On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, White Wolf wrote:

On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, Scott Johnson wrote:

[snipped refutation of my thoughts]

Gee, I found someone being made fun of for each of those.  Guess he isn't 
so far off, is he?

And I found that you were rather stretching to make the point.  Guess he 
might be a bit off, ne?

Maybe somewhere in between.

Probably - as I said, *some* humor is laughing at pain.  Just not all of it.

can get into.  But 'improbably' is the key word there - would we find a 
show where the lead character tripped and sprained his ankle, got beaten 
up by a gang of street thugs, fired from his job, mugged, and hit by a car 
inherently funny?

I loved that episode of Seinfeld!!

As I said in the part you trimmed, there are doubtless ways it could be 
*made* funny.  (One of the best ways, for instance, would be to make them 
happen improbably quickly - having tragedy upon tragedy happen to someone 
within, say, an hour or two, or less, becomes funny simply because it's 
an outrageous amount of bad luck - too much to be believable, almost.)  But 
just the premise in itself isn't inherently funny.  From a completely 
objective standpoint, just seeing that happen over a reasonable period of 
time would probably seem closer to tragedy than comedy.

(Also, just what pain would my .sig be playing off of?)
--
Scott Johnson |
zagyg@io.com  |              This space intentionally left blank.

It's mocking.  You are deliberately degrading something.  Many jokes that 
seem to do no damage otherwise, are mocking in nature.

Oo-kay.  What am I degrading?

--
Scott Johnson |
zagyg@io.com  |          This space intentionally left blank, too.
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