The Explanation

       I'd like to start this blog off with a little something about me. I admire people who are good at witty comebacks and spontaneous responses. I've always admired people who have this trait. They're a lot of fun to be around and make for good company. These are the kind of people who are the so-called "life of the party". I've always wanted to be one of these people. I don't want to be the "that's what she said" kind of person who attempts to be witty. I want to be the genuinely funny people who can make up a joke or a silly song at a moment's notice. I haven't always been envious of those people but I certainly am now that I realize that it's just not in my genetic make up to be the funny guy who tells jokes. But I'm not bitter. I'm not bitter that I can't crack jokes or spout off a whole set of new lyrics for a common silly tune or any number of things that can get an entire room laughing. Not even slightly bitter.
       After all, why should I be bitter when I like to think I can tell stories? Being able to tell a good story is a good party quality as well, right? You end up reaching a smaller audience, certainly, but in general your audience can be just as satisfied as the audience of the funny guy. And that is the truth. Or, at least, that's what I tell myself. This may not necessarily be true and I make no guarantees so don't try this at home. It could end up severely injuring your self-esteem, bruising your pride, deflating your ego and generally decreasing your social status and self-view. I avoid finding this out by not actually telling any stories in real life. I mostly just repeat comic punchlines and things that I have read because my head is a vast receptacle for useless information. Please do not explain to me that telling stories is a terrible idea. I do not want to know. Kindly leave me to my delusions.
       Speaking of delusions, I seem to have digressed back from my tangent to my original line of thought. I can logically conclude that I will never be one of those spontaneous funny people. Logic does not stop me from deluding myself into thinking that I can convince people that I am one of those funny guys without actually being spontaneous. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and the solution I came up with to the problem of pretending to be spontaneous and funny is by thinking up comebacks in advance. I usually refer to these in my own mind as advance-comebacks, which is a terribly clever and witty name for them but just as appropriate would be the term "punchline" because I have to write the rest of the joke as well.
       I sit around and think of arbitrary situations that have the possibility of actually coming up in real life. For example I will give you a response to a situation that actually has come up and I actually have used. In a situation where someone asks me what religion I prescribe to (though maybe not in those precise words but something along that vein) I have come up with a good response. The situation goes a bit like this:
People are talking in a room. The conversation turns to religion. Someone asks me what religious view I have.
       I respond: "I'm either agnostic or a pantheist, depending on how you look at it."
       This response is entirely true. I am a logical, scientific person. I like proof of things. There is some evidence in the universe to suggest that there is something out there beyond human comprehension. It could be some kind of God. It could be multiple gods. It could be that everything in the world has it's own unique spirit. It could be that the world is a complex ant farm in the alien equivalent of a science fair and we just don't know it because the aliens are as much beyond our comprehension as we are beyond the comprehension of a hive of ants. I believe that there is something. And I believe there are a set of basic morals that we all, as human beings, should probably all follow.  This is the basic premise of being agnostic. You believe in some kind of higher power but don't necessarily believe in god. I do. And since I believe this I can easily believe in the basic premise behind any and all moral religions and claim that I am pantheistic. As a pantheist I believe in all religion. I don't necessarily believe in every aspect of each and every religion but I believe that it's plausible that any one of them could be the truth. And thus is my response formulated.
       But despite the fact that this response is very much like the kind of thing that the funny, spontaneous people I know would say, it's not actually funny. I had previously assumed that I could get away with not actually being terribly funny if I pinned down the witty side of the equation. After managing to try several of my advance-comebacks on various people I slowly reached the conclusion that my wit is too intelligent. Very few people quickly grasp the concept of pantheism and agnosticism being one and the same even after my explaining it to them. Most people don't even bother to ask what I mean. I do, usually, get a lot of puzzled expressions to which I often explain. But, as Scott Adams would say: "It's Not Funny If I Have to Explain It." Neither is it witty if I have to explain it, sadly enough.
       I realize that I am neither witty nor funny and there is a distinct possibility (which I deliberately persist in not testing) that I also cannot tell good stories. Yet I still can't help but continue to come up with the punchlines to bad jokes for situations that rarely if ever come up. I could say, in fact, that my life is a series of bad punchlines.