Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Walk in the footsteps of George Washington or Tip O’Neill. Experience the grim Colonial graveyard near Harvard Square or the marbled Victorian vistas of Mount Auburn Cemetery. You can visit Brattle Street’s elegant Tory Row or some really, really ugly modern architecture.

For even more options, and to make reservations, get the pdf you can link to from the Cambridge city page.

I sure hope it doesn’t rain here on July 5.

If you read Harry Potter–and don’t you?–I’m Hermione. The most exciting stuff I have to say is nerdy or fun stuff I learned and what I thought of it.

That’s why I’m scared as well as inspired by Halley on “life and death bloggers.” I care about the real lives of bloggers I read–but my real life is not what I blog about.

If I blog about good stuff going on in my life, I worry that I sound boastful.
If I blog about stuff that makes me unhappy, I worry that I am whining. If I offer advice–won’t I just sound smug? If I refrain from offering advice, I feel guilty because I’m not trying to help. What a worry wart!

I’m Hermione and I’m also New England. I know lots of people who hug and kiss-kiss their friends, and I really like it when friends do it to me, but I also worry about if I’m doing it right, which probably means I’m not.

I really like kissing my two kids and my husband. I don’t worry if I’m doing it right with them. And I used to like kissing my mother hello and goodbye–she liked it too–but the gesture was so untraditional, so un-New-England, that her dog would start barking fiercely whenever I did it.

And, if you want to know something personal about me, I really, really, really miss my mother, who died just a little bit more than two years ago.

Last month I claimed that NH had made me irony-deficient. Today, Zoe Williams in the Guardian has the real dish on irony, dissecting its postmodern use

“not..to lance a boil of duplicity, but rather to undermine sincerity altogether, to beggar the mere possibility of a meaningful moral position.”

Thank you, Zoe! That’s what I’m talking about!

For my generation, a “meaningful moral position” sounds almost oxymoronic. I couldn’t defend or define my own beliefs about right and wrong. Is morality like pornography (“I know it when I see it”)? Is it like art (“I know what I like”)? And yet, I keep trying and trying to do the right thing–whatever the heck that is.

And those smugly post-moral postmoderns tittering behind their hands annoy the bejeezus out of me.

Here’s Kalilily, one of blogdom’s most famous blondes, just back from a magical visit to Maine and posing next to Blogsisters.

I just (finally) read her interview with Frank Paynter. Boy, I’m glad I didn’t read it before he interviewed me–I would have been too intimidated to say yes. She is one red-hot momma.

I love the way Elaine embodies so many different people, often all in the same sentence–mother and sexpot, dreamer and doer, bookworm and witch and warrior and more–for example, when she explains the choice of her nickname:

I came up with combining Kali — for the Lilith-related goddess of death and rebirth — and lily — for Lilith, for “Elaine the fair, Elaine the pure, Elaine the Lilymaide of Astalot.”   And there’s also my affinity for Georgia O’Keefe’s calla lilies.  One of my lovers, the one with whom I went to Paris in the spring, gave me a sterling silver ring with the shape of a calla lily.  It’s the only ring I tend to wear.  So, you see, I just love it when disparate parts of my life weave together like that.  Like a web.  Like the net.

Elaine of Kalilily is much more fun than the chaste and fair maid of Astalot, but I did find a cool page of links to texts and images of Tennyson’s idyll “Lancelot and Elaine.”

Of course the answer to the age old question of what does a Scotsman wear under his kilt is……his shoes.

Steve MacLaughlin, in Frank Paynter’s latest interview

I love Frank Paynter’s interviews because they remind me of questions I didn’t know I had–for example, what would a Scotsman who was a Mormon wear under his kilt? While researching this topic, I learned the answer to another question: “Does a Google search on “Mormon underwear photo” turn up lots of porno?”

The answer to that one is yes.

I don’t share MacLaughlin’s scorn of bloggers-who-blog-about-blogging, but he does say some interesting stuff in the interview:

I believe that there has been less debate over Rousseau’s “The Social Contract” or “Waiting For Godot” by Samuel Beckett than there has been over what blogging is or what it means in some larger social context. History always repeats itself and blogging is the latest iteration of personal journals, which is not a new concept to say the least.

And, as always, Paynter says some really good stuff:

Some bloggers, for example Dave Winer, are unashamed blogging evangelists. Some, like Chris Locke, have extended their personal publishing into blog space. Some, like AKMA, find blogging to be an online community building opportunity….

Paynter’s insights are so unlike the heavy-handed parodies of A-list bloggers John Scoble posted on his site a while ago. To condense its long, unfunny slam at Dave Winer:

10. Print “Dave claims he invented everything.” 
20. Print “Dave thinks he’s sooooo great.” 
30. Goto 10.

It reads like a high-tech version of Limbaugh-does-Clinton. Ugh.

If somebody wanted to parody Winer’s blog, it would be a lot funnier to write something that sounds like Winer’s blog–RSS, Harvard, dinner with friends, what I said last year, how morality should shape software standards. A good parody would have short entries, lots of links, and some funny thumbnail images.

A good parody, like Winer himself, would be fun to read.

Christopher Moore just came out with a new book, and if that doesn’t stir you, let me remind you of some of Moore’s previous titles:

• Island of the Sequined Love Nun
• The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

In addition to fine books and zingy titles, Moore wrote my favorite author’s disclaimer ever.* I can’t wait for paperback to read
Fluke : Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings.

I’m buying two hardcovers in a week? Moore and Harry Potter put a spell on me.

*”If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it.
If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil.
If you seek an adventure, may this story sing you away to blissful escape.
If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions….”

Chistopher Moore, Lamb

“A physicist friend of mine once said that in facing death, he drew some consolation from the reflection that he would never again have to look up the word “hermeneutics” in the dictionary.”

Steven Weinberg, “Sokal’s Hoax”, NYRB, August 8, 1996

“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.”

Paul Dirac (1902-84)

You know, POMO prose might make more sense if we thought of it as poetry. But I’m not waiting for my deathbed to figure out what the stuff I’m reading actually means.

Bricolage

Derived from the French word “bricoleur” (a Jack-of-all-trades or handyman). POMOs use “bricolage” for any patchwork or non-expert creation.

Dialogism

Theory that every statement is “really” half a dialog with some imaginary listener–and therefore impersonal, objective statements don’t exist.

Heteroglossia

the challenge of nonstandard dialects to an official language–metaphorically, challenges to any dogma.

Sadly, the POMO bricolage of buzzwords works better as an author’s job-application than it does as a reader’s source of information. Yule Heibel has some very interesting remarks on the economic basis of POMO prose in her comments on my rant yesterday.

I’m working on my own little POMO glossary, and check this out:

The Phallus

“…some critics say the term ‘the Phallus’ in Lacan’s work has as many as eight meanings and some as few as one meaning. One thing everyone pretty much agrees on, though, is that Lacan tries to maintain a distinction between the Phallus as a signifier privileged male attributes, and the penis, as a spongy little organ that can’t live up to the Phallus’s inflated claims.”

Those POMOs have been reading too much spam–or hanging out with some very unmotivated guys.

“When people throw excrement at one another whenever they meet, either verbally or actually, can this be interpreted as a case of wit, or merely written down as a case of throwing excrement? This is the central question of all interpretation.”

Mary Douglas, Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (1975)

Picture Galileo, climbing the steps of the leaning tower on a hot Italian summer afternoon. Picture Newton, hiding out under the apple tree and scratching his bugbites as he tries to read. Picture your family doctor, shining that little light up your nose…discovery isn’t pretty. Even my research–trying to figure out what makes people laugh, why some jokes are funnier than others, and who has already said good stuff on this topic–even my research can be ugly.

Some of the world’s most infuriating people have written and written and written about humor. I have one short but cherished list of “Stupid Things Smart People Have Said About Humor”, and one of my favorites is the little gem above from Mary Douglas, an anthropologist studying tribal joke rituals.

So imagine my horror when I came across that very quote in a scholarly book about “everyday conversation.” Somebody else had already made the joke I was planning to make–somebody had beaten me to the laugh at this utterly humorless “insight” into humor. Then, to my relief, I realized the author was quoting Douglas approvingly. Woo hoo! I still have my joke!

Frank Paynter has been taking the piss out of postmodern criticism, bless him. Pity me, Frank–I have to read this stuff, because most modern literary theory is written in this tangled, PC, complex, language that you have to read three times before you are really sure that what the paragraph says is 1) obvious, 2) bullshit or 3) (much less often) useful. Here’s a short sample, from Salamansky himself (herself? none-of-your-goddamn-business-what-my-gender-is-self?):

“However, in Heidegger’s formulation, Rede, the rhetorically “correct,” strives toward systematics of exclusivity and closure in its attempt to screen out as much heteroglossia and dialogism as possible for the sake of clarity–to hone language, if it were possible, to monoglossia, to limit its bricolage of genres and narrative levels. A police officer for instance, making an arrest, is unlikely to wax poetic or relate deep-seated childhood traumas to the accused.”

S.I. Salamensky, Talk Talk Talk: The Cultural Life of Everyday Conversation (2001)

Enough poking fun at the world’s multiple genders–but speaking of poking fun, let’s talk about marriage.

I invite blogworlders to chip in with good advice about how two people of happily different genders can coexist. If you think that’s too flimsy a segue–Dan Berlinger of Archipelago is getting married–congratulations, Dan!

To start with, here are four very standard pieces of marriage advice:

Don’t say things in anger that you will later regret.

Remember Han Solo in the garbage compactor, dodging the ricochets of his own bullet? At least the bullet stopped after a few bounces–nobody got hurt thinking about it later.

Marriage is not 50-50, it’s 80-20.

Expect to give 80% and get back 20%. And so will your parner.

What goes around comes around.

In a long marriage, you will be the person your partner knows best–the model for what’s okay and what’s forbidden. If you break promises or sulk for hours–so (eventually) will your partner. If you give little presents or call when you’ll be late coming home–so (eventually) will your partner.

Never go to bed angry.

It’s a lonely feeling to wake up and remember the stupid fight that you both thought was more important than your love for each other.

You can also learn a lot from watching people do really stupid stuff:

“Ann wouldn’t know about that, would you, Ann?”

Ewwww–there’s nothing more painful than watching a couple needle each other in public. Before you take some nasty, “witty” poke at your mate, just remember how ugly you look doing it.

“What did mean Daddy do to you?”

There are about 8 zillion reasons not to compete for your kids’ affection by putting each other down. Teach your kids by example that hurting anyone in the family hurts the whole family unit–and vice versa. You will eventually be very glad your kids learned this.

“I made the coffee, get your own god-damned cup.”

Some days, life is exhausting–that’s not your partner’s fault. You’re more likely to get praise and affection for a cup of tea delivered with a smile than for a whole pot of hand-picked Peruvian organic coffee you snarled about making.

“That’s mine!” “No, it’s mine!”

I knew a couple whose shared nerdy fun of building electric trains turned into a war between two obsessions. They should have remember Dan Berlinger’s fine saying, “Be mindful. Be focused. Be of the moment. Be respectful.”

Come to think of it, maybe Dan is the one who should be giving us advice. Good luck, kids!