Nenslo's Formula

From: ali assa seen <dancing@ausNOTTHISchron.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2001 2:40 AM

> "Two Beans" <twobeans@godhatesyou.com> wrote:

> >Osama bin Ladin!
> >
> >Wow, didja see how I used current events to sound witty?!
>
> Nenslo's formula:
>
> Here's how to be funny. Find something that everybody knows about, and
> mention it sardonically. Find two different things everyone knows about
> and mention them together. Find something people remember from twenty
> years ago and mention it. If you want to be considered an artist or
> intellectual, take something you remember from twenty years ago and
> mention it along with something from a long long time ago that artists
> and intellectuals know about. Then if you want to be HIP you take that
> the thing you remember from twenty years ago and the thing from a long
> time ago and mention them along with rock music or drug addiction.

Has anyone ever just gone up and recited that at a poetry "slam"? That
would just put lights out on the whole evening. The particular line
about "Find[ing] two different things everyone knows about and
mention[ing] them together" recalls a formula Bill Griffith quoted
(from Alfred Jarry, perhaps?) in an old Zippy comic book, calling humor
"the uniting of opposites". Which I always thought was close, but wrong
- I would say "the uniting of the incongruous*" hits the nail on the
head. Like, nuns and dogfucking is funny. Dogs fucking and cats
practicing abstinence is just stupid.

I bow to Nenslo's completeness, but I offer my simplification for the
"bathroom reader".

- Dr Strangemonde

*(alternate: the "uniting of the incompatible")
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Nenslo's Formula
From: Arbane the Terrible <arbane@attbi.com>

Wasn't it St. George Carlin who said "If you can nail together two things
that nobody has ever nailed together before, some schmuch will buy it."?

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Original file name: Nenslo's Formula - converted on Thursday, 20 December 2001, 03:25