Using Humor

Well! That was easy!

I have a running battle with easy-open containers. Most of them aren’t.

Medicine bottles with the cryptic “Push & Turn” instructions. Tabs on boxes that dispense paper cuts as often as the contents. Plastic packs that slice & dice. This Pop-Secret example of the “glue every possible edge” school of package design.

Hill’s Science Diet Cat Food bags, not only have an easy open design, but also a resealable zip-lock… Except tearing at the tab provided doesn’t open the bag, and cutting anywhere below it ruins the zip-lock.

After marrying me, Arlene had to get over occasionally seeing the naked cereal bag laying on the breakfast table next to what was left of the box.

I believe every architect should have to actually live or work in a building he designs, every doctor should take some of his own medicine, Congress should have to live with the laws they pass, and every origami expert who thinks they can design packaging, should be dropped on a desert island and forced to survive by actually opening their boxes, tubes, jars and bags.

It’s a small thing I know. But life is too short for bad staplers, pens that don’t write, web-sites desgined for Internet Explorer and easy-open containers, that don’t.

Share your experiences with easy-open containers in comments.

Wispy TP tendrils wafting in the breeze.

We got wrapped last night.

The picture was taken afrter quite  a bit of clean-up and does not do the effort justice.  And since Arlene and I don’t have any friends that stay up late enough to attempt this, we decided it must be some of Dalton’s friends.

Which reminds me of the time, back in the day, when I was wrapping a house with Dave Lane, John Bond and Brad McMinn, or it might have been Mickey Ford, Don Hill and Donald Freeman, or any number of others.

On this particular night, not caring what clothing cost, I crawled underneath a car to escape detection and aprehension by an irate father. Keep in mind that cars weren’t sealed so tightly then. Most driveways were ice-rink slick with oil drippings.

I survived.

My t-shirt and jeans did not.

Now parents call ahead to make sure it’s OK to do the TP deed.

Crime and corruption in Congress is one thing, you expect it. But calling ahead to ask permission to wrap a house? This is the kind of thing that makes me shake my head and wonder what has this world become?

It’s toilet paper thrown in a tree!

It’s made to dissolve in water!

People get upset and call the cops about this?

Call ahead and ask permission?

And that isn’t the only thing that’s changed. Where we used to look for the industrial strength sandpaper consistency cheap toilet paper….

Our tree was wrapped in Charmin Ultra Extra Strong.

This is one nice neighborhood! Nearly all of it was suitable for re-use! Unfortunately Arlene got the section with a twig stuck in it.

Maybe I should have called her first and asked permission.

At least it’s not as dirty as I remember…

…here under the car.

I have just watched Suart Brown’s TED talk: Why Play is Vital – No Matter Your Age.

Play.

When did we get so serious?

We’re even serious about humor. Somehow somewhere we seemed to get the idea that to be serious, we have to be solemn.

Maybe it’s best to just throw stuff out there and hope something sticks, or more accurately, someone laughs.

Sometimes things work, and sometimes things don’t.

I performed with a man for several years who wrote some wonderful material. But hoarded it as if he would never write anything good again. Anytime I thought something was too good to let go, I locked up, kind of creative constipation. But when I let it all go, new stuff always filled in the space.

This is not new. It’s sort of a comic version of what televangelists call, The Prosperity Gospel, or some motivational speakers call the principle of vacuum.Zen yogis caution us that if we are already full of crap, there is no room for anything else, no room for anything new. If you are busy finding places to use what you already know, you are not looking for new things to learn.

Funny surrounds us.

In Focus On The Escape we talked about locking in on something to the exclusion of everything else.  The only barriers are self created ones. There is always another story, always another joke, always another stupid frat guy who not only does something stupid, but films it and puts it up on YouTube for the world to see.

The only way to find out if something is funny is to put it out there.

If you are one of those rare individuals who has such a highly refined sense of humor that only three people on the planet share your insights, as long as they are not bedouins who live in a tent, or pygmies who live in the jungle of New Guinea, you will find each other and laugh.

So play.

It’s OK.

If it works, it works,

if it doesn’t…. try something else.

And if your company or group has forgotten how to play, bring me in for your next meeting or event! (I’ve got kids in college, and an expensive wife, I need the money!)

Meanwhile, play around with comments, and with the subscribe buttons.