Okay my charming readers, this week I must rant about something that left me feeling well, shall we say, less than gruntled. Now, I warn you, if you do not already think me a fusspot, you very well might after you read the rest of this post. If so, don't worry. I will not be in the least offended as I often loudly proclaim that I am secretly aspiring to be a crotchety old man at the tender age of thirty-three. In fact, if you label me as one who'd yell at kids to get off his front lawn, or who complains about the music kids listen too these days, I might even be mildly flattered.
A few days ago, I joined a dark humor group, thinking it would be a good place to promote, "The Heinous Measure," and other future projects infused with macabre humor. I feel the need to rant about said group as it seems my definition of dark humor is not the norm. I view it as amusing or fun play with things morbid, scary or otherwise from the horror genre, that is preferably also clever in some way. Happily, my chief writing friend fantasy writer, "David Viau," was equally disgusted by the choice quotes I shared with him from this group. We both agreed that an exemplary bit of dark humor was a story by the great and late Roald Dahl, entitled, "Lamb to the Slaughter," in which a woman beats her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb.
The average post I read, and believe me I read quite a few of them, were nothing more than semi-coherent strings of swears, other rude words, and anatomically impossible acts. There was nothing to suggest I hadn't stumbled into a haunt of boobies who had nothing better to do than try to one up each other on who could say the dirtiest, most offensive thing. Their vulgarities left the intellectual part of my brain feeling most depressed, and it took me some time to convince it that Daddy wouldn't let those agonizingly crude, self styled comedians hurt it anymore. Once my brain was comforted, I left that group, resisting the urge to count my IQ points to make sure none were missing.
As I couldn't let this post go by without providing a couple of examples of what I'm referring to, well fear not, here they are. For the record I have sanitized them in my own fashion, so as to make them at least somewhat presentable to the sensibilities of you, my intelligent reader. In other words, these are paraphrased versions of what I read as I really didn't want to tarnish my blog with the exact quotes.
Example the first: "You tell those STD infected mother loving lovers to go love themselves and insert a bag of male appendages in their mouths and hope they loving choke on them, those loving stupid dumb reporting lovers."
Example the second: "Loving love loving, very rude word for girl part rhyming with hunt, pickle."
Call me pedantic, but the random use of the word, "pickle," at the end of this one to me seemed needless and rather random. Furthermore I was confused as to the point of this post. The first one was at least in response to someone complaining about being reported for inappropriate language. Where as number two seemed to be the Facebook version of one talking only to hear oneself talk. To me it would be no different than would be wandering around in public, middle finger erect, while shouting random words from the sexuality section of my high school biology textbook.
Now, please don't think me one easily offended by coarse language. I've been known to possess a slight potty mouth from time to time, so am not bothered by words or phrases that may be lewd, vulgar or otherwise offensive. Indeed the summer camp I attended as a teenager introduced a no swearing clause into their permission form after the first year I went. I have since suspected, as have many of my fellow campers, that yours truly was the inspiration behind that.
What did actually annoy me was the apparent perception that dark humor means anything that would give your grandmother a heart attack if uttered in church. I thought such humor was more worthy of labels like, "toilet humor," "crude humor," "vulgar humor," etc. Dark to me implies things that are shadowy or morbid, so I was left greatly disappointed, and mildly irritated.
What are your thoughts? What is dark humor to you?
Hit me up, virtually, not literally of course, as I'd suggest striking a blind person is worse than punching someone with glasses. You can get me on my Facebook page at: Writer Jonathan Birdsall on Facebook. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Until next Monday...
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