Sunday, June 27, 2010

No Laughing Matter! Or is it?

Sometimes, indeed often, things are such that you feel like crying. They’re so absurd and irrational. And stupid. But then the thought occurs to you: crying won’t help. How can it? Wallowing in self-pity’s equally absurd and irrational. And stupid. So what do you do then? Well you could try laughing. Yeslaughing. Because humour can cut right to the core of things. To help us see things more clearly. It often takes silliness here to highlight silliness there.

Enter No Laughing Matter! It’s a shadowy comedy outfit. A google search turns up precious little information about it. I can’t find out when it started, where it’s based, or how big it is. And the ‘about uspage of its website’s not very enlightening [1]. Though it shows us its motto/credo: ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you’. And its logo: (I think) a finger with hair and a smiley drawn on it. So far NLM!’s put out three short videos – ‘The One About Iran’, The One About Hamas’ and ‘The One About The UN’ – each with the same format: a woman interviewing a man. You can see the videos here [2] and the annotated scripts here [3]. They’re hilarious. And incisive. Satire’s indeed a powerful tool.

I wish you success, NLM! What you’re doing can’t hurt. And it just might help. It just might. I for one hope it does.

1 comment:

Chris Burrows said...

NLM Is wonderful; lovely satirical humour while being thought provoking.
Love the picture of you as a little lad, there is on of Sel in an almost identicle pose at roughly the same age.
There used to be one of me too, but it was destroyed.
Sorry about melt-down I am taking amitryptiline. I always take 25mg a night to ward off chronic nightmares, so my GP doubled up to 50mg and I am sleeping better.
I hope your new PM is an improvemnet , I had not been paying attention and having heard Rudd a few times had decided he was a right winger, so I was doubly horrified to learn he was supposed to lean to the left.