Logical Comedy Quotes

Will Jess be OK with that?” “Having a phone without a passcode is practically an open invitation.” I can’t argue with that kind of logic.

By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of central planning was, because ti can't think. The comedy of law's sterile logic--large POISON signs warning against common sand, spending twenty-two years on pesticide review and deciding next to nothing, allowing fifty-year-old white men to sue for discrimination--is all too reminiscent of the old jokes we used to hear about life in the Eastern bloc. Judgement is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it.

there is any moral to this story, it’s that, when you are writing code, remember that someone may have to comb through it and check everything when it is being repurposed in the future. It could even be you, long after you have forgotten the original logic behind the code. For this reason, programmers can leave “comments” in their code, which are little messages to anyone else who has to read their code. The programmer mantra should be “Always comment on your code.” And make the comments helpful. I’ve reviewed dense code I wrote years before, to find the only comment is “Good luck, future Matt.

As anyone who has experienced it will know, war is many contradictory things. There is brutality and heroism, comedy and tragedy, friendship, hate, love and boredom. War is absurd yet fundamental, despicable yet beguiling, unfair yet with its own strange logic. Rarely are people 'back home' exposed to these contradictions — society tends only to highlight those qualities it needs, to construct its own particular narrative.

Humor comes out of the unexpected: If there’s no surprise, there’s no laugh. In a triple, as discussed in chapter seven, the first two lines are often straight lines; this is the realistic element. The third line is the surprise twist—logically related to the first two lines, but unexpected and exaggerated. Realism is the setup, while exaggeration is the joke. “Get your facts first,” wrote Mark Twain, “and then you can distort them as much as you please.

There are people," my father continued, "who are born to be unhappy and to make others unhappy, who are the victims of celestial intrigues incomprehensible to us, guinea pigs for the celestial machinery, rebels allotted the part of a rebel yet born - by the cruel logic of the celestial comedy - with their wings clipped. They are titans without the power of titans, dwarf-titans whose only greatness was given them in the form of a rigid dose of sensitivity that dissolves their trifling strength like alcohol. They follow their star, their sick sensibility, borne along by titanic plans and intentions, but then break like waves against the rocky banks of triviality. The height of the cruelty allotted them in lucidity, that awareness of their own limitations, that sick capacity for dissociation. I look at myself in the role forced on me by the heavens and by fate, conscious of my role at all times yet at the same time unable to resist it with the force of logic or will.

These word games bothered and intrigued me. Appearing to be silly nonsense, on examination they were absolutely logical—yet they were still funny. The comedy doors opened wide, and Lewis Carroll’s clever fancies from the nineteenth century expanded my notion of what comedy could be. I began closing my show by announcing, “I’m not going home tonight; I’m going to Bananaland, a place where only two things are true, only two things: One, all chairs are green; and two, no chairs are green.” Not at Lewis Carroll’s level, but the line worked for my contemporaries, and I loved implying that the one thing I believed in was a contradiction. I also was enamored of the rhythmic poetry of e. e. cummings, and a tantalizing quote from one of his recorded lectures stayed in my head. When asked why he became a poet, he said, “Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.” The line, with its intriguing reference to comedy, was enigmatic, and it took me ten years to work out its meaning.

