Monday, December 14, 2009

No laughing matter

I am most comfortable speaking and typing (we hardly write anymore, I think it’s time the verb fell out of use) using the Queen’s tongue. Not literally of course, that would be gross. My lack of mastery over the language of my forefathers is a result of both not having the opportunity to learn/use it at school and having parents who were perfectly comfortable with a conversation where speakers carried on in different languages (Mallu by the parents and English by my brother and me) which made for very interesting phrasing amidst arguments but more of that some other time.

So English is my only effective literary weapon seeing as my Hindi is rusty, my French is blunt and my Malayalam is double edged (i.e. it would hurt me more than the other guy if I used it). Also for me to write a blog is to put my above mentioned wickd lit skyllz to the test. Any way the long and the short of it is I’ve often opinionated lazily, mostly to inanimate objects, that there’s really not that much to write about and who would read all these blogs anyway.

But given my appreciation for good humor which is evident from my super intelligent comments ranging from the simple LOL to the gut busting ROFLMAO when I started reading blogs like krishashok, indiauncut and others, I was of course inspired to start my own version of blather. At which point I encountered the challenge that makes most aspiring bloggers give up like the Indian team, despite the best efforts of Sachin. Namely, what do I write about? Still working on it.

However what I wanted to know after reading those blogs was how post after post these guys could carry on the banter. In short, not being content with getting my funny bone tickled, I wanted to learn how I could tickle other people’s ribs without becoming an orthopaedist or getting a restraining order.

Which led me, the thoroughly unfunny person that I am, to a whole host of wiki articles on humor that were more of the mind numbing variety than the type mentioned previously. Nevertheless I learnt completely useless things like how sarcasm was only one version of irony and that ‘polysemy’ was not a euphemism for a trailer park.

And with it the realization of what E.B White ( the author of Charlotte’s Web) said of efforts like mine. "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."

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