It was a Friday night. A bunch of us were sitting around a table in a bar drinking beer. Two guys, two women, and myself. The conversation was passing through a quiet period and we were talking about beer or buying beer, something like that. Alluding to how the beer isn't all that cheap. That's when I decided to shoot in with a joke: Well when your glass is starting to empty you could always go to the bathroom for a refill. It will be a little diluted, but hey. [correct for loss of precision in translation]

It wasn't very funny, but hey who can deliver all zingers? Some jokes are mediocre, you either tell them anyway or say nothing.

One of the women smiled, the other one didn't look up from her cell phone, probably didn't even hear it. Just about right. But the guys had a totally different reaction. One stared at me as if in disbelief. The other made a derogatory comment about how classless jokes are part of modern culture.

I was incredulous at the criticism. I had no idea what he meant. I asked the woman who had smiled at it, she didn't get it either. It wasn't until the next day it dawned on me.

What I meant was obviously that if you're running out of beer, you can go to the bathroom, where there is a sink, and fill up your glass with tap water. It would then be diluted, the remaining amount of beer in the glass would mix with the water. This was a natural instinct for me, going back to when we were kids and drank tea, but the tea was hot, so we would fill up half the glass with hot water and the rest with tap water to get the right temperature. The two guys had a different interpretation of the joke. I can't bring myself to spill it out for you, but I think you'll get it soon enough. It was indeed classless.

When I realized the alternative interpretation I was insulted. I have never stooped that low to get a laugh and people who do this.. well let's just say they're "not my kind of people".

So why does this happen? It has to do with cultural background. The same picture shown to people in different parts of the world can trigger very different interpretations based on what kind of world they live in. And we understand why this is so. Just like we interpret or "understand" visual images by the fact that our brain compares them with all kinds of things we have seen in the past, searching for a match, we associate everything we perceive sensually, or intellectually, with things we already know.

So when you're misinterpreted, and someone accuses you of expressing something classless, who is really the embarrassed party?

Jon of ngedit.com recalls how a benign hand gesture he helped spread was discovered to be very similar to an obscene hand gesture, well known in some circles. His rationale is:

If someone does know about the obscene version, then whose fault is it really?

I think making this sort of accusation says two things about you.

1. The fact that your mind connected you with the obscene alternative, and you didn't discard this and think there must be some other meaning I'm not getting reveals that you are well familiar with expressions of this nature. Whether it is the case that you immediately found the obscene version and stopped thinking about it, or you found both and decided on the obscene version, well neither detracts from the fact that you calculated the obscene version a more probable choice, which says something about what kind of statements are natural "in your world".
2. The fact that you concluded I had made the obscene statement, taking into account that I have never told jokes like that in your presence (or for that matter at any other time) says something about what you think I'm capable of. It also shows a not so kind hearted willingness to lump me in with a group I don't exactly belong to. No benefit of the doubt given here.

But now in the wider context, what can be said about jokes like this? The woman who had smiled at the joke obviously got the intended message. So telling it to her was harmless. As far as the two guys are concerned, they have themselves to blame for associating what was said with what apparently they are used to hearing. And unintentionally also revealed something about themselves we wouldn't otherwise have known.

There is a choice to make here. Anything you say could potentially be misinterpreted. Sometimes you are aware of this, knowing what kind of material passes for humor. So you can censor yourself and rephrase everything you want to say so that the meaning cannot be twisted. But it's not exactly the most satisfying thing to be unable to express thought directly.

In the alternate case, you say what you wanted to say, and part of your audience may appreciate it, while you give the pathetic people what they want. He said balls hahahahaha *insert a 30 minute veritable battle of wits as your audience tells every joke about balls they can think of as you patiently wait for them to get it over with*. Of course, as a last resort you can shun the bad company. But then, of course, you're not socializing anymore, you outcast you.

However, it's really up to you as a receiver to make the judgment. Personally I like to give people the benefit of the doubt even when I'm fairly sure they meant to be classless. So I don't laugh, I offer an alternative interpretation. At this point you have two choices. You can either admit defeat and save face, or you can persist