Full Flush 10

I’m not a comedian.?

But I know how to make people laugh.

It comes in handy, because people generally like to laugh. Especially after bad meetings and bad sex. Actually, it’s not so much that people like to laugh—they need to laugh. I dunno where laughter fits into the Maslow picture but I’m pretty sure we all have a primal urge to lol.

Humour cuts the red wire with 00:02 left on the clock and defuses the social awkwardness bomb; it applies emotional aloe to the sunburnt soul (it rubs the lol-tion on its skin?). “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.” I heard that a bit when I worked agency side. That and “We’re not saving lives here” were two phrases that commonly appeared when things went awry. What, you mean these banner ads aren’t gonna bring grandpa back? No matter: let's just laugh the badness away and remember that the work is kinda inconsequential.?

This brings me to funny as philosophy.

Funny involves donning your best jester’s hat and giving the status quo a wet willy. Funny looks at how things are, asks why they're like that, then fucks around with the possibilities.

I agree that banner ads don’t save lives. That’s true.

But what if they did?

What if banner ads were the cure?

What if there was a supervillain with a doomsday device and, when he made his demands known—I hope you're sitting down, btw, because you’re not gonna believe it—but this guy, this evil mastermind, well, he asked for $1bn worth of… banner ads. Delivered by midnight. Or else he activates the device.

Not saving lives, huh? What if the only way to save lives was with banner ads?

Funny takes what’s true, then interrogates it, plays with it, distorts it. Funny invites and sometimes challenges people to think about the nature of normality. And here’s the best part, funny people: you can say the stupidest shit ever, so long as there’s a smidge of truth in there.?

One of my heroes is Bugs Bunny. Let’s pause here because, if you choose to stop reading now—and that’s fine, I know everyone’s busy, and the world is a Hieronymus Bosch triptych of tariffs and loud lies and digital slop, so maybe you wanna spend time with your kids instead of reading this riff, but you should also know there’s not much left to go (in my ramble, not life)—and discover nothing else about me, you’ll at least know the only thing you really need to know about me: I idolise Bugs Bunny.

In Bugs Bunny we have an unserious talking rabbit who struts around, carrot-in-hand (paw? Furry foot?), zinging every character in earshot with his endless supply of smartarsery. He also gets up to high jinks. Elmer Fudd, a hunter and Bugs’ nemesis, is often on the receiving end.

This situation is not realistic. You might even call it “the stupidest shit ever”. But I 100% buy the fact that Bugs, a rabbit, doesn’t wanna get shot by Elmer, a hunter (notice how, as was the case with the life-saving banner ads, the comedy in Bugs v Elmer stems from a matter of life and death; see also: Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner; see also: "If you don't laugh, you'll cry" as a response to being hunted). With that truth in place, I'm willing to go wherever the geniuses at Looney Tunes care to take me—they have permission to unleash their characters’ animated antics (yes, I realise people are more accepting of silliness in cartoons than irl, but even at their most ridiculous, jokes feel more organic and resonant when there’s truth inside). ?

I’m awful at endings and have felt quite uninspired for much of Q1, so to quote a pig wearing a bow tie: “That’s all, folks!”