more jokes

the last post has a sort of reference/pointer problem; i can't tell the difference between a humourous event being said, and it actually happening. cue several hundred self-important words on post modernism and the reality of language.

of course, the joke is that this ambiguity between life and conversation about life (all very gofai) is often used as a crux of humour, and that's the joke.

another joke i did recently was the prison experiment, although this was instantiated as a party.

the set up was that everyone who came in was assigned either guard or prisoner, using the aperture science centrifugal decision tool - a bottle spun so as to either point to one role or another. ed and i had been down to sainsbury's and bought as many party treats as possible, in both 'basics' and taste the difference' ranges. so we had wine, vodka, orange juice, crisps, and dips, and probably more that i've forgotten, all in one flavour for prisoners and another for guards. and 60 cans of carlsberg for everyone.

one flaw that crept in, i think, was that chances of being a prisoner or a guard were even. prisoners should have outnumbered guards.

ed had printed out a whole bunch of great warning signs to put up everywhere, which worked nicely in different ways and opened avenues for conversations and fights. there was 'guards only' for the nice food, 'prisoners only' for the bad stuff, and 'human use only' for the toilet. some signs were so obvious in their message they were reverse-psychoactive - 'no spitting', 'no throwing of drinks', &c. a large 'deserters will be shot' sign was stuck above the door. then some signs were completely arbitary, the informative equivelent of white-washing coal - 'look both ways before entering the corridor' and so on. they were good.

upon deciding which of ed and i were prisoners or guards, before anyone else came, ed was imprisoned and i was a guard. i really wish that at this point, i had said 'right. no more guards' and taken the whole party under control. but to be honest, it failed to catch light. people were flaunting the rules fairly openly, and i didn't have the conscience to come down on them like they deserved that early in the evening. i did make sarah dance on her own to a song, which she really resented, so i joined in. then ed decided we should swap everyone round. i don't know why i allowed this, comning from a prisoner, but i thought it would be fun. instead, rather than making people react more strongly by giving them the opportunity for power where there was none before ('now i've got you, you son of a bitch') i think it just undermined whatever roles had been seeded and the whole thing became a bit of a prisoner-guard mish-mash. but then it was a party.

as a party it was pretty good. there were no bands playing this time, but ed and i set up a five hour set list of party music, from scott walker to mad capsule markets (i think digital hardcore is very party. others might not agree). this lasted a few hours; a large proportion of people left before midnight to get transports. a significant proportion didn't turn up, mainly due to colds. and at roughly midnight or one, everybody disappeared upstairs to the party in the same flat one floor up. then they came down and something quite remarkable happened, as the mp3 players and the internet came out, and everybodies' favourite songs came up on youtube for the dancing of. i went to bed about four, after a selection including vile pervert, born to run, girls just wanna have fun, and the phantom of the opera. you can dance to anything if you like the song.