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Thursday, February 20, 2014

Divine Comedy?

Instead of posting, I slacked off and watched an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Jay Leno. Then I watched the one with Howard Stern, and now it's pretty much time for work.

I don't believe we've ever explicitly discussed the relationship between comedy and cosmology, humor and metaphysics, despite the fact that nearly every post contains things intended to make you laugh. In fact, I can't imagine the blog without the humor, which makes it what kind of blog exactly?

Among other questions, such as, is it appropriate to the subject? Probably not, since I know of no other stand-up cosmedians. Am I trying to make God laugh, or what? Does God even have a sense of humor? He's got quite a mess on his hands. Am I trying to cheer him up? Am I searching for the ultimate guffah-HA experience?

They say Hebrew is very conducive to puns, and that there have always been funny rabbis. Given the preponderance of Jewish comedians, it makes you wonder if there is something transmitted through the religious DNA. There's also the old joke about how Catholicism is the only religion based on a pun, i.e., Peter/rock...

8 comments:

  1. You mean, wascally wabbis.

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  2. You're not gonna like this, but the Alec Baldwin one is one of the best episodes, IMO. (I'm not crazy about this either.) But he does a really good Burt Lancaster.

    My wife absolutely loved the Louis CK one (awesome cartoon in it). Me too.

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  3. Anyway, back to the salt mines..

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  4. In Buddhism, it often said when one gets a taste of their true nature for the first time, it will either inspire tears of joy or pure laughter. I do believe humor is integral to the cosmos, and can be experienced as such depending how free we are. That's why I always dismayed by those who are easily offended. Sure, some humor is of poor taste. Even Carol Burnett pointed out that comedy is tragedy plus time. But as you once said Bob, we should also be able to "harmonize the whole spectrum of vertical consciousness," -- and humor rides all along it, from the high to the low.

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  5. Speaching of wascally wabbis, don't miss the Carl Reiner/Mel Brooks episode in season one.

    Which reminds me. Prediction: there will be a Bill Cosby episode.
    And it will be spectacular.

    There is also a stop-in-his-tracks synchronicity near the end of the Tina Feh episode.

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  6. Does God even have a sense of humor?

    ↑ʘ↓!

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  7. Making someone laugh, or allowing yourself to laugh with someone is an intimate thing. It establishes or opens the door to a relationship, no matter how brief. I tend to see God's humor as a wink. I believe He takes much pleasure in us.

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I cannot talk about anything without talking about everything. --Chesterton

Fundamentally there are only three miracles: existence, life, intelligence; with intelligence, the curve springing from God closes on itself like a ring that in reality has never been parted from the Infinite. --Schuon

The quest, thus, has no external 'object,' but is reality itself becoming luminous for its movement from the ineffable, through the Cosmos, to the ineffable. --Voegelin

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. --Wittgenstein