Every black rat snake should hiss as soon as possible

Hello!

Last night I stayed up late to finish writing a buddy comedy. So I finished that story and that meant I completed it a day before the deadline. Hooray for me! It's about two old women who drive to a haunted house to warn the new homeowner about the place, not realizing they are just warning the haunted house's manifested figure.

It's OK. A couple of rewrites and it'd make a decent little comedy.

But now onto the new genre - Black comedy! Or as mentioned in the title, otherwise known as: black humor, dark humor, dark comedy, morbid humor, edgy humor, or gallows humor.

I have until 14th October to have this new script finished. So for today's blog I thought I'd begin researching the genre and seeing what I can dig up.

We travel back to 1940 to find the origins of the term "Black Humor". Coined by French surrealist André Breton in his book Anthology of Black Humor, about the work of Jonathon Swift and other writers.

I would like to think we all know what black humor is, Black comedy is finding humor from a serious. issue, often morbid. So think tragic or sensitive subjects, such as war, tragedy, disease, death and suffering of the innocent. In Bruges is a big favourite of mine. I think this is a good example of Black humor.

So onto Jonathon Swift. Born in Ireland, so good for him. He also died in Dublin, so probably should have thought about moving before then? What I will do for this blog is do a quick bit of research on Mr. Swift. Just by glancing at some quotes of his and seeing what sort of person we are dealing with here. Father of black humor, I bet he's got a good joke or two in him. Maybe something even profound.

(Overdramatically taps on the keyboard to google search....

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.....Alright.

In fairness, my natural reaction is to be cynical so it's unfair for me to actually criticize anyone, let alone a widely respected writer who has their work reaching into present day to still inspire people. However, I do have some thoughts about some quotes of his:

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken

I'm not too impressed by this one. I think he could have left out the pie-crust bit and it would've sounded snappier. I would even bet someone else coined the phrase "promises are made to be broken" which meant Mr. Swift wanted to add in a p word there to have his own claim to the clever thought. It's as if I said now as a quote:

No Woman, No Cry, No Stressing" - Kevin Ryan

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.

Not bad, I just can't help shake the feeling this was already being said. I dunno, it seems like something an old man in the pub would tut and say when the the other men in the pub were telling each other about the referee who didn't send off that player during the match. (My nephew's hurling team may have had a terrible referee during their game)

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

Who the hell questions kissing? Even if you're not a sexual person, fair enough, but who criticizes the concept?? Did he have a go at the Neanderthal who came up with hugging too?

Every dog must have his day.

Not true. "Must" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It MUST have it's day? Unfortunately it doesn't. I wish it did. I wish every dog had many days but they don't Jonathon. And I get that this isn't even something we have to take literally. We can just think, well he meant everyone has to have some success at some point. But, if he's coining this, since it's attributed to him, then he started it. Someone said to him "I wish I had a day of being successful you know?" and Mr. Swift replied about every dog should have his day. Now do you think his friend, who clearly is a little down and needs a pick me up, is not wondering what the feck is Jonathon bringing up dogs for?

Change it a bit and it shows how silly it is. Let's say someone on twitter writes - Hey I don't know if I'll ever become a writer!" and I reply "Well every black rat snake should hiss as soon as possible". See? Now it makes no sense.

Books, the children of the brain.

Does this not sound like Jaden Smith when he tweeted about how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real? I mean come on?

Now I'm not sure what to do about Jonathon but I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a character firing off these sort of sentences. Haven't quite gotten to the black humor part yet. Next blog I should be back with a better grasp.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin