Categories
Adventures of the Author

Droll Humor?

Recently I was accused of being droll.

Not this blog mind you, or even the various characters and personas I have populated it with, but me, my very own personal self.

Droll.

Brent Diggs offers up a droll facial expression

If there is anything that gets my dander up and marching around,1 it’s being labeled with terms so offensive, so clearly and blatantly derogatory that even I don’t know what they mean.

So in spite of strict vows intellectual pacifism, I undertook the most strenuous research methods at my disposal to fathom the enigmatic mystery known as droll.

After several second of diligent mousework I wiped the sweat from my wrist and basked in the glow of discovery.2 After a brief post-investigative nap, I read through the symptoms as presented by the vocabulary professionals of Dictionary.com:

Drolladjective. amusing in an odd way; whimsical; waggish.

Could it be? Was it possible that The Ominous Comma and myself its erstwhile creator were in fact suffering from the insidious effects of droll humor?

So severe were the consequences of this implication that I sought out a second opinion, and after a couple more clicks of grueling research the lexiconary specialists at Wikipedia confirmed the diagnosis:

Droll Humor -an often dry, witty form of humor that elicits laughs through amusingly odd, sometimes zany behavior or speech.

They those same experts went to on to illustrate the sufferings of well known victims like Steven Wright and John Cleese, never once hinting at a cure.

I was stunned. I didn’t know how to live with such self-knowledge, or myself after having discovered it. My only hope lay with the experimental psychological research of the late Doctor Harold Toboggans3whose cutting-edge Third Person Repressionary Hypnosis therapy I hoped would give me my one shot at pulling through this crisis without permanent damage.

Snatching at the fragments of memory, I hastily assembled my best approximation of the Doctor’s radical self-programming technique.

I helped myself to several cleansing breaths and a shot of scrubbing bubbles. Then as I gazed convincingly into the mirror, I began the chant:

“Brent Diggs has droll humor – Brent Diggs is droll.”

The moral of the story I began to realize–

“Brent Diggs has droll humor – Brent Diggs is droll.”

Is that any time you set out upon a voyage of self discovery-

“Brent Diggs has droll humor – Brent Diggs is droll.”

Be sure to thoroughly check your itinerary.

“Brent Diggs is…”

—–

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  1. After years of clinical research it is still unclear what role dander plays in the rageification process, but experts agree that it should definitely get top billing.
  2. For extended basking I recommend Toboggans Industries Discovery Screen made with actual pieces of ignorance to filter and protect your delicate tissues from the ravages of eureka-band radiation.
  3. I don’t know for sure that he is dead, but whatever state he’s in, he is very, very tardy to several counseling appointments.

Categories
Adventures of the Author

Intelligent Humor for the Enlightened Masses

I have been reading up on Search Engine Optimization lately and my research has inspired me to try and clarify the focus and purpose of the Ominous Comma, in the hope of reaching a greater percentage of my internet neighbors with the glad tidings of my existence.

Regular readers will have already grasped the humorous intent of these pages, but since my presentation is often very highbrow and almost always very, very, very dry, causal observers, may they be human or search engine, may not immediately grasp the point of all this Very Exciting Nonsense.

Some people would say that the problem lay in my Search Optimization skills. Those people would be wrong. The real problem is this: Google is an idiot.

Regular readers may also recall a similar effort a few months ago, namely my spectacular sellout, in which I boldly inserted the world ’humor’ into my subtitle in a valiant attempt to garner more attention for this site. Search engines however, seem to have no respect for effort, and the exhaustive restructuring of nearly a dozen letter in my top- part- header- thingy has so far brought me very little in the way of visitors. Some people would say that the problem lay in my Search Optimization skills. Those people would be wrong. The real problem is this: Google is an idiot.

Google fails at intelligent humor search

I know that those who lovingly pour over these pages are not used to such harsh language, and if I suspected that Google Search had been dropped on its head as an infant algorithm, I would be much more delicate with my words. But what else can I say about any so-called program, the result of hundreds of thousand of hours of loving devotion and nurture, that cannot grasp the exuberant joy and articulate humor of this publication?

So with apologies in advance to all my subscribers and other loyal constituents of this blog, I am going to attempt to explain what the Ominous Comma is all about, using small keywords so any non-corporeal visitors can follow along.

The Ominous Comma is about humor, intelligent humor,1 humor that launches itself from the shining phosphors of your monitor and grabs you by the cerebellum, wringing the laughter from the irony centers of the brain like an over-filled sponge.

Humor that takes no prisoners, that is unafraid to fill articles, take occasional plunges into satire, and even lightly caresses the cheek of politics.

Humor that is proud of the term humor and is not considering a name change to Funny, Witty, or Mildly Jovial.

Humor that doesn’t have time for celebrities or reality TV because it is still in college even though its synapses have advanced far beyond what are normally considered the Learning Years.

Humor whose wife frequents these pages and therefore cannot resort to boobies and bikinis to bring in traffic but must actually write essays and articles to attract the masses.

That kind of humor.

To further clarify and annoy, I will give a brief list of my influences to help you determine whether or not you have found the right Internet Humor Provider for you.

Douglas Adams
Steven Wright
Anyone able to use the word “scrumbly” in a sentence.
The Far Side
Dilbert.
Danger Mouse
Anyone receiving a mandatory sentence for using the word “scrumbly.”
Monty Python
Oscar Wilde
Invader Zim
Voltaire
The Scumbly Scrumblers of Scrumblitude.
Danger Couch
The Peter Principle by Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull.
Dave Berry

I think that about covers it. Remember, if you are looking for political diatribe you are at the wrong site. Similarly if you thirst for gossip or computer tech stuff, you are not going to find much of that here. All you are going to find here is the funniest stuff that anyone has ever written.

Just as long as you define anyone as me.

  1. If you are not intelligent, I am sorry but I am going to have to ask you to stop reading right now. If you are illiterate, I need you to stop staring at the screen pretending to read. Go loiter somewhere else.

    Sorry, rules are rules.