YouTube and the Humour Barrier.

Following on from the last post about the language barrier, I now have to report a problem with the humour barrier. It goes like this:

Several times recently I’ve had comments of mine deleted on YouTube. Interestingly, none of them were overtly offensive. They weren’t even critical of the video. What they amounted to was an attempt to take a slightly more oblique view of the subject matter and impress a little humour into the discussion. It seems some channel owners don’t like that, and so they opt to decline my right to comment. Well, that’s up to them and I see no justification for serious concern.

The point is, though, I’m fairly sure that the problem is my sense of humour. It’s a little oddball even by English standards, so I suppose it’s unreasonable to expect people from other cultures to get it.

Take Benny Hill, for example. I never understood why anybody found anything he did funny, and yet I gather his show was one of the most popular ever broadcast on British TV. He even had a dedicated following in America and was invited to appear on American TV chat shows. An example: he accidentally rips the T shirt off some busty bimbo, and then runs away while she chases him in bra and knickers. Is that funny? Not to me it isn’t.

But if the psychiatrist asks: ‘Have you lived in Blackpool all your life?’ and the patient answers: ‘Not yet’, I find that funny. When Spike Milligan describes his mother-in-law as looking like ‘a dog’s bum with a hat on’, I find that funny. And when the barman asks the talking white horse whether he realises there’s a whisky named after him, and the horse replies: ‘What? Kevin?’ I find that funny, too. It seems other people don’t.

So what’s the solution? Stop making my version of humorous comments on YouTube? I could, but then I wouldn’t be commenting authentically, would I? I think I’ll start keeping count of the number of comments I have deleted instead. It will give me something to boast about during my next life on a different planet.

Phones and the Language Barrier.

I have a mobile phone, but I’m not a mobile phone sort of person. Accordingly, I use the cheapest little phone it’s possible to get (£15.99 from Tesco) because all I want it to do is make and receive calls and texts. I’m not a poking and stroking addict, and neither do I ever want to be. When I leave this earth I would like it to be said of me: ‘He died with his boots on, what teeth he had left were his own, and never once did he stoop to poking and stroking.’ Ah, but…

It was suggested to me when I was negotiating the rigours of changing provider that a modern SIM would probably work better in a modern phone designed for multi-G networks, whatever they are. And so I’ve been studying proper, modern phones on the Argos website and now I have problems.

For a start, the product information has obviously been written by people who lack even the most basic fluency in English. ‘Why should they be fluent in English?’ you might ask. ‘They have a language of their own and it’s a perfectly good language.’ ‘I know,’ I would answer, ‘but they’re trying to sell me a phone and English is the only language I know. So I’m not a polyglot. I’m inferior. I don’t care. I just want to know what I’m buying.’

The second problem is that the writers of the marketing blurb are transparently engaged in making a product which is tediously basic (judging by the price) sound like the latest in 22^nd century technology. But they’re doing it in a version of English which wouldn’t pass muster with a 5-year-old. So how on earth can I trust it?

And then there’s a third problem. I skip over the ludicrously overcooked hyperbole and concentrate solely on the technical stuff, but then I find that they use terms and abbreviations which are completely alien to me. I’m a simple, if rather reclusive, sort of chap who’s been using a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile for the past eighteen years and still thinks that waving it about in the supermarket is my passport to the world of normal people.

Clearly it isn’t. Clearly I need educating, but where do I go? To a mobile phone shop? Do we still have mobile phone shops? I expect we probably do, but then I would be faced, no doubt, with the prospect of dealing with some snotty young millennial who isn’t giving me his or her full attention because he or she is worrying about where I’ve left my walking frame in case somebody falls over it. Life and millennials can be cruel like that.

And so I ask you: is there any prospect of rescue, or must I live out what’s left of my sad little existence with a phone signal that washes gently in and out like the waves on a beach in Tahiti? (I expect they speak quite good English in Tahiti, but that’s little consolation.)

 

Incidentally, I don't have a walking frame (yet.) That was a joke.

Finding the Gap.

Considering the fact that I’m the sort of person whose perceptions and responses are driven more by emotion than reason, it’s perhaps surprising that my emotional armour is generally quite secure. (Or maybe it isn’t so surprising. Maybe people driven more by emotion than reason are good at making armour.)

The fact is, however, there are chinks in it – gaps big enough to allow entrance to sometimes seemingly innocuous bits of sensory input, thereby sending my mind to states of elation, excitement, despair or depression. This video is of the elation variety.

I’m completely hooked on it and watch it nearly every day. There are several stars on show, but for me the greatest stars are the kids dancing with their instructor. I bow the knee to them, I really do. They bring fresh air to a jaded mind, encouraging the view that the human race might be worth belonging to after all, and even that there might be hope for a world which I think is heading for severe difficulty. They even encouraged me to try some of the moves myself, whereupon two things happened:

1. I got a sharp pain in my left ankle.

2. I fell over (well, nearly.)

Shuffling is definitely for the young, so long may they have the will and physical wherewithal to practice it.

The Little Tea Bag Tale.

Something odd happened this morning. After I got up I went into the kitchen to make a mug of tea and followed the usual routine:

Put some water into the kettle, switch it on, take the mug which has been standing on the drainer overnight with a little water in it, throw away the old water and rinse the mug, place the mug on the worktop, take the tea bag container from the cupboard, remove a tea bag and place it in the mug. But here’s the interesting bit:

When I came to place the teabag into the mug, there was already a fresh, dry teabag lying in it. So how can that be? I can think of only two explanations:

 

1. Some other-worldly or other-dimensional being did the job for me.

2. I performed the same action twice within seconds of each other but only remembered doing it once.

Both possibilities are intriguing, just in different ways. And do bear in mind that of all the odd things which have happened in this house, the majority happened in the kitchen.

Me Again.

I sometimes wonder why I make the posts that I do, since most of them are of no value whatsoever to anybody but me. I usually conclude that they are little bits of the current me seeping out into the ether, like steam from a valve or the overflow from a flooded slurry pit. And as such, they have value of a sort.

But I sometimes wish I were less self-aware, and spent my time engrossed in TV soaps and cookery shows instead. Critical awareness of self and circumstances might have done Carl Jung some good, but to most of us it’s a recipe for discontent.

*  *  *

And a Russian correspondent in the comments section of YouTube told me today that in Russia, bad humour is known as ‘English humour.’ I didn’t bite.

October Gloom.

It was a dark and stormy night.

OK, let’s try again.

The late October night impressed a wet and heavy blanket of near-impenetrable blackness on the land and all that moved upon it. Very little did. Most were hidden in shelter from the barrage of arboreal debris which clattered and cracked on the surface of the pool-strewn country lane, while half naked trees screeched in fear of the roaring north westerly gale.

So, is that an example of lyrical writing, or is it to be derided as mere purple prose? I think I probably prefer Snoopy’s version.

I wrote a second attempt in my head, but couldn’t bring myself to type it up. The weak, palpitating sense of lowness that comes with chronic fatigue is sitting in my chest tonight, and life sometimes grows discouragingly tedious.

The Question of Mystery and Imagination.

You know, blogging can become an addiction. I’ve been scribbling notes to this one for over ten years, and now I get restless, even a little fretful, if I can’t think of anything to write about.

I was feeling that way earlier, and then I chanced upon an old post on which the lady from India, Dominique, had left a couple of comments. You might remember Dominique; she’s the one whose mode of written expression seemed to carry her presence into the room. It seemed to have some mysterious power to convey her energies into my private space.

Tonight it went a stage further: I heard her voice quite clearly in my mind. It was a quiet, feminine voice, but it had an edge to it like vibrating glass. And the accent sang slightly, conveyed with the kind of expressiveness unique to Indians who speak perfect English with the lilt of the sub-continent.

And so I’m naturally curious to know what this means. I’ve never met Dominique; I don’t know what she looks like, how she spends her days, or how old she is. But do I now know what she sounds like? Probably not. I expect it’s all just the meanderings of what passes for an imagination.

Or is there something real going on here? Life is, after all, a very strange business replete with mystery if you care to recognise it. It seems a little odd that I should suddenly feel gently and subtly haunted by a woman with whom I exchanged only a few brief words seven or eight years ago. And further, I wonder whether there might be a connection with the mysterious behaviour of the Filipina nurse which captured my attention so strongly in hospital. I’ve even wondered whether they might both be unwitting messengers of some kind. 

Ah, well. I don’t suppose I shall ever know. The best of mysteries have a tantalising habit of staying that way, and separating mystery from imagination is always difficult.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, I’m currently watching a movie called The Last Mimzy. Mel lent it to me to help wile away an hour or so of my solitary evening lifestyle. Those evenings, now growing inexorably, can drag rather badly if there’s nothing with which to engage. It’s compelling enough so far. The plot is interesting, if not new, and the two child leads are more than adequate. And it’s reminding me again that the American work ethic seems contrived to shackle people to the shallow preoccupations of lifestyle, rather than encouraging a deeper exploration of life.

Don and the Disease.

I see dear old Donald has got Covid. Or so they say. I’d be disappointed if there’s even a single person in America who isn’t asking the question: ‘Has Trump really got Covid, or is this a lame attempt to get the sympathy vote?’

Well, maybe he has, or maybe there’s another possibility. I gather there are plenty of people of Republican persuasion who have serious misgivings about their beloved leader, and I very much doubt that Russia is the only country where political undesirables in positions of influence come to untimely ends.

Am I being unduly cynical? That’s a matter of opinion; I’m only considering possibilities. Better that than be naïve. It seems to me that people generally, at least here in the west, are becoming ever more cynical, and people like Trump are part of the reason.

Thank You, Google.

For several years now I’ve been experiencing a growing faith in Google’s little army of volunteer algorithms standing ever-ready to serve my needs and interests with targeted advertising. Tonight they gave me:

Attacks in the Wild on Container Infrastructure 

Can anybody out there tell me what the hell that means? I considered clicking on it to find out, but decided that my sensitive soul is not yet ready for such a profound escalation of my sense of wellbeing. Give me a century or two.

An Evening Muse.

I’ve had an unusually busy, active and productive day today. By six o’clock this evening I was minded to think that it had even been a successful one, which is almost unheard of for me. And then I got a text message from a denizen of the corporate world. Oh dear, here we go again…

Still, at least the bounteous moon is beginning her majestic ascent into a cold and cloudless sky. I can see her peeking through the baring branches of the hedge beyond my kitchen window. I like seeing the full moon hiding behind things. I expect I could even work out why if I could be bothered. 

(I’m very interesting, aren’t I?) 

Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to Maria Sondule of Pittsburgh. I seem to recall she had Argentinean antecedents, which probably means that she knows how to tango. I’ve heard it said that it takes two to tango, but I’m entirely unschooled in such matters. It occurs to me that she might have married a successful businessman and become a Trump supporter.

Time to put an extra layer on. My office is turning a little chilly, and woollen jackets are cheaper than electricity.