The story of The Rape of the Lock, sylphs and all, could have been told, though not so effectively, in prose. The Odyssey and the Comedy have something to say that could have been said well, though not equally well, without verse. Most of the qualities Aristotle demands of a tragedy could occur in a prose play. Poetry and prose, however different in language, overlapped, almost coincided, in content. But modern poetry, if it ‘says’ anything at all, if it aspires to ‘mean’ as well as to ‘be’, says what prose could not say in any fashion. To read the old poetry involved learning a slightly different language; to read the new involves the unmaking of your mind, the abandonment of all the logical and narrative connections which you use in reading prose or in conversation. You must achieve a trance-like condition in which images, associations, and sounds operate without these. Thus the common ground between poetry and any other use of words is reduced almost to zero. In that way poetry is now more quintessentially poetical than ever before; ‘purer’ in the negative sense. It not only does (like all good poetry) what prose can’t do: it deliberately refrains from doing anything that prose can do. Unfortunately, but inevitably, this process is accompanied by a steady diminution in the number of its readers. Some have blamed the poets for this, and some the people. I am not sure that there need be any question of blame. The more any instrument is refined and perfected for some particular function, the fewer those who have the skill, or the occasion, to handle it must of course become. Many use ordinary knives and few use surgeons’ scalpels. The scalpel is better for operations, but it is no good for anything else. Poetry confines itself more and more to what only poetry can do; but this turns out to be something which not many people want done. Nor, of course, could they receive it if they did. Modern poetry is too difficult for them. It is idle to complain; poetry so pure as this must be difficult. But neither must the poets complain if they are unread. When the art of reading poetry requires talents hardly less exalted than the art of writing it, readers cannot be much more numerous than poets. The explication of poetry is already well entrenched as a scholastic and academic exercise. The intention to keep it there, to make proficiency in it the indispensable qualification for white-collared jobs, and thus to secure for poets and their explicators a large and permanent (because a conscript) audience, is avowed. It may possibly succeed. Without coming home any more than it now does to the ‘business and bosoms’ of most men, poetry may, in this fashion, reign for a millennium; providing material for the explication which teachers will praise as an incomparable discipline and pupils will accept as a necessary moyen de parvenir. But this is speculation.

If you set five men pulling on a rope, you multiply the strength of each in dividual by five. With death, it's the other way round. If you kill a thousand men, the death of each is a thousand times less important than if he had died alone (Gombrowicz). A specious logic, since it is a matter of quantity in the one case and of quality in the other (the one is multiplied, the other divided, so deep down there is no paradox). But it is a superb proposition all the same! Certain regimes reserve for themselves a monopoly on physical violence. As for the socialists, they reserve a monopoly on moral comedy. That is why it is quite difficult to make fun of them. But this is not something they should be proud of, because when something no longer makes you laugh, it probably means what is ridiculous about it is already deeply buried away, immune from further harm, irreparable. It is against all the rules for power to appropriate a function - ridicule - which commonly belongs to the sphere of manners and which is normally the province of the public mind

… we are not going to add any fresh thrill to the thrill which the loveliness of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn has already given its readers… it seemed clear to me that Rat and Toad, Mole and Badger could only face the footlights with hope f success if they were content to amuse their audiences. There are both beauty and comedy in the book, but the beauty must be left to blossom there, for I, anyhow, shall not attempt to transplant it. But can one transplant even the comedy? Perhaps it has happened to you, as it has certainly happened to me, that you have tried to explain a fantastic idea to an entirely matter-of-fact person. ‘But they don’t,’ he says, and ‘You can’t,’ and ‘I don’t see why, just because –’ and ‘Even if you assume that –’ and ‘I thought you said just now he hadn’t.’ By this time you have thrown the ink-pot at him, with enough of accuracy, let us hope, to save you from his ultimatum, which is this: ‘However fantastic your assumption, you must work it out logically’ – that is to say, realistically. To such a mind The Wind in the Willows makes no appeal, for it is not worked out logically. In reading the book, it is necessary to think of Mole, for instance, sometimes as an actual mole, sometimes as such a mole in human clothes, sometimes as a mole grown to human size, sometimes as walking on two legs, sometimes on four. He is a mole, he isn’t a mole. What is he? I don’t know. And, not being a matter-of-fact person, I don’t mind. At least, I do know, and still I don’t mind. He is a fairy, like so many immortal characters in fiction; and, as a fairy, he can do, or be, anything. But the stage has no place for fairies. There is a horrid realism about the theatre, from which, however hard we try, we can never quite escape. Once we put Mole and his friends on the boards we have to be definite about them. What do they look like?

