Laughter is learning
When you treat everything as entertainment, you can live longer and MOST IMPORTANTLY you can learn more.

When everything is EMERGENCY PANIC DEADLY SERIOUS you're not allowed to learn anything.

Learning includes 'science', as I've been pushing lately, and learning also includes the basics of human behavior.

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Why was Jordan Peterson unnecessary in the 1930s? Because HARDASS human nature was part of entertainment. There were romantic songs for sure, but there was also a constant theme that marriage is more trouble than it's worth. The unattached life had its own romance. If you weren't MEANT to be married, you had more freedom.

These views were already extinct when I grew up in the '50s and '60s. Marriage was automatically assumed to be necessary and wonderful. If you weren't MEANT to be married, you weren't qualified to live. Take one for the team NOW.

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Recently my bedtime playlist has included a 1933 series called Mirth Parade. (It doesn't seem to be available free online.) The verbal part of Mirth Parade was low-quality humor by any standards, mainly contrived puns** that reached 10 feet beyond funny to cram in a combination of words. Like many of the syndicated shows, the musical part was brilliant.

An episode about sailing and boats includes two HARDASS representations of romantic reality. Neither song would be singable today. Reality is CRIMETHINK, in 'science' and human behavior.

First a version of the familiar Barnacle Bill, not quite legally obscene but HARDASS real. This is how the world works.

Barnacle Bill.

Second, a totally forgotten lively number about a sailor with a dame in every port.

Two-buck Tim from Timbuktu.

Choral version of the same song.

A young man who grew up with the ability to PERCEIVE reality and LAUGH at reality wouldn't need Jordan Peterson to develop him into a Peterson cultist. He'd know how to HANDLE reality.

LIFE IS PURPOSE.

ENTERTAINMENT IS THE OPPOSITE OF GENOCIDE.

LAUGHTER IS THE OPPOSITE OF DEATH.

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** Contrived puns...

An advice columnist answers a question.

Q: My husband is Norwegian and he drinks a lot. Should I expect him to be waiting for me when I return from vacation?

A: No, he won't be waiting for you. Norse is Norse and souse is souse, and never the train shall meet.

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Musical sidenote: Many of the Mirth Parade episodes include a performance by Florence Gill, the Barnyard Nightingale. She sang classical numbers like a chicken, in a remarkably realistic way.

The Barnyard Nightingale

Here's an article about her later career working for Disney.

Labels: Alternate universe, Entertainment

  ¶ 10:39 PM