Laughter is Salvation

[Payne]

After reading through it I'd have to say I agree with it, but I just don't feel the same.

well, i can tell you one thing, if you're so certain you got it all figured out,

you're almost certainly 169% utterly and completely WRONG

[AFK]

Laughter.

Thats right. Not only does laughter bring joy to yourself or others you wish, but we can turn it against our foes as well. We've all known that feeling of doing something totally normal to us, and then hearing unexpected laughter from behind. Are they laughing at me? Are they making fun of me? Laughter can make the target question what he is doing or what he believes in far better then any revelation from god. Imagine if you will, if six Discordians stood outside the United States Congress, and as our "esteemed" representatives filed in, they simply pointed and laughed. Oh, the chaos!

By laughing at the horrible, we take all power from it, and refuse to allow it to damage us. Next time your boss asks you to work overtime, simply look him in the face and break out in uncontrollable laughter. Watch him walk away. The shocking, the grotesque, everything loses it's power in the face of laughter. By laughing at ourselves we learn humility, and just how funny the universe nearly is. I'll never forget this one girl I had a huge crush on. After I finally worked up the courage to ask her out, she made it very clear she was not the slightest bit interested. And I laughed. Why?

Next time you encounter a problem, or face difficult times, remove yourself from the situation, and imagine if you had seen the same thing happen, but with cartoon characters. You'd be amazed at how funny losing a wallet and not realizing it till your at a toll booth can be!

In a general sense, I agree that Laughter is an important thing to have during our March to Death.  However, I also think you've got a little too much naivete going here.  What the hell, really, does 6 Discordians laughing at some Congressmen do?  I mean, sure, the 6 Discordians might get some giggles out of it, but what does it accomplish?  The Congressmen won't remember them from a hole in the wall.  And laughing at your boss when he suggests overtime?  Again, it may feel good inside, but you're still going to have to do the overtime, or find a new job.  So do you really win in this exchange?

I think Laughter is important, for maintaining the innerself.  And it's good to make others laugh.  But Laughter itself is not going to solve the problems we are facing today.  So while we take our humor seriously, we still need to take the seriousness seriously, because you can't laugh when you've been atomized by an H-bomb. 

[LMNO]

You think we don't laugh enough?

When this  ----->    Is our most often used emote?

When Satire and sarcasm are our bread and butter?

When "Do it for the LAIL" is on of our mottos?

Perhaps our brand of humor is a little dark and gallows-y for your tastes; fine.

But don't try to say that we don't laugh enough.  We're laughing all the way to the apocalypse, friend.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

You've all heard the arguments before: things are bad, but not that bad, but somehow bad enough; humanity is a bunch of hopeless monkeys; I feel like I'm going crazy cause I'm the only one who gets it; etc; etc. Indeed if one were to listen to such arguments, one would have a very bleak and almost misanthropic world view.

But it doesn't have to be like this.

But I WANT it to be like this.

I am not misanthropic because I am bleak, I seem bleak because I am misanthropic.  I just hate stupid hairless apes, and I really wish they'd get the hell off my planet.

And if you can't accept that, then you must just be on some kind of judgemental trip, right?  So stop being so fucking insensitive toward my insensitivity.

TGRR,
Laughs, alright.  In fact, he's laughing right now.  Guess why?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Imagine if you will, if six Discordians stood outside the United States Congress, and as our "esteemed" representatives filed in, they simply pointed and laughed. Oh, the chaos!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Not only that, I'm also saying we can use laughter in many ways, a few that I have not seen used by the odl guard around here.

And because you haven't seen it, it doesn't happen.

Right? 

Right right right?

Well, Shaman, let me be the first to thank you, for being the very first person to ever come here to teach us all how to be REALLY REAL Discordians! 

That's never happened.  Not once in 6 years of hairy-ass, eye-gouging years of fucking with shit, never ONCE has anyone whose balls haven't dropped yet come along to teach us The One True Way to be Discordian.

Thanks, Sensei.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

must...not...poomp....

I poomped.   

[Triple Zero]

Imagine if you will, if six Discordians stood outside the United States Congress, and as our “esteemed” representatives filed in, they simply pointed and laughed. Oh, the chaos!

wow. i didnt even catch that line.

btw Roger, just curious, but if all of us hairless apes finally got off your planet, wouldn't it become horribly boring? who'd you hate on? who'd you kick in the nuts? whose raingod will you be? can you put out the fire if it keeps you warm?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Imagine if you will, if six Discordians stood outside the United States Congress, and as our "esteemed" representatives filed in, they simply pointed and laughed. Oh, the chaos!

wow. i didnt even catch that line.

btw Roger, just curious, but if all of us hairless apes finally got off your planet, wouldn't it become horribly boring? who'd you hate on? who'd you kick in the nuts? whose raingod will you be? can you put out the fire if it keeps you warm?

I will play fucking pinochle with Elvis and Johnny Cash.

And listen to The Rolling Stones.

So just fuck off.  All of you.

[Cain]

I did this rant way better.  I also think Roger may have done a similar one, but I'm not sure, it may have been LMNO, about humour and politics.

Anyway, I say mine was better not just because I have a huge ego (although I do) but because I didn't try to claim an unspecified "old guard" (who presumably includes me) weren't doing things the way I didn't like (how would I know, after all) and concentrated on a particular style of comedy useful in political arguments and discourses, for cutting people down to size.

I also remembered something you apparently forgot Shaman - that good comedy requires an audience to work well.  OK, so you and some other people laugh at some politicians.  So?  Doesn't make a blind bit of differnece.  You don't even make up 0.1% of the eligible vote.  You don't matter.  But if you can make their supporters laugh at them, if you can turn the politicians into figures of ridicule in the eyes of large amounts of the population, make people feel sheepish and somewhat ashamed of looking up to or defending them....well, then you may be onto something.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I did this rant way better.  I also think Roger may have done a similar one, but I'm not sure, it may have been LMNO, about humour and politics.

Anyway, I say mine was better not just because I have a huge ego (although I do) but because I didn't try to claim an unspecified "old guard" (who presumably includes me) weren't doing things the way I didn't like (how would I know, after all) and concentrated on a particular style of comedy useful in political arguments and discourses, for cutting people down to size.

I also remembered something you apparently forgot Shaman - that good comedy requires an audience to work well.  OK, so you and some other people laugh at some politicians.  So?  Doesn't make a blind bit of differnece.  You don't even make up 0.1% of the eligible vote.  You don't matter.  But if you can make their supporters laugh at them, if you can turn the politicians into figures of ridicule in the eyes of large amounts of the population, make people feel sheepish and somewhat ashamed of looking up to or defending them....well, then you may be onto something.

I think he believes that making a politician think that some dirty hippies are laughing at him will make the politician reform his wicked ways.

We all remember what happened when that got tried on Nixon, right?

[LMNO]

[The Good Reverend Roger]

*coffeespew*

YUO ---->  OWE ME A NEW PLASMA SCREEN, YUO BOSTON DEGENERATE!

[LMNO]

YOU'LL GET A NEW PLASMA WHEN YOU PRY IT OUT OF MY COLD, DEAD HANDS, SOCKFUCKER!

[Payne]

Dear LMNO,

I laughed till shit came out of my eyes.

Did I do it wrong?

~~~Concerned from Scotland