#humor

"I watched Hannah Gadsby's show Nanette. Now, it's a really great show, you should watch it if you get the chance. She talks a lot in it about comedy and her main point is that she feels that, herself as an oppressed person, she's often used her comedy to let the audience off too lightly - she makes a lot of good points. I think the problem with stand-up comedy is it simplifies stuff. It's hard to get at the truth when you've got to get a lot of regular laughs. And sometimes I think, am I trying to get to the truth here or am I just trying to tell funnier lies? So for example, I think she simplifies some stuff in her show. She says, stand-up comedy works by creating a tension in the audience, that's then punctured with a punch line. I don't think mine works like that, I think for me the tension arrives in the punchline. My uncle always said "do something you love, and you never have to work a day in your life" - he did heroin. The tension arrives in the punchline and the setup line is almost supposed to be soothing, really. People say, don't they, that you only regret the things in your life that you don't do. I don't know who said that first, but it's someone who's never broken two corkscrews trying to get an unlubricated parsnip out of their arse. The tension arrives... in the punchline."

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“Sometimes I write stuff now and I go "am I really rebelling there, or am I just conforming?" Because our society works on conformity. People talk about racist cops; they don't select for racism. There isn't a test where they go "I'm afraid you failed; you answered several questions about the history of Motown correctly." They test you for conformity so that you'll just nod along with structural racism, and sometimes I say to myself "well, am I conforming?" So look, I compèred Live at the Apollo a couple of years ago - which is a type of conformity in itself - and at the time, you're supposed to do jokes on all these celebrities they've got down at the front and one of them was this really brilliant female boxer who I really admired and I'd followed her whole career. I had written this joke which I was really proud of which was "At the Olympics, in the women's boxing, they fought in two minute rounds which was good, because if had been three minute rounds I think I would have ejaculated my own pelvis." And you know, I really laughed when I wrote that. I thought "that's fucking hilarious" because you'd never say that to someone's face, would you? And then as I was walking to the show I was thinking; people do say that kind of thing, people say that kind of thing in school - especially me. People say it now on social media, so am I just fucking conforming here? And what am I conforming with, a deeply sexist society?”

“Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Whatever it is it's heading straight for the World Trade Center!”

“I watched the footage of Saddam being executed, and it really made me think…is there nothing on the internet that I won’t masturbate to?”

“I'm gonna leave yous with one final piece of advice, and my advice is; never trust the super rich. What's the first thing they do when they get rich, they buy a yacht. Ever been on a yacht? It's like being in a two star hotel on fucking roller-skates. The only reason anyone would want to own a yacht is so that they can abduct children, sail them out to international waters, fuck them, and dispose of their bodies. And that's what everyone who owns a yacht... is doing. I don't care who it is, J. K. Rowling? I have to say, for legal reasons, that J. K. Rowling is not fucking and killing children in international waters... to the best of my knowledge. That's what's happening out there; the sea levels aren't rising, it's just the weight of dead, fucked kids. The sea isn't even salty.”

“Hello you cunts, black power!”

“There is a vegetarian option: you can fuck off.”