THE 7 FORMULAS OF HUMOR: 1. POW's -- plays on words 2. Reverses (quick switch in audience point of view) 3. Triples (build to exaggerated finale) 4. Incongruity (pairing two logical but unconventional ideas) 5. Stupidity (so audience feels superior) 6. Paired phrases (using antonyms, homonyms, synonyms) 7. Physical abuse (slapstick)

Which is to say: of course I am still lonely. I've come to see it as an inevitably rather than an indictment, a condition that will continue to go in and out of remission in ways I can never reliably track. Romantic comedy logic provides love as an antidote for loneliness - or, really, love as an antidote for everything. But we know that love is rarely unbounded or infallibly accessible. There's no lever to pull when we want to draw it closer, and to rely on other people for a cure is to ignore the expanse between free will and obligation. No one person can create a drip-line of availability and understanding into another.

I’ve never said anything bad about your books.” She’s eyeing me with blatant confusion, like she can’t figure me out. Join the club. It has many members, and I don’t care. “Doesn’t mean you haven’t ruined other writers’ careers.” A tiny dent appears between her brows. “It’s my job to review books and I’m as objective as I can be. It’s a simple fact that not every book published is good. And I owe it to the New York Press readers to give my honest opinion.” It sounds like a spiel she’s recited many times before. Which means I’m not the first author to bail her up. “I’m in publishing. I know how reviews work.” I stalk to the fire and grab a poker. Her logic merely accentuates how unreasonable I’m being, and I need something to jab at, so I start prodding at the smoldering logs. “But your words hold more sway than most. Books you pump up go gangbusters, books you trash end up languishing. Surely you know that?” For the first time since we met, I glimpse an angry spark in her eyes. She’s obviously trying to impress me, to stay calm, probably with the aim to suck up. But I’ve hit a nerve and her eyes drift to the poker in my hand for a moment, like she’s imagining skewering me with it.

I want to help you if you have a dirty-word problem. There are none, and I'll spell it out logically to you. Here is a toilet. Specifically-that's all we're concerned with, specifics-if I can tell you a dirty toilet joke, we must have a dirty toilet. That's what we're all talking about, a toilet. If we take this toilet and boil it and it's clean, I can never tell you specifically a dirty toilet joke about this toilet. I can tell you a dirty toilet joke in the Milner Hotel, or something like that, but this toilet is a clean toilet now. Obscenity is a human manifestation. This toilet has no central nervous system, no level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it's impossible. If it could be obscene, it could be cranky, it could be a Communist toilet, a traitorous toilet. It can do none of these things. This is a dirty toilet here. Nobody can offend you by telling a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it's trite; you've heard it many, many times.

And how should I know whether or not I speak the truth?" the God asked of him, "since I am but the illusion of an old woman, as you have so frequently proved by logic.

Woman was an idol of belly-magic. She seemed to swell and give birth by her own law... Man honored but feared her. She was the black maw that had spat him forth and would devour him anew. Men, bonding together, invented culture as a defense against female nature... from this ... has come the spectacular glory of male civilization, which has lifted woman with it. The very language and logic modern woman uses to assail patriarchal culture were the invention of men. Hence, the sexes are caught in a comedy of historical indebtedness. Man, repelled by his debt to a physical mother, created an alternate reality, a heterocosm to give him the illusion of freedom. Woman, at first content to accept man's protections but now inflamed with desire for her own illusory freedom, invades man's systems and suppresses her indebtedness to him as she steals them.

A joke is a curve ball—a pitch that bends at the last instant and fools the batter. “You throw a perfectly straight line at the audience and then, right at the end, you curve it. Good jokes do that,” Burrows said. To achieve the unexpected twist, it’s sometimes necessary to sacrifice grammar and even logic.

An enthusiastic person who is very logical with his or her own thinking process, he or she can eventually express his or her thought with delight and humor to educate and entertain his or her audiences.

