#reader i laughed

[greens-your-color]

Appreciation posting ig

[lafcadiosadventures]

The Extremely Homosexuality-Free Death of Patroclus, Troy (2004)

[i-am-a-stupid-robot]

Shout out to the Mexican restaurant where I saw in the span of a single meal not one, but two ladies survive the dreaded materialization of waiters, a sombrero, fried ice cream, and the birthday song only to have the grinning (>:3c) waiter standing directly behind them sneakily reach around their necks and envelop their faces in full chloroform-style with a veritable cloud of whipped cream served on a napkin.

[clove-pinks]

"The Fashionable Novel": drawing by Paul Gavarni, a detail in Petits fashionables c. 1830s.

Compare with an excerpt from the satirical "How to Write a Fashionable Novel" by Frederick Marryat, originally published 1833 in his own Metropolitan magazine, in the form of a dialog between the characters of Arthur Ansard (A.), and his friend Barnstaple (B.)

B. First, as to the opening. Suppose we introduce the hero in his dressing-room. We have something of the kind in Pelham; and if we can’t copy his merits, we must his peculiarities. Besides, it always is effective: a dressing-room or boudoir of supposed great people, is admitting the vulgar into the arcana, which they delight in.

A. Nothing can be better.

B. Then, as to time; as the hero is still in bed, suppose we say four o’clock in the afternoon?

A. In the morning, you mean.

B. No; the afternoon. I grant you that fashionable young men in real life get up much about the same time as other people; but in a fashionable novel your real exclusive never rises early. The very idea makes the tradesman’s wife lift up her eyes. So begin. “It was about thirty-three minutes after four, post meridian—”

A. Minute—to a minute!

B. “That the Honourable Augustus Bouverie’s finely chiselled—”

A. Chiselled!

B. Yes; great people are always chiselled; common people are only cast.—“Finely chiselled head was still recumbent upon his silk-encased pillow. His luxuriant and Antinous-like curls were now confined in papillotes of the finest satin paper, and the tout ensemble of his head—”

A. Tout ensemble!

B. Yes; go on.—“Was gently compressed by a caul of the finest net-work, composed of the threads spun from the beauteous production of the Italian worm.”

A. Ah! now I perceive—a silk nightcap. But why can’t I say at once a silk nightcap?

B. Because you are writing a fashionable novel.—“With the forefinger of his gloved left hand—”

A. But he’s not coming in from a walk—he’s not yet out of bed.

B. You don’t understand it.—“Gloved left hand he applied a gentle friction to the portal of his right eye, which unclosing at the silent summons, enabled him to perceive a repeater studded with brilliants, and ascertain the exact minute of time, which we have already made known to the reader, and at which our history opens.”

[marryat92]

“Well, now, Captain, I tell you what, you call your Britain, the Mistress of the seas, yet we whipped you well, and you know that.”

“Oh! yes—you refer to the Shannon and Chesapeake, don’t you?”

“No! not that time, because Lawrence was drunk, they say; but didn’t we whip you well at New Orleans?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“No? oh, Captain!”

“I say you did not.—If your people had come out from behind their cotton bales and sugar casks, we’d have knocked you all into a cocked hat; but they wouldn’t come out, so we walked away in disgust.”

“Now, Captain, that’s romancing—that won’t do.” Here the little ones joined in the cry, “We did beat you, and you know it.” And, hauling me into the centre of the room, they joined hands in a circle, and danced round me, singing:

“Yankee doodle is a tune, Which is nation handy. All the British ran away At Yankee doodle dandy.”

— little girls (belonging to his host, a middle-class American woman) torment Captain Marryat, a British War of 1812 veteran, in Diary in America.

The Battle of New Orleans by American painter Edward Percy Moran.

[cometxmc]

[docholligay]

madegeeky

replied to your

photoset

:

ahahahahah. Because I am the exact breed of...

I love that one of humanity’s weird traits if laughing when you get nervous or scared. Like, it’s such a human response, humor. I think about it a lot when I see those “humans are space orcs” posts, about how weird a response it is and how weird it would seem to an outsider.

I’m definitely a “whistling in the dark” type and I’m endeared to others like it. I remember when my friend Katy was going, she was throwing back beers and watching the basketball game when her dad mentioned she wasn’t supposed to drink on her pain medication, and her immediate response was, “What am I gonna do?  Die?” 

[ahagisborn]

A genuinely very funny thing: I drew the top one as an example jack o lantern mouth and the five year old I watch drew the lil pointy things on the teeth and I thought he was gonna say it was a vampire now but instead he looked at me and said, completely deadpan, “now it’s legs”