I hope you had some nice chocolate.

Now: the following blog requires me to refer to a particular swear word. This word – for some reason – is widely considered to be “the worst one”. I don’t know why; it is simply the result of four letters being arranged in a particular order so as to refer to a part of the human body, not unlike ‘nose’, ‘head’ or ‘ball’. But, thanks to a series of whacky anthropological events in society, this word has been granted super-dooper powers of offence and is a mysterious stranger to our television, newspapers and radios.

While I personally have no issue with using the word myself (as this story will illustrate), I have chosen to save myself and The Standard website boffins/elves/nerds the collective headache of printing it and will instead substitute the word with the still amusing formulation, dingbat.

But rest assured that whenever you see the word dingbat in this blog, you will undoubtedly be thinking of the word c**t.

And we will all still try to convince ourselves that this is the most adult approach we can come up with to deal with such vulgarity.

Right. Moving on.

Despite what some Facebook groups might say, I am a comedian. I try to make things funny and I try to make funny things. Some people enjoy those attempts at humour, others do not. I have slowly grown to accept this. When I started entering the public arena with me little jokes and me little asides and me little theories, any negative reaction to my comedy – or, indeed, a reaction that wasn’t overflowing with praise – turned my heart cold and made me want to run away and be a lawyer and makes lots of money and screw the poor shits and THEN the guys at high school would be impressed with me and I’d get all the girls and they’d see.

They’d ALL see!

(Thunder crash)

But over the past year and half, reality has sunk in and I am okay at letting the internet-based jibes of people who don’t hanker for the B-Man pass me by.

I do get annoyed, though, when people simply don’t get jokes.

Jokes are beautiful. Screw your haikus and your platitudes and your koans; jokes shit all over them. They’re usually about as pithy as a group of words can be, they’re interesting, they can teach you something, make you think about something or argue for something but best of all, they make you laugh. They contain – or at least endeavour to contain – the essence of funny.

I love jokes. I love talking about jokes, I like hearing great jokes and I love writing jokes. As I am currently in the throes of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, I am regularly having four to five joke-gasms a night. Sure, sometimes I’m faking them, but on the whole, I’m hearing a shitload of great material from numerous comedians and loving every minute of it.

Comedians have always had to be prolific, but now, thanks to the interhighwaywebzgooglenetmachines, there’s hundreds of different outlets for your funnies and more opportunities for you to share your jokes with the world. A popular trend amongst myself and my comedian friends is the micro-blog phenomenon of Twitter; or, as I like to refer to it, “140 characters and the truth”.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, please consider yourself old and click here.

Twitter is perfect for comedians because it forces you to edit ruthlessly and it allows you to share your witty observations with potentially thousands and thousands of people who choose to follow you. If someone doesn’t like what you tweet, they can “un-follow” you and move on to follow Wil Anderson or Adam Hills or Josh Thomas or Ross Noble or Meshel Laurie or Dave Hughes or whoever else better aligns with their comedic tastes.

My good friend Melinda Buttle is a prime example of the possibilities of Twitter. A brilliant up-and-coming comedian, Mel has garnered an impressive fan base through her consistently funny tweets, many of which are re-tweeted (if this phrase annoys you, again – you’re old) by other Twitter users, thereby alerting their follows in turn of Mel’s comedy stylings. Karl Chandler, another comic friend of mine, fills his act with often breathtakingly clever one-liners. To him, Twitter is a perfect disciplinary tool that makes him write and test out material without leaving the house or going to the disgusting effort of standing up for a full five minutes on stage.

Anyway, the point is, I try to make my tweets entertaining because I view my role as a comedian and comedians are supposed to be entertaining with the funniness and the ha-has. If I’m not shamelessly plugging up-coming gigs or radio stuff, I try to really think about what I post and do slightly better than

OMG my coffee is cold and my train is late. FML #Urgh

12:30 PM Apr 2nd via Tweetie

Again, if you’re not across ‘FML’ or hastags, seriously, this is happening – you are an ‘old’.

Inspired by the recent religious holiday, while walking down the street yesterday, I decided to tweet this:

Happy Easter! Jesus died for our sins, including blasphemy. What a [dingbat].

4:08 PM Apr 4th via Tweetie

On the whole, I was pretty proud of that. It’s not exactly mind-blowingly original, but it does the job. It was just a short little Easter Sunday LOL, a classic switcheroo, a mere nothing designed to bring a wry smile to my followers as they enjoy their long weekend.

Admittedly, some people quite liked it. I was re-tweeted and complimented by some nice people.

But they were in the minority.

“I'm not religious, but that is not even funny. Or particularly clever. Why upset others needlessly?”

“what an offensive and lame primary school quality joke. Poor effort.”

“NEVER use that word again. Disgusted.”

“That status is terrible. You’re a dickhead”

These are just some examples of reactions to my little piece of art. Now, they’re not exactly death threats (though my boyfriend has received death threats for equally trivial things on his Twitter account), but they do illustrate a passionate dislike for something that was designed to entertain and amuse.

It’s evident to me that these people didn’t get the joke. I have thought about my tweet again and again and again and would defy anyone to explain to me exactly how it is offensive to anyone or anything. I mean, after CLEARLY SETTING UP THE PREMISE OF THE HILARITY (that Jesus died for our sins including the VERY SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED SIN OF BLASPHEMY), I then IMMEDIATELY go on to BLASPHEME, insulting the very man who (supposedly) SACRIFICED HIS LIFE in order to save PEOPLE LIKE ME WHO BLASPHEME.

If you read that tweet and actually believed that I was seriously calling Jesus an actual dingbat with no concept of irony or self-awareness, I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t be let near computers. You will shit on the internet and get shit stuck in its wires.

Is this a part of being religious or politically correct now? An absolute rejection of any humorous statements that refer to anything religious? Did the Lord say unto his people, “And thou shalt not do all that naughty stuff NOR take context into consideration when reading Twitter?”

(Thunder crash)

I mean, I do happen to think religion is stupid and if you believe a dude was crucified, died and stuffed into a cave and then came back from the dead to eventually ascend into Cloudland, you are a right old duffer, but this tweet wasn’t even about that. This was a tweet about language and surprise and the thrill of using the word dingbat and Jesus in the same 140 characters and wishing people a happy long weekend.

…

Is this thing on?

Basically, I’m a bit annoyed that people react with such ignorance to my comedy. It’s almost offensive. No – it is offensive. Yeah, I’m offended. I mean, as a comedian, I’m offended by this rubbish. And to add insult to injury, this came at this holy time of the year, when my people gather together to celebrate and worship what we believe in. It’s childish and ridiculous and an affront to what we value as a society.

Now I know how Jesus felt.

Except I have more followers.

--

Tom Ballard

www.tomballard.com.au

www.twitter.com/tomcballard

www.triplej.net.au/tomandalex

www.facebook.com/tomballardaustralia