/society” values, and I will be like a prophet holding up the sign: “Warning: this will be the past if we don’t stop the future right now.”
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| The only part of him that isn't white is his hair. |
A voice worth listening to
Christian Lander created a blog titled “Stuff White People Like”, a study of upper-middle-class white culture, a comical and clever observational blog for making a path in modern white society. His voice is that of a scientific observer or sociologist that is peering into a zoo of white people. Essentially what Jane Goodall accomplished with primates, Christian Lander did with white culture. His blog has 74,700,125 hits, truly he struck a nerve of conviction people felt and a vein of culture people bled. His goal is to bring contemporary white culture to its senses and have them living a real life. Lander accomplishes this by stating observations, such as, white people like the Ted Conference (#134 The TED Conference) only because:
You see white people like the idea of getting smarter quickly, but they don’t like the idea of people thinking that they are lazy. It is a bit of a paradox, but it does explain why white people only like Cliff Notes if they are part of some sort of hilarious college story about last-minute studying for an exam. And why they consider it highly unacceptable to use cliff notes or Wikipedia to get a rough understanding of a book you don’t want to read.
He sounds as though he is being serious, but it is absurdity wrapped in the fooling guise of ‘scholarly prose’. As a graduated graduate student, Lander knows how to pull those strings and does it effectively in absolutely every-single-post. He is so subtle in his approach that a good number of people probably take him too seriously, nodding their heads in agreement, all the while missing the point that Lander is actually satirizing them and not talking about them.
This blog is simple. The bare DNA of it is: simple. It is comprised of a list of things white people do, numbered 1 through infinity. Each ‘thing’ is written about, equating to 1 blog post. There are a lot of key words of pop culture from Conan O’Brien, Ray-Ban Wayfarers, Bansky, Bob Marley, the World Cup, Facebook, Netflix, Marijuana, and so on. All these key words help put SWPL near the top of every search, gathering many views.
His sentence style is simple. Just the way the ‘white person’ likes it. A simple sentence with a complicated implication. His writing is intelligent but concise, with few (if any) grammatical errors in between. He delivers and pauses at precise moments to let each bullet point settle. His sentence structure has been strikingly consistent for over 2 years since he first posted #1 Coffee. Perhaps the only thing that has changed is the length of his posts, they are getting longer and ingeniously descriptive. The emotions that are conveyed are so blunt that they are mistaken as being genuine, for example, when Lander says,
For many white people, TED Conferences are actually a source of sadness and depression. This comes from their dreams to attend a future TED Conference in person. But with a price tag of $6000 and an invite-only policy, many white people are simply unable to attend. This is a new concept for white people as they have successfully been creating and joining expensive exclusive clubs for over one thousand years. Popular examples include: private schools, politics, and ice hockey.
Lander is clearly being sarcastic, but because he sounds so serious and full of goodwill when he writes, he is able to digress about touchy subjects such as ‘class’ and get away with it. This is because what Lander says about the ‘white person’ (or human nature) is so unabashedly true that the natural response is to nod in agreement, thinking nothing of what he implied.
The content of the blog is simple: all the things we love to do, and hate to lose. Currently there are 134 blog posts, each on a different thing a white person likes. The character of the blog fits snugly into the mindset of a white person: blissful simplicity. This reflects the character of the character, namely, he knows himself and his own culture so well that he is able to intelligently wrap petty trifles in expensive words.
Simplicity & humor is Lander’s technique to get middle class America thinking about their sham of an existence.
