CSotD: Leave a silly moment alone (PLUS A BONUS: Gov’t theft!)
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The nice thing about a single-panel strip like "Rubes" is that, when Leigh Rubin gives in to the temptation to do a really stupid pun, he doesn't have any space to tread on it by having characters "react."
I can't tell you how many times I reject a strip for CSOTD because the cartoonist dulled a really good punchline with reactions. It builds to a funny, silly punchline and then, in the final panel, the characters essentially apologize for the gag.
Dude, if you're sorry you wrote it, tear it up and do something you aren't ashamed of.
And there's no reason to be ashamed of a silly pun. Puns require the brain to abruptly switch directions and that bothers some people. And some people hate to be tickled. Some people hate rollercoasters. While you can amuse some of the people all of the time, that leaves another group of some of the people that you can't amuse any of the time.
There's an old saying about people who can't take a joke.
There's also an old saying among sales people that you reach a point where "Whoever speaks next loses." You put an offer on the table and then you shut up. Shut up. Don't talk. Don't add to it, don't explain it, don't modify it. Shut up. The person across the table will likely break the tension by speaking, and the only thing they can say that doesn't involve accepting at least part of your offer is "I see we have nothing to talk about."
They won't say that. By the time you've put a concrete offer on the table, you're too far along into the process for anyone to just walk away.
The same thing works in interviewing. You ask the vice president of the bank, "The auditors say a quarter of a million dollars is missing. How could that happen?" And then you shut up, despite the tension that fills the room. Eventually, he's going to say something. And, if there's nothing he can say on his own behalf, he's either going to cave or he's going to say something so stupid that he indicts himself. Most likely the latter, but you never know.
And when you make a stupid joke like "spoiled brats," the same thing applies: Just lay the gag on the table and shut up. Don't undercut your own position. Just shut up. If it takes a minute, that's okay. Let the tension build, because that's how funny works.
(Now that you've been told this important principle of humor, you must promise to use it only for good.)
And now for something completely not funny:
A follow-up to an earlier post about the USDA's new "My Plate," which, of course isn't actually "My" plate at all.
Apparently, it isn't the USDA's plate either.
This article in Slate noted that the USDA's graphics aren't particularly groundbreaking, but stopped short of accusing them of a copyright violation. I'm not sure why. It sure looks like outright theft to me.
Note that protein, while never purple in real life, is purple both in the USDA's plate and on the copyrighted kids' plate sold by a private company, Nutri-Plate. And, though the government no longer acknowleges oils and fats as a factor in diet, they do think that "dairy products" — which, after all, are a source of dietary fat — are round and blue. And "grains" on the Nutri-Plate are orange, like the grains on the USDA's plate. Veggies are predictably green; you can hardly fault them for that one.
The Nutri-Plate design has the advantage of being a coherent teaching tool, the idea being to make sure each of those foods only covers its own place on the plate. Okay, it won't work with spaghetti and meat sauce or a nice chicken cous-cous, but the principle is there.
The USDA design doesn't really discuss proportions, and their graphics department, as we can plainly see, has no principles.
Graphic artists get ripped off enough these days, don't you think, without the government, keeper of copyrights and trademarks, leaping into the fray?
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