On ‘Krazy Kat’ and ‘Peanuts’

A recent reprint of an article by Umberto Eco, © 1963. Reprinted from the June 13, 1985 Issue, The New York Review of Books, translation copyright © 1985 by William Weaver. Link 

Peanuts is thus a little human comedy for the innocent reader and for the sophisticated. In its center is Charlie Brown: ingenuous, stubborn, always awkward, and doomed to failure. Requiring, to a critical degree, communication and popularity, and repaid by the matriarchal, know-it-all girls of his group with scorn, references to his round head, accusations of stupidity, all the little digs that strike home, Charlie Brown, undaunted, seeks tenderness and fulfillment on every side: in baseball, in building kites, in his relationship with his dog, Snoopy, in playing with the girls. He always fails. His solitude becomes an abyss, his inferiority complex is pervasive—tinged by the constant suspicion (which the reader also comes to share) that Charlie Brown is not inferior. Worse: he is absolutely normal. He is like everybody else. This is why he is always on the brink of suicide or at least of nervous breakdown: because he seeks salvation through the routine formulas suggested to him by the society in which he lives (the art of making friends, culture in four easy lessons, the pursuit of happiness, how to make out with girls—he has been ruined, obviously, by Dr. Kinsey, Dale Carnegie, Erich Fromm, and Lin Yutang).

I never liked Peanuts – now I know why. Also note the date this was written: 1963!

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How to Be Polite

Here’s a polite person’s trick, one that has never failed me. I will share it with you because I like and respect you, and it is clear to me that you’ll know how to apply it wisely: When you are at a party and are thrust into conversation with someone, see how long you can hold off before talking about what they do for a living. And when that painful lull arrives, be the master of it. I have come to revel in that agonizing first pause, because I know that I can push a conversation through. Just ask the other person what they do, and right after they tell you, say: “Wow. That sounds hard.”

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GQ Interview with Louis C.K. A revealing read, that goes beyond his “comedy”. Link

The greatest jokes, Louis C.K. tells me, never register as jokes. Not quite. The punch line of a great joke may punctuate it and make people laugh, “but it doesn’t solve the joke, doesn’t stop it, so the joke keeps going and going and going…”

He talks about success, failure, and survival and delivers some unexpected wisdom – delivered as only he can:

If we just wrest our eyes, literally and figuratively, from our digital gizmos and the shitty, spoiling impatience they instill, we’ll see that this life, this planet, is amazing. That it is something just to be in the world, seeing and hearing and smelling.

These situations where I can’t make a choice because I’m too busy trying to envision the perfect one—that false perfectionism traps you in this painful ambivalence: If I do this, then that other thing I could have done becomes attractive. But if I go and choose the other one, the same thing happens again. It’s part of our consumer culture. People do this trying to get a DVD player or a service provider, but it also bleeds into big decisions.

So my rule is that if you have someone or something that gets 70 percent approval, you just do it. ‘Cause here’s what happens. The fact that other options go away immediately brings your choice to 80. Because the pain of deciding is over.

“And,” he continues, “when you get to 80 percent, you work. You apply your knowledge, and that gets you to 85 percent! And the thing itself, especially if it’s a human being, will always reveal itself—100 percent of the time!—to be more than you thought. And that will get you to 90 percent.

After that, you’re stuck at 90, but who the fuck do you think you are, a god? You got to 90 percent? It’s incredible!”

Clever. And, a valuable resource for showing a client what happens with a responsive site. Link

Today is April First.

Be aware that anytime today when you read something, hear something or see something you should take a second to remind yourself that the odds are it is a fabrication, one that is either so brazen and titanic in its scope that you cannot believe anyone would expect you to fall for it (thus giving it a weird kind of credibility) or so plausible in its larger details that you fail to notice that certain less significant aspects of it are full of falsehood.

These lies, both large and small, aim to take advantage of the innate trust we are all born with as human beings and somehow maintain even as we wend our way through a world riddled with deceit and prevarication.

They use our basic decency as a Trojan horse, and once they are welcome inside our heads they do what they can to manipulate us, to make us follow the rules they give us and buy the things they want us to buy and go about our miserable lives without the hope or realization that everything could—and should—be better.

Do not forget: Every single thing you see today is a lie.

Also it is April Fools’ Day, so there’s gonna be a lot of other stupid shit cluttering things up too.

Every time I read this I laugh. I also hear Foghorn Leghorn’s voice, especially when I read the word “prevarication.” (Link)