Since it appears that exaggeration is the logical antithesis of realism, it may seem ludicrous to have both within the framework of one piece of humor. But good humor is a paradox—the unexpected juxtaposition of the reasonable next to the unreasonable—and that creates surprise. Think

Dominic’s black shorts hung so low I refused to look at the waistband in fear I’d misstep and break my neck. Only, today he paired them with… So fucking hot. A white wife-beater No words. Brain splat. Now, don’t ask me why, but for some reason a tank like that on a man like him did wild things to me. My common sense immediately shut down and the wailing sirens of an emergency evacuation alarm sounded in my head. Well, that along with a mass exodus of logic, reason and intellect out my ear holes. Whoosh. Gone.

The parasail's winch turned, winding up the line, pulling Ally and Serena lower and closer to him in a steady pull. A funny feeling seized him as he watched her. Logically, he knew she kept getting closer, but he suddenly knew she’d never arrive. She’d be suspended out on the end of that line for eternity, seemingly within reach, yet somehow distant. His breath stopped.

Refining the relationship between exaggeration and realism in humor can be related to stretching a rubber band. Imagine the unstretched band is the realism, and exaggeration stretches the band. When the rubber band is stretched to capacity, several things happen at once. Stretching alters the shape of the band; exaggeration changes the perception of reality. The rubber band can be stretched a little (understatement) or a lot (overstatement). Just as tension increases in a rubber band that it is stretched, exaggeration increases tension in the audience—up to the breaking point. When you pluck a rubber band, it makes a sound. The pitch of this sound gets higher as you stretch the rubber band further. This sound can be compared to emotion in an audience. The more you stretch the rubber band, the greater the emotion in the audience. Finding the proper balance between realism and exaggeration is the ultimate test of a comedy writer’s skill. Humor only comes when the exaggeration is logical. Simply being ludicrous or audacious is not a skill. It’s amateur. Many novice stand-up comedians struggle with exaggeration. They’ll start with some realistic premise—the way women dress, picking up men in a singles bar, outsmarting the police, or advertising slogans—but then they’ll shift into fifth gear in a wild display of ludicrous fantasy that’s not well connected to the initial premise. Their material has limited success because they make the same mistake repeatedly: They disrupt the equal balance of realism and exaggeration. Outrageous doesn’t mean creative.

Was an afterlife without pretty, stubborn, and infuriating men like Malcolm a heaven or a hell? I’d have to think about it. The cat in me said hell. The sane, logical woman in me said heaven.

Black comedy is the comedy of the logic—or more exactly, the illogic—of a system. This advanced and difficult form of storytelling is designed to show that destruction is the result not so much of individual choice (like tragedy) but of individuals caught in a system that is innately destructive. The key feature of this moral argument is that you withhold the self-revelation from the hero to give it more strongly to the audience.

Many characters exist in an organization. Someone explains the rules and logic by which the system operates in great detail. • Many of these characters, including the hero, go after a negative goal that involves killing someone or destroying something. • Each believes strongly in the goal and thinks what he is doing makes complete sense. In fact, it is totally illogical. • The opponents, also within the system, compete for the same goal and also give detailed but insane justifications. • One sane person, usually the ally, continually points out that none of this makes any sense and action will lead to disaster. He functions as a chorus, but no one listens to him. • All the characters, including the nominal hero, use extreme, sometimes even murderous, methods to reach the goal. • The actions of the characters lead to death and destruction for almost all. • The battle is intense and destructive, with everyone still thinking he is right. The consequences are death and madness. • No one, including the hero, has a self-revelation. But it is so obvious that the hero should have had a self-revelation that the audience has it instead. • The remaining characters are horribly maimed by the struggle but immediately resume their efforts to reach the goal. • Slightly more positive black comedies end with the sane person watching in horror and either leaving the system or trying to change it.

Beware of nostalgic stimulus if you’re allergic to the logic of strategic comedy.