My talents are wasted here

41. I didn’t start listening to music until I was in high school. Before that, I honestly could not have told you the difference between rock and rap, classical and metal. (Name wise, I probably could have identified them with some practice.) I mean, I was lame. I’m still not much of a music listener, I listen to podcasts more than anything, but at least I know what I like now.

For some reason, my sense of humor is warped in such a way that I find people NOT laughing to be hilarious. I also find my audience irrelevant to my humor. Take for example something that happened earlier this week:

I had to add some comments to a guy’s paper on the count of it being part of the conference. His paper was absurdly dense and difficult to read. He tried to squeeze far too much information in 3700 words. The result was like reading an encyclopedia, but devoid of personality. Here, I’ll include a paragraph:

The True God, known variously as the “One” or the “Unknown Father,” was unknowable and transcendent. To many Gnostics, this being represented an indivisible unity. Valentinus (2nd cen.) maintained that this being was actually a duality of “the Ineffable” and “Silence.” From these emanated six divine principles: “Parent” and “Truth,” “Word” and “Life,” and “Human Being” and “Church.” These eight deities together formed the “first octet,” also called the Ogdoad (Irenaeus 1.11.1). Gnostics encoded the Ogdoad as an eight-fold symbol that represented transcending the seven planets (Hoeller, “GNLAT” 30). From the Ogdoad emanated many lesser divine beings called Aeons (eternal realms). Aeons emanated other Aeons and provided a “transition from the immaterial to the material, from the noumenal to the sensible” (“CE”). The Aeons together with the Unknown Father formed the spiritual realm of the Pleroma (fullness). According to Basilides (2nd cen.), there were 365 Aeons (Guiley 10). According to Valentinus, there were 30 Aeons, which emanated as male/female pairs called syzygies. Poop. In many Gnostic traditions, a female deity named Sophia (wisdom) was one of the last emanations. Valentinians taught that Sophia wished to understand the perfection of the Unknown Father, and journeyed through the Pleroma “until she is at last stopped by a power known as the Limit (Horos)” (Hoeller, “GNLAT” 38). At this point Sophia separates into Higher Wisdom, or he ano Sophia, which was allowed to ascend into union with the Father, while Sophia Achamoth was blinded and fell into the “great abyss” (“CE”). Sophia Achamoth was thus exiled from the Pleroma and eventually finds redemption through the Christ. Meanwhile, her desire to know the Father caused her to emanate the primal matter and the creator of the universe.

I could have hidden the word “poop” in there and you’d never find it on the count of how dense the writing is. As a comment, I told him that his writing was “too dense, abstruse, impenetrable, and Delphic.” In the course of my comments, I made constant jokes of the sort, not because I wanted to make him laugh, but because I’d thought of them and couldn’t keep them to myself.

It’s actually a serious problem in my life, ironically.

There should be a way for me to combine my absolute lack of respect for reverence and propriety with my pending career in academe and philosophy.

hmmm… do you think anyone’s written anything worthwhile in the philosophy of humor? ((Answer: No.))

41. I didn’t start listening to music until I was in high school. Before that, I honestly could not have told you the difference between rock and rap, classical and metal. (Name wise, I probably could have identified them with some practice.) I mean, I was lame. I’m still not much of a music listener,…