Some time ago, I came up with a joke about all spammers either offering to "shrink my mortgage, or enlarge my penis" when I set up a guestbook on my site and had to take it down because it was being spammed constantly.
I'm watching TV now (and this just proves to me that I have no clue what I'm missing when I'm not watching tv, which is always) and standup comedy is on...
and the man says....
"It seems like I'm only getting two kinds of spam these days; people promising to shrink my mortgage, and people trying to enlarge my you-know-what."
I was halfway tuned out until then and when I heard him say "people promising to shrink my mortgage...... " in the background, in that split moment of a pause, I felt my eyes get big and my jaw go slack. Then, in slow motion: "...or.. en...large... MY YOU-KNOW-WHAT! [hahahahahahaaa]".
It was that moment of frozen horror when you're stopped at a stoplight, watching in the rearview mirror, helplessly, as the car behind you barrels up behind you, tires screeching, waiting to see if they will be able to stop in time.
Baudrillard has a quote about how the notion of "stealing" other people's good ideas is bullshit because, if someone spontaneously comes up with the exact same idea as you, it means it was pedestrian idea to begin with.
So does this mean that my joke, which always made me giggle, (and is much funnier for me because I have neither a mortgage nor a penis, whereas Mr. Standup probably has both), was not as clever as I once thought, because clearly this man and likely a million un-famous others have had the very same idea and thought the joke to be their own?
Or does it mean I'm good enough to have my own standup special on Comedy Central?
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