Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Jokes That Weren't

                So, this is my 100th post.  I know, I’ve been really lazy with updates the past few months so I hope this one doesn’t suck.  Really, there’s a good reason for me to be so scant with updates recently.  I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried writing, but it’s fucking hard.  And it’s time consuming.  And sometimes I write whole articles that I think just suck so I throw them away and feel really bad about all the time I just wasted writing jokes that nobody will ever see.  That’s why this 100th post is so special.

                It’s not very often that I have a thought in my head that doesn’t get blurted out, posted on Facebook or made public in some way.  For the most part, I’m one of those people that lack a filter and/or the good sense to not always say the first thing that comes to mind.  However, since I’ve started to realize that some of the absurdities born of my mind aren’t really suitable for dissemination across a wide audience (how smart did that sound?), I’ve begun to hold back a little.  Sometimes, I write things that are too dark, too gross or too politically incorrect for me to share them with everyone, at least not without some context attached to them.  Of course, now that I have this blog and more than 140 characters to explain myself, I have a great opportunity to put some of these jokes in context.  So here are 5 jokes that I didn’t end up sharing with the world all for pretty different reasons.  These are the Jokes That Weren’t.

“How can dogs just a pinch a loaf and be fine but I gotta wipe my ass for 20 minutes?”
Okay, I don’t think I need to go into the history of how this joke (or very real thought) came about, as I’m sure you can probably figure it out on your own.  But I think this is a legitimate point.  Dogs just go outside, drop a deuce and go back to their day.  If I’m that clean after a dump, I consider it a good day.  Most often, we all sit there and have to wipe and wipe until the paper comes up clean.  Then you do a security-wipe just to make sure the clean wipe wasn’t a false reading.  And really, that’s still kind of weird, isn’t it?  If you got a bit of poop on your hand, would you just wipe it off with a napkin and go back to your day?  Hell no, you scrub that shit (literally).

“I saw a shirt that said ‘Your body isn’t wrong, society is wrong’ and I thought it was a great sentiment.  But the shirt was like a 4XL.  I think a positive self-image is important, but I also think vegetables and treadmills are important.”
                This one never got posted because there is a huge movement against “fat-shaming” and I was pretty positive that the joke would spiral out of control with negative responses.  I may not be a fitness expert (or even novice) but I try to watch what I eat and stay active to maintain a healthy weight.  And I do think there is a difference between making fun of someone for being overweight and pointing out unhealthiness in their lifestyle.  If you’re huffing paint, I’m not going to tell you that society is wrong for telling you not to huff paint and if you’re at an unhealthy weight (high or low), people shouldn’t be telling you that’s okay either.  Clearly, a big reason this joke never went anywhere was because I’d have to spend too much time being serious and defending it, and if you haven’t noticed yet, I don’t do much serious (remember, the joke right above it is about poop).

“If I were to ever die in a freak fatal accident or anything, I would want it to be on April Fool’s Day so that everyone would think it was a prank and then they’d feel bad when they found out it wasn’t.”
                Well, this one is just morbid.  I personally thought this one was really funny (and I typically hate everything I write).  I had a few people that I shared this with who thought it was funny, but I knew they had that kind of twisted humor.     While I do make a lot of self-deprecating jokes, I walk a fine line to make sure people don’t think I have some kind of a personality disorder (am I succeeding?) and this one just seemed like it would have people calling a suicide hotline for me if I thrust it upon the general public.  There’s a reason why I typically avoid April Fool’s Day pranks; it’s because everything I do would either be morbid or involve poop (see my earlier jokes about poop).

“Do other races talk about their one white friend by saying ‘He’s one of the good ones.  He won’t go on a mass shooting.’”
                So, this one is a bit of a hot-button issue.  I have unfortunately seen a lot of really stupid people make really awful, racist statements about correlations between criminal activity/terrorism and people of different ethnicities, countries of origin, immigration status or skin color. And then they turn around and say stupid shit like, "I'm not racist.  I'm just talking about the bad ones."  It pissed me off, so I thought I’d make a statement about it through a joke.  But, much like some of my other jokes, I did not have the  energy or the desire to spend the next several days arguing with shitty people about it.  As much as I relish completely destroying dumb people in arguments, I felt like this one was going to end up with me dealing with more tiresome idiots than I cared to, even if it is statistically accurate.

“I like when I see people post online that they’re ‘sending prayers’ to someone who’s had misfortune.  It’s the perfect way to do nothing helpful and not feel bad about it.”
                Well, this one is clearly offensive to anyone who considers themselves a devout follower of their faith (and many that don’t).  I try not to touch too heavily on any sort of religious commentary because it’s basically the number 1 way to piss people off and as long as you’re not demanding me to convert or affecting my life, I really don’t care what you do or who you follow.  And this joke pretty much flew right in the face of that stance of mine (I hate being a hypocrite).   I have a tendency to make fun of whatever trends I see happening on social media, so this joke followed suit with that, but it definitely had a lot more potential to incense people than my other jokes.         

“There’s nothing wrong with a Devil’s three-way.  It’s just 2 buddies having sex with different ends of the same girl.  Sometimes there’s even a high-five.  Everybody likes high-fives.”
                I actually got really bold (or drunk) and posted this on Facebook at one point, then immediately deleted it (it did get 1 Like before it was deleted!).  No matter how I phrased this, or what the timing of it was when I posted it, I could not get this joke to feel right.  Maybe it’s because the joke is about having sex and the vast majority of jokes that I make are about how useless I am when it comes to women (there’s arguably no reason why my girlfriend even likes me aside from her just having bad taste), so this joke seems entirely out of place for me.  Maybe it’s because for one time in my life I actually took a second to feel some sort of shame about what I was saying (no, that’s never the case).   For whatever reason, this just didn’t feel right to post on Facebook and Twitter.  But here it is now, so it will end up on those sites anyways (so totally share this post and embarrass me).

                Maybe this will give you some insight as to how my brain works and how I edit and tailor my jokes for my audience (it hasn’t given me any insight, I’m still clueless).  Maybe this was all an elaborate way of me still getting to tell jokes that I’ve been stewing over ever since I wrote them.  Maybe nobody is even reading this.  Maybe this whole thing was a mistake and these jokes are so terrible that this will be the death-knell for my joke-telling career.   It was a good run.


-Ryan

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