Laughter

Yes! I thought I was supposed to go in at 12:30 today, and I started getting ready, but then I read my schedule and it said I go in at 3:00. I am so thrilled. I have been annoyed about my work schedule for the past few weeks because I've been stuck working on Mondays. My religion isn't officially recognized by anybody, but according to my rules, Monday is my day off, my Sabbath. It's strange to say that I have a 'religion,' and to mean it as kind of a joke, and kind of serious. If a whole bunch of people agreed with me, then it would be serious. The only reason it isn't 100% serious is because it's only me alone, and a few random scattered people who aren't working together. As soon as I get a second job, the schedule enforcement will immediately become much stricter. With or without a 'religion,' working on Monday is still in conflict with my availability.

I have been thinking about laughter recently. Yesterday I had a couple of incidents where I lost control of my suppressed laughter. The first incident happened when I was walking in the door to work. I was already a couple of minutes late, partly because my clock never really matched theirs after the daylight saving change, and I tinkered with it and it still is a couple minutes off. Anyway, I was going through the door, but there was this older woman in front of me. She wasn't very old, but she had some kind of physical disability.

I don't laugh at people with physical disabilities. That's something I've seen whenever I google anything from Lemony Snicket, and follow the paths to the psychotronic perpetrators, the abusive people, the sickos, the 'psychopaths,' - you should see some of the things that I've found - they're horrible. It really does seem to happen a lot with Lemony Snicket quotes, because those books are in the category 'Literal Truth Disguised As Fiction.' They're as close as you can get to literal truth, with some fantasy and whimsical imaginary things in there, and it's about mind control, stalking, mafia gangs, and other types of evil. And, like I said, you find horrible things on pages where people are quoting lines from those books. I found one page where somebody actually bragged about using 'special gear' to zap people in a neighboring town because they had a major 'chicken problem' there. They use animal symbols to refer to people, all the time. You can't tell whether the bragging is real or pretend. The URL is buried in my other notes, which are someplace else on my computer, because I've been moving stuff around after trying to fix a computer problem I had. Anyway, when I follow those paths, I find almost always images and text making fun of people in wheelchairs and people with disabilities.

Even so, sometimes I can't help laughing. This was one of those times. I had the rotten luck to be already late, and this slightly disabled lady was going through the door before me. And she wasn't in one of those motorized carts, she was walking and pushing a cart in front of her. And each one of her steps was about two inches. I am not exaggerating. So I and about six other people were blocked behind her and it took about two minutes for her to get through the doorway. I had the urge to turn around, and look in the eyes of the woman behind me, so that I could see her facial expression, but I resisted that urge, and I didn't look at anybody. I looked straight ahead, and I looked to the side, and I looked at the exit door and had the urge to jump through it and go in the exit, but I didn't. And I was absolutely silent until I finally got through and went around her, and held it in until I was far enough away from her, and then I started laughing on my way to the time clock, and there were tears running down from my eyes. Sometimes you can't help laughing, but at least you can be nice enough not to laugh directly at somebody in a way that would hurt their feelings. I actually care about disabled people and I wish that I had some way to help them, but you can't help laughing at the stuff that happens sometimes.

Then, a little while later, there was another customer who had some strange kind of hat on her head. The hat was mesh, so it could not have provided any warmth, because it was nothing but a thin netting with spaces through it. When I saw it, I thought it was one of those plastic mesh bags that they put the clams in at the seafood department. I really thought for a second that's what it was. So I started laughing and I just lost it. Unfortunately, nobody was nearby, so I couldn't tell anyone about it and show it to them.

I have conflicting beliefs about laughter. Sometimes I think you should just let it out, and then relax, and not worry about suppressing it, and not worry about hurting someone's feelings. I accidentally laugh and don't intend to hurt people, and sometimes I think that people believe I'm cruel or mean because of that. I've tried to learn when to laugh and when not to laugh.

I've observed more than once that sometimes, if you suppress your laughter, it triggers other feelings. I would watch a movie and deliberately not laugh, and instead, it would trigger sadness, or ecstatic joy, or amazement, or other intense feelings beneath the laughter. It didn't always happen, just sometimes. It's not something reliable or consistent that I can always do. It seems to be just in some moods.

Sometimes, not laughing at somebody is a way of showing loyalty to that person. You eventually find out when it's okay to laugh at them, and when it isn't. You just have to get to know somebody to find out if something is a sensitive issue that they're not supposed to laugh at. You can't really know ahead of time which things are okay and which things aren't. I laugh at myself a lot, and call myself names like 'you dork' when I make a mistake, but if somebody else called me that, I would be angry.

So I was thinking about this partly because I went back to not bleaching my whiskers, so they are now dark brown and visible, and it takes getting used to. I'm sure some people have wanted to laugh. But I'm keeping them this way and I won't go back to bleaching them or doing anything to them. I didn't want to even bleach them in the first place. Removing them would violate my grooming beliefs, which I can't explain to other people.

I have a picture of somebody and I really like the picture, however I'm sure he would probably think it's a terrible picture. 'They' made fun of it and gave me a mental image of a cartoonized version intended to make him look ridiculous. I refused to laugh. All the time, they make jokes that aren't funny, and they force you to see and hear these not-funny jokes whether you want to or not. Images of people being made to look ridiculous is one of the typical things they do. It makes me very angry when this happens. They have no respect for anger - to them, anger is just another joke.

So, this blog was kind of funny at first, then it became negative.

But I still have a couple more hours before I have to go to work, and I'm still happy about that....






(*** i found it in my notes. this was from the google quote "very fresh dill" ***)

"Do you really need to ask fuddes? Cause I mean, it's not like I did it. Nope. Today I was off burning heretics in the neighboring town. Hooboy, did THEY ever have a chicken problem. Fortunetly, with a little help from Norm and some special "gear" from the Inquisition.....the situation is cleared up. Except for the HUGE mess Norm made. I mean DAMN BOY! I thought you liked it dirty....but for the love of GOD! I didn't even know you could USE peanut butter for that purpose, let alone wood chips. As for the VanTols and their dairy.....I say they are currently arming a guerrilla army of rodents to assist them in their ever raging war against the GMC. Never forget the GMC, folks. That or they are rediscovering the joys of Lactaid and the dairy products they can now consume. Posted by: Laemkral on March 18, 2004 11:25 PM"
URL=http://perversiontracker.com/archives/000409.html

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