Thursday, June 7, 2012

Learning Not to Take Things so Flippin' Seriously

By now, if you haven't heard about the Florida bath salts zombie attack where a man high on a particularly potent form of LSD affectionately dubbed "bath salts" ate 80% of another man's face, you've probably been under a rock without WiFi.  It must have been hard to find a rock without WiFi signal, so good for you.

Anyway, I came across this graphic while surfing the web one afternoon during nap time and I haven't stopped laughing about it ever since.  It has everything.  Pop culture (that song is terrible, by the way), zombies, and inappropriate humor.




Why is it blog worthy?  Because it's absolutely, completely un-okay to be making fun of this.  Isn't the rule 22.3 years?  I'm pretty sure that's what the prophets Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman said.  But I laugh every time I think of this picture with those words canted to the rhythm of that awful song.

Obviously, I'm not alone in thinking this is hilarious, because it's been re-blogged about 40 million times by now.  But decent people everywhere are snickering behind their hands to hide the fact that they are amused.  Some pretend not to find any humor in it at all and even fewer truly don't find it funny, and think those of us who do are terrible people. 

Here's the thing, though.  In a life that's often peppered with absurdity (this story, for instance), pain, tribulation and difficulty, don't those of us who CAN find humor in situations like this deserve to have a laugh?  We're not laughing at the poor man who was attacked.  Just at the ludicrous circumstances.  I mean... right in the middle of the uptick in undead popularity with shows like Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead (all of which I watch and love), this happens.  And some of us cope with awful stuff by laughing.

This brings to mind all the trials of being a parent for me.  I can't even tell you how many times something scary has happened to my family and my husband and I started cracking jokes about it on the way to the emergency room.  In the middle of a panic, sometimes that's all you can do.

So.  I'm going to stop feeling bad about thinking this is hilarious.

What are your thoughts on laughing at tragic, terrible things?

2 comments:

  1. No comments about laughing at terrible things necessarily, although I do happen to support the act as a way of coping... but I have to share a story:
    Today, when my brothers and I got in the car after having dinner out, my mom said, "Everyone put on your seatbelts.... NOW!!!!!!!"
    Oh. My. God.
    We all just had to laugh. It was like, completely unprovoked. She had a zombie moment where her connection with reality shut off completely and she was back in a car with 6 screaming children and a grouchy husband and nobody listening to her. It was, basically, hilarious. Not only are the 3 of us (as opposed to 6) over 12 and mature for our ages, no one was even talking. She was not joking. And I have to admit, it was pretty scary, in a lot of ways; a nice mixture of scary and funny to be sure.

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  2. That's awesome, Haley lol. It's funny how our brains can shut off.

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