StrongStuff: fun in the...moonlight?

fun in the...moonlight?

i'm off to enjoy a week at the jersey shore...see ya suckers!

5 Comments:

Derby said...: A lollipop, pop, lolly, sucker, or dum-dum is a type of confectionery consisting mainly of hardened, flavoured sucrose with corn syrup mounted on a stick and intended for sucking or licking. They are available in many flavours and shapes.
Lollipops are available in a variety of flavours, particularly fruit flavours. In Europe, especially the Nordic countries, Germany and the Netherlands, salmiakki-flavoured lollipops are also available, but these are largely unknown in other parts of the world. With numerous companies producing lollipops, the candy now comes in dozens of flavors and many different shapes.
Some lollipops contain fillings, such as bubble gum or soft candy. More exotic lollipops may have insects such as mealworm larvae embedded.[1][2]
Some lollipops have been marketed for use as diet aids, although their effectiveness is untested, and anecdotal cases of weight loss may be due to the power of suggestion.
The term "lollipop" was first recorded in England in 1769, denoting a sweetmeat consisting chiefly of sugar or treacle. The first element is perhaps related to "loll", meaning "to dangle" (as in a tongue)—"lolly" was also a northern dialect word for the tongue, although this may in fact be derived onomatopoeically from the mouth sounds associated with sucking and licking. According to another explanation, the term may have originated as a loanword from the Romani language. This theory cites the Romani loli phabai, or "red apple", and notes the term may derive from apples eaten from sticks.
"There's a sucker born every minute" is a phrase often credited to P.T. Barnum, an American showman.
However, when Barnum's biographer tried to track down when Barnum had uttered this phrase, all of Barnum's friends and acquaintances told him it was out of character. Barnum's credo was more along the lines of "there's a customer born every minute" – he wanted to find ways to draw new customers in all the time because competition was fierce and people bored easily.
The entire quote is "There's a sucker born every minute...and two to take 'em." The source of the quote is most likely famous con-man Joseph ("Paper Collar Joe") Bessimer. Barnum's fellow circus owner and arch-rival Adam Forepaugh attributed the quote to Barnum in a newspaper interview in an attempt to discredit him. However, Barnum never denied making the quote. It is said that he thanked Forepaugh for the free publicity he had given him.
Another story credits David Hannum with saying "there's a sucker born every minute", referring to people who were taken in by the Cardiff Giant Hoax. In turn, it was erroneously attributed to Barnum.
However, yet another source credits late 1860's Chicago "bounty broker, saloon and gambling-house keeper, eminent politician, and dispenser of cheating privileges..." Michael Cassius McDonald as the originator of the aphorism. According to the book Gem of the Prairie: Chicago Underworld (1940) by Herbert Asbury, when McDonald was equipping his gambling house known as The Store (at Clark St. and Monroe in Chicago) his partner Harry Lawrence expressed concern over the large number of roulette wheels and faro tables being installed and their ability to get enough players to play the games. McDonald then allegedly said, "Don't worry about that, there's a sucker born every minute."
In the John Dos Passos novel The 42nd Parallel, the quotation is attributed to Mark Twain.
The phrase is also the opening song in the broadway musical Barnum, about P.T. Barnum's life.
The quote is featured on the original 1973 movie posters of Paper Moon, where it is attributed to Barnum; August 18, 2007 at 12:42 AM
tom said...: not funny! i am not pat! i don't deserve this!; August 18, 2007 at 12:10 PM
Derby said...: umour or humor is the ability or quality of people, objects, or situations to evoke feelings of amusement in other people. The term encompasses a form of entertainment or human communication which evokes such feelings, or which makes people laugh or feel happy. The origin of the term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which stated that a mix of fluids known as humours (Greek: χυμός, chymos, literally: juice or sap, metaphorically: flavour) controlled human health and emotion.
A sense of humour is the ability to experience humour, a quality which all people share, although the extent to which an individual will personally find something humorous depends on a host of absolute and relative variables, including geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, and context. For example, young children (of any background) may possibly favour slapstick, such as Punch and Judy puppet shows or cartoons e.g. Tom and Jerry. Satire may rely more on understanding the target of the humour, and thus tends to appeal to more mature audiences.[citation needed] Non-satirical humor can be specifically termed "recreational drollery"
Some claim that humour cannot or should not be explained. Author E. B. White once said that "Humour can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." However, attempts to do just that have been made.
The term "humour" as formerly applied in comedy, referred to the interpretation of the sublime and the ridiculous. In this context, humour is often a subjective experience as it depends on a special mood or perspective from its audience to be effective. Arthur Schopenhauer lamented the misuse of the term (the German loanword from English) to mean any type of comedy.
Language is an approximation of thoughts through symbolic manipulation, and the gap between the expectations inherent in those symbols and the breaking of those expectations leads to emotions such as laughter.[citation needed]. Irony is explicitly this form of comedy, whereas slapstick takes more passive social norms relating to physicality and plays with them[citation needed]. In other words, comedy is a sign of a 'bug' in the symbolic make-up of language, as well as a self-correcting mechanism for such bugs[citation needed]. Once the problem in meaning has been described through a joke, people immediately begin correcting their impressions of the symbols that have been mocked. This is one explanation why jokes are often funny only when told the first time.
Another explanation is that humour frequently contains an unexpected, often sudden, shift in perspective. Nearly anything can be the object of this perspective twist. This, however, does not explain why people being humiliated and verbally abused, without it being unexpected or a shift in perspective, is considered funny - ref. "The Office".
Another explanation is that the essence of humour lies in two ingredients; the relevance factor and the surprise factor. First, something familiar (or relevant) to the audience is presented. (However, the relevant situation may be so familiar to the audience that it doesn't always have to be presented, as occurs in absurd humour, for example). From there, they may think they know the natural follow-through thoughts or conclusion. The next principal ingredient is the presentation of something different from the audience's expectations, or else the natural result of interpreting the original situation in a different, less common way (see twist or surprise factor). For example:
“ A man speaks to his doctor after an operation. He says, "Doc, now that the surgery is done, will I be able to play the piano?" The doctor replies, "Of course!" The man says, "Good, because I couldn't before!" ”
The Simpsons is noted for using this technique many times to evoke humour. Former show runner David Mirkin often refers to it as the “screw-you-audience” joke. A prime example is in the episode "And Maggie Makes Three", wherein Patty and Selma are about to expose the secret of Marge's pregnancy:
Selma: (Looking at the very beginning of the phonebook) "Hi Mr. Aaronson, I'd like to inform you that Marge Simpson is pregnant."
Selma: (Looking exhausted at the very end of the phonebook) "Just thought you'd like to know, Mr. Zackowski. There! Aaronson and Zackowski are the town's biggest gossips. Within an hour, everyone will know.
Both explanations can be put under the general heading of "failed expectations". In language, or a situation with a relevance factor, or even a sublime setting, an audience has a certain expectation. If these expectations fail in a way that has some credulity, humour results. It has been postulated that the laughter/feel good element of humour is a biological function that helps one deal with the new, expanded point of view: a lawyer thinks differently than a priest or rabbi (below), a banana peel on the floor could be dangerous. This is why some link of credulity is important rather than any random line being a punchline.
For this reason, many jokes work in threes. For instance, a class of jokes exists beginning with the formulaic line "A priest, a rabbi, and a lawyer are sitting in a bar..." (or close variations on this). Typically, the priest will make a remark, the rabbi will continue in the same vein, and then the lawyer will make a third point that forms a sharp break from the established pattern, but nonetheless forms a logical (or at least stereotypical) response. Example of a variation:
“ A gardener, an architect, and a lawyer are discussing which of their vocations is the most ancient. The gardener comments, "My vocation goes back to the Garden of Eden, when God told Adam to tend the garden." The architect comments, "My vocation goes back to the creation, when God created the world itself from primordial chaos." They both look curiously at the lawyer, who asks, "And who do you think created the primordial chaos?" ”
Knowing a punch line in advance, or some situation which would spoil the delivery of the punchline, can destroy the surprise factor, and in turn destroy the entertainment value or amusement the joke may have otherwise provided. Conversely, a person previously holding the same unexpected conclusions or secret perspectives as a comedian could derive amusement from hearing those same thoughts expressed and elaborated. That there is commonality, unity of thought, and an ability to openly analyse and express these (where secrecy and inhibited exploration was previously thought necessary) can be both the relevance and the surprise factors in these situations. This phenomenon explains much of the success of comedians who deal with same-gender and same-culture audiences on gender conflicts and cultural topics, respectively.
Notable studies of humour have come from the pens of Aristotle in The Poetics (Part V) and of Schopenhauer.
There also exist linguistic and psycholinguistic studies of humour, irony, parody and pretence. Prominent theoreticians in this field include Raymond Gibbs, Herbert Clark, Michael Billig, Willibald Ruch, Victor Raskin, Eliot Oring, and Salvatore Attardo. Although many writers have emphasised the positive or cathartic effects of humour some, notably Billig, have emphasised the potential of humour for cruelty and its involvement with social control and regulation.
A number of science fiction writers have explored the theory of humour. In Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein proposes that humour comes from pain, and that laughter is a mechanism to keep us from crying. Isaac Asimov, on the other hand, proposes (in his first jokebook, Treasury of Humor) that the essence of humour is anticlimax: an abrupt change in point of view, in which trivial matters are suddenly elevated in importance above those that would normally be far more important.
Approaches to a general theory of humour have generally referred to analogy or some kind of analogical process of mapping structure from one domain of experience onto another. An early precursor of this approach would be Arthur Koestler, who identified humour as one of three areas of human creativity (science and art being the other two) that use structure mapping (then termed "bisociation" by Koestler) to create novel meanings[3]. Tony Veale, who is taking a more formalised computational approach than Koestler did, has written on the role of metaphor and metonymy in humour[4][5][6], using inspiration from Koestler as well as from Dedre Gentner´s theory of structure-mapping, George Lakoff´s and Mark Johnson´s theory of conceptual metaphor and Mark Turner´s and Gilles Fauconnier´s theory of conceptual blending.
[edit]Evolution of humor
As any form of art, humour techniques evolve through time. Perception of humour varies greatly among social demographics and indeed from person to person. Throughout history comedy has been used as a form of entertainment all over the world, whether in the courts of the kings or the villages of the far east. Both a social etiquette and a certain intelligence can be displayed through forms of wit and sarcasm.18th-century German author Georg Lichtenberg said that "the more you know humour, the more you become demanding in fineness."
Sight gags and language-based humor activate the two regions in the human brain known to have von Economo neurons, a specialization in neuron form that has evolved in the last 15 million years. This suggests that humor may have coevolved with the ability of great apes and humans to navigate through a shifting and complex social space.; August 18, 2007 at 6:04 PM
Chogrin said...: wow, Scott went all out on this one...there's no way I can beat that...but anywho your vampire surfer chick is awesome! Will you have prints of this at the upcoming con? Peace!

~El Capitan Game~; August 19, 2007 at 6:44 PM
TOM REBELLO said...: neat-o tom!; August 21, 2007 at 9:35 PM