Saturday November 13, 2021; 7:42 PM EST
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- I just made a quick edit to something I've written previously. My struggle with that concept is covered elsewhere here, but I thought this is a good example of the kind of edit that I have given myself permission to do, so this is actually about the edit itself, which was to fine-tune a joke.#
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- If this were another essay, it would be about how I should just transclude the node I'm pointing to, rather than pasting the text here. That essay would emphasize the importance of being able to specify precisely which parallel universe I want to quote, because I could later edit that node to say something different. That essay would explore the Loaf Question, as well as some of the ideas that actually animated that infernal machine.#
- If this were another, other, essay, it would be a riff on Hofstadter's musings on counterfactuality. In the process it would probably veer off into Minsky's A Society of Mind. But that essay would probably get back around to the Loaf Question, too, through all the usual routes like Vannevar Bush and As We May Think. See Intertwingularity, under Hofstadter, under Reality Recursion, under Phil K. Dick.#
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- This post, however, is not about infernal machines. It is about how leadership works. #
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- Here's the edited gag:#
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- Anyway, it worked pretty good for movies, but for actual TV the VCR was a complete fucking disaster. It was so bad, entire swaths of the economy were devoted to writing and performing jokes about setting the clock on the VCR. It absolutely eclipsed the airline food sector, destroyed rolling up the toothpaste tube, and came close to unseating relentless, horrific sexual harassment, like that featured during the Henry Blake era of M*A*S*H, as the top source of quality jokes.#
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- I thought about this edit for a few days before making it. I added the words "during the Henry Blake era".#
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- I'm working on a big post, which I've decided just now to call the Sunday post. This means I have to post it Sunday. It also means, I think it's important enough to think about rather than posting immediately. It also means, I can't weasel out of it, since now you know it exists. It also means, if I feel like doing something like that again, I have just invented a new thing that I can do, and a place to do it, and a way to refer to it. #
- This is one reason why names are important, it gives us something to grab hold of. That post will explore the importance of naming something, but it probably won't actually get around to that, not explicitly anyway.#
- That post is also going to make a big deal about leadership, but it is already far too long and about too many things. But I wanted it to be absolutely clear that when I say something is due to the way things are at the very top, I really, really mean it. So here we are.#
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- I'm working my way through M*A*S*H on Hulu, which has been a great experience. One of the things I do is, I try to be funny. I think humor can, better than nearly anything else, faster, help us to see the world in a different way. Those little bursts of epiphanic clarity can instantly reshape how we think things work, better than nearly anything else. #
- The laugh itself, is completely involuntary. We can't help it, something just made us gasp, did you see what just happened there? That shit was hilarious!#
- How does it do that? Is it the words, is it the drawings, is it the voices, is it the timing, is it the editing, is it the material, is it the contrast, is it the pathos, is it the rhythm, is it the repetition, is it the slap in the face, is it the pie? What is it? I want to do that. #
- I want to know how it does what it does, because laughing is amazing and I love doing it, and, crucially, I crack myself up, sometimes. And I'd like to know how to do that more often. I am sorry. Sometimes I think I am one funny motherfucker. This lasts exactly long enough for me to realize that no one is laughing, and then I go do something else for awhile to hide my eternal burning shame. #
- I am not kidding. This is part of why I have literally hundreds of projects going, all the time. If I'm posting animations, it is because I have humiliated myself with words and need to try something completely else, or else I will crush my own soul. I am still trying to come up with a name for that refractory period between the mistake that makes me set the project aside, and when the humiliation has subsided enough that I can try again. Probably something horse-related.#
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- Anyway, everybody knows, M*A*S*H is fucking hilarious, and it is hilarious for exactly one reason: There is no laugh track in the operating room.#
- We all know that, so I won't belabor the point. The contrast between a show that could do serious, and funny, was what made it all poignant, it was the little swirl in the yin-yang symbol that tied it together. Everything else sprang from that, it is the foundational genius insight of that show. #
- The laugh track drives me nuts and I wish someone would convolute it the fuck out of there, because it's repetitive, and that's what convolution is for, but until someone does that, I'll take the bad with the good. (Like the cropping in the Hulu release, which is weird, but I can get used to it. It did ruin the joke where Frank Burns sticks his finger out of the crate like a little periscope, but I knew the gag anyway, so it's all good.)#
- So the show is basically one hundred percent, all the way through, to its bones, about the idea that there is horror in the world, and part of how we deal with that horror is trying to be human, and funny. And comedy, the best comedy, the stuff that really gets you, is fucking horrific. #
- You may think I'm going to be all Lenny Bruce or whatever the fuck here, but no, I am not talking about people like Dave fucking Chappelle who think they now get a pass for whatever lazy-ass offensive, degrading shock shit they want to spew and rest on their existing, documented brilliance. (I say "whatever lazy-ass shit" because I don't need to watch Netflix to know what he's been up to, I can tell it's fucking offensive, I can hear trans people when they talk, did you know they have voices and reasons for why they say things, just like every other human ever.)#
- I'm talking about the stuff that you can't unsee, once you've seen it. NO NOT LIKE THAT NOT LIKE [EXTREMELY DISTURBING INTERNET GOTCHA PAGE REDACTED] WHAT ARE YOU KIDDING ME YOU LITERALLY CANNOT UNSEE THAT WHY WOULD YOU EVEN DO THAT TO PEOPLE I AM NOT KIDDING#
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- Also, I'm not talking about the stuff in M*A*S*H about how they tie their masks. I don't know what happened, but sometime between then and now, I gained a whole bunch of judgy opinions about how masks should work, and once you've seen that in the O.R., you can't unsee it, either.#
- In the first few seasons of M*A*S*H, the jokes that aren't about the horrors of war or racism or whatever, like, nearly every single one, and this is one funny show, so there are a LOT of them, every single one, repeatedly, right there in your face, is because it is absolutely hilarious to repeatedly, constantly, unrelentingly, obsessively, at every single opportunity, every moment, every thought, never stopping, sexually harass every single person you see.#
- This never stops. It is constant. It is absolutely hilarious, and most of the gags revolve around the indignance of the ones subjected to the harassment. It is demonstrated, constantly, all the time, in every single possible way, that this is the way it is and you have absolutely no fucking recourse. The very idea that this isn't the way it could be, the very concept that you deserve one fucking bit of basic human respect, THAT is the joke.#
- Hawkeye and Trapper John are relentless in their attempts to deal with their absolute lack of control over what's going on around them by forcing their sexuality onto literally everyone around them, nurses to Radar to Klinger to Koreans to the wounded. Nobody has a say about any of it, they must participate. (That is, of course, the joke.) #
- Henry says, aw gee, come on guys, don't be like that. #
- He's married, and he gives nurses little kisses on the nose when they get their underwear from his tent, so he can't really throw stones.#
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- Colonel Potter would not put up with that shit, not at the levels maintained during the first few seasons. There are other reasons the show changed then, it moved to sets, it was edited differently, the characters changed. But it was still funny, it was fucking hilarious, and it stayed funny for a long time after.#
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- Colonel Potter would not put up with that shit, and things changed. Things were still good, we didn't lose anything. They were just good in a different way. We don't lose out when we prioritize basic human respect. As a commander, you can get things done with your crazy doctors, even if you rein them in. BJ did not, in fact, make things funny by constantly making everything about his own desires and lack of control over them. As a creator, you can still be funny and make jokes about power without making every single thing about sexual humiliation.#
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- Colonel Potter would not put up with that shit, and things changed.#