11 SEP 2008
Funny business
The funny sitcom formula that will make us funny is loosely defined as funny business. More exactly it is business as usual with something hopelessly wrong, futile, ridiculous, impossible, useless or incompetent about it. It's designed to fail. It's false and funny. We can act it out deadpan with our old serious selves, never have to learn a single comic line, and be instantly funny.
The prime example is the funny religious mission. Must be funny provides a complete program of salvation, sin, redemption, and one commandment to live by, that nobody will believe for a minute. Then we can act it out seriously, using everything we know about serious religions, and maybe even establish a funny church.
Not all funny enterprises meet this formula. Building funny world, surprisingly, does not. Funny world is defined by the same formula, must be funny, which governs funny business. Everything in funny world must be funny, and we can build it as a social play space or as an adventure game. Both of these fail the funny business formula because they are achievable, which makes them serious enterprises.
Another example that passes the funny business test is funny revolution, joining a secret society to subvert serious world. Just to make sure it's impossible, we create our own Inquisition which attacks anything that might work, which would be serious, leaving only ridiculous and futile efforts. All players in every funny enterprise are secret agents of the Inquisition, ruthlessly stamping out seriousness and maintaining funny quality control.
Funny money is an interesting case. It follows the ancient definition as money we make ourselves in unlimited quantities. We claim this is the key to abundance for everybody in funny world. Hey, it works for the government. Of course we all know funny money is worthless, so it passes the test of being ridiculous and impossible, along with all funny business devoted to making funny money.
Then we take funny money seriously and act as if making funny money is our purpose in life. We can act rich and do a lot of funny business.
Gamers may pursue funny money as a way of keeping score and winning. They may try to carve out industrial empires in funny world. They may try to regulate funny money to ensure their gains. All serious. All futile.
Funny money by its nature turns things upside-down. The serious players lose to the last, who appear to have no clue, though maybe they do. Then the serious players resolve to win next time, and become slaves to the game, building infrastructure for the funny economy, where the last continue to win.
The funny world adventure game becomes funny again, since the aim of serious players is frustrated. All funny money games invert the player hierarchy, so that funny money and all its works remain funny.
The funny religious mission meanwhile extends its blessing to funny world, funny money and funny revolution. Like all millennial faiths, it commands its converts to build a new world, a heaven on earth. Now funny world is more than a serious performance space, we have a funny reason for creating it.
The funny mission has no way of determining if its converts are funny or not, other than funny money, which is taken as a measure of funniness. Just as serious money is the god of serious world, funny money becomes the god of funny world. So all converts are told to make as much funny money as possible. Now it's more than a score, it's a religious duty.
The funny revolutionaries are also blessed as contributing to the new world, raising consciousness with their pranks. Yet the ultimate revolution is defined as building the funny economy, until the gross funny product overtakes the GNP.
The combination of funny religion, funny money and the Inquisition ensures that all our funny business is futile and ridiculous. Then we pursue it with utmost seriousness and sincerity, with passion and intensity, with exaggerated ambition, lofty purpose, elaborate detail and comic incompetence, and see how far we can take it.
5621
13 SEP 2008
Funny thoughts
from Charles Webb
It is the utter seriousness with which Don Quixote pursues his impossible, absurd project that makes it an archetype of funniness and allows him to step into mustbefunny sainthood.
serious/yang -- funny/yin
The vehicle of mustbefunny runs on the fuel of cognitive dissonance...
Look at the mustbefunny practitioner as martial artist. Find a group that practices tai chi in the park at 4AM (like the Chinese do) and demonstrate to them your mustbefunny practice. What is mustbefunny practice anyway? Does ANY "practice" cross that threshold of seriousness that questions its ontological status in funnyworld?
Will the strategic effort required to achieve large numbers of mustbefunny converts also, inevitably, cross that threshold of seriousness (see above) and, thereby, vaporize and disappear in the rarefied air of funnyworld?
Since a mustbefunny "practitioner" is probably an oxymoron (I like the sound of that) what should we call one who "does" mustbefunny? Or...is mustbefunny a non-doing? Isn't the opposite of practice improvisation? So...unrelenting improvisation becomes mustbefunny "practice"...
5627
24 SEP 2008
Make funny money
The current financial crisis is reason enough to make funny money. Why funny? The must be funny rule makes it ridiculous, and is a severe design constraint. So be it. Must be funny is a religious edict and we have to work with it.
That makes the project funny from the start and selects the right people and attitude. We aren't really trying to replace serious money. We're doing it as a lark, a hoax, a satire, an artistic statement. But we work on it seriously as if the world depended on it.
There are advantages. A severe design constraint is a challenge and gives the project definition. Must be funny protects us from competition and conflict with serious money. And monetizing funniness sends us into a social milieu, which connects with the funny mission's promise of abundant life.
5640