Shorty

One of my favorite websites to visit just to do a quick scan down the page is Fark. The stories are usually pretty good, and sometimes awesome, but the headlines can be spectacular. For example: "Janet Jackson's boob costs CBS $550,000. Not bad, considering it probably only cost Janet five grand" or "Scientists to map known universe, find Carmen Sandiego" -- brilliant. There are so many different media for humor. I mean, who knew that single-line headlines could be such a comedy goldmine?

On a tangent, who thought up sarcasm (or any other "type" of humor for that matter)? It's obvious that new jokes need to be invented, so they don't get boring, but entirely new fields of humor? How would peole find it funny at first? Sarcastic wit probably just made people seem like assholes before sarcasm was wide-spread. So I suppose that humor only changes when culture changes in such a way to make a new type of humor widely accepted. When humor changes, it is an indication of a shift in society as a whole. (By the way, I'm making this up as I go along, so if I end up taking a few paragraphs to reach an obvious conclusion, I apologize.) It makes one wonder what the hell kind of culture we have that finds most of the sitcoms out there to be funny. There, I said it. Well, sitcoms on network TV do need to get huge ratings to be profitable, because all of their revenue is from advertising, and huge ratings require catering to the lowest common denominator. Everyone has their own sense of humor, and the networks need to find comedy that can tickle as many funny bones as possible. Uniqueness is the bane of network television. Hmmm... That opens the door to all sorts of critiques of pop culture, capitalism, MTV, and so on...

But it's past my bedtime.