I am pleased to announce that my articles are no longer extremely offensive, and I’m no longer a horrible person
I am reformed. After recently writing an extremely offensive article, getting fired by The Aggie, writing an extensive apology and getting provisionally rehired, I am beyond proud to announce that from this point forward, nothing I write (or even think for that matter) will be too offensive, too controversial, too relevant, too topical, too stimulating, too soon, too much, too little, too late, too close to home, too smart, too stupid, too right, too wrong, too short, too long, too small, too big to fail, too-faced, too fast, too furious, too far, too fiery, too feisty, too fussy, too funky, too funny and, as a result of all this, especially not too f***ing good.
In short, my articles will no longer contain any ideas that anybody doesn’t like or agree with, in style or substance. In fact, perhaps it would be best if my articles didn’t contain any ideas at all. Yes, I think that should work. No ideas, no thinking, no problem. I don’t want to expect too much from my readers, and I fully realize that thinking is just not something that most people want to do, especially when they sit down to read.
My idyllic, idealized non-idea would be something that you already believe but enjoy being told by others is true so you feel better and more vindicated for believing it, too. When I don’t think of a non-idea that I know won’t make you think or reevaluate your preconceived notions, I’ll know that it’s a non-idea worth not exploring or explaining in my future articles. I like to refer to this amazing natural feedback loop as “confirmation, pious.”
Through these tumultuous last few weeks, I’ve learned that comedy is only funny if everyone thinks it’s funny. The legendary comedian Steven Wright once asked, “If you tell a joke in the forest and nobody laughs, is it a joke?”
Well, I’d like to answer that question and go a step further. No, it’s not a joke because humor and comedy have to be funny, and telling a joke in a forest, especially if it’s a joke about a tree that fell in the forest when nobody was there to hear it make a sound, is bullying a dead tree, and that’s just not funny or okay under any circumstances. If you think that making fun of dead trees is funny, then your sense of humor is not the correct one, and you, like me, need to change it right now.
I learned this the hard way because I recently told some jokes that some people didn’t laugh at, not because they weren’t funny, but because they weren’t the right kind of funny. Since I’ve learned this lesson, I’m extremely grateful going forward that I will be spared the painful burden of consoling you after deeply offending you or not making you laugh.
Going forward, please avert your eyes from potentially offensive, unfunny humor and proceed to the emergency eyewash and shower station. I sincerely hope that you are able to redevelop the fallow land within your brain that makes you think that things that aren’t funny are funny. I did, so you can, too. This was a Notice of Proposed Land Use Action.
Author’s Note: This article includes the word “fiery” and discusses “dead trees” at length. This is merely coincidental and in no way related to the fires that burned throughout California and is not intended to be funny in any way, so do not laugh.
Written by: Benjamin Porter — bbporter@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
