And this site is ..?
About wit, play and humanity.
Wit, which has the same origin as wise, simply means understanding what is happening and what it might mean; in other words, intelligence – seeing beyond the surface of things.
It comes, like all learning and understanding, from childhood play. Beyond a certain point we're playing not just with physical space, and the objects that happen to be there, but with ideas.
Humour deals with the unexpected and the incongruous.
It's a major part of the intelligence that has enabled us to adapt to changing conditions over millions of years, form societies, build civilisations, and transform our environment.
Put simply, it's about being surprised by stuff, reacting to it, learning from it, and moving on to bigger and, in some ways, better things (the history of our species in the last two and a half million years, give or take).
With humour you can be frivolous-playful or serious-playful. You can even deal with very grim topics and still be funny - not laughing at people as victims but making points about the idiotic, greedy, cruel things that we all do from time to time, and that rich and powerful people can often get away with.
"Humour's like an anaesthetic - you can use it to cut deep without people realising just how far you've gone."
So, it's intrinsically humane, in my view: it can question all these things, and encourage us to think critically and reflect.
Terry Buchan
(All the stuff on here is written by me unless another author is credited.)
Alliterative Ancestry
Family is a funny thing, isn't it? At least, you hope it is if you're using it as material for so-called comedy (as some people kindly refer to my monologues).
I started to investigate my ancestry recently, because someone had told me I was descended from Aristotle.
Or was it from reptiles?
Anyway, I spent some time looking up stuff on the web (since I had to include the insect side of the family - they make such a fuss if you overlook them, especially at weddings – scurrying around everywhere, all over the jam, under your feet, total nuisance) and after a few months of research I felt I had some grasp on my forebears.
So now I keep them – well, three of them, the fourth one died in a bearskin-related incident – in the cellar, with the bull and the badger, for baiting.
No I don't, I'm just kidding - I keep them purely for alliterative purposes.
Helps a lot with the poetry, I find.
And, from time to time, with the comedy.
Do we depend too much on IT?
How could this happen?
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Are you a therapist and short of ideas on how to make money? Here's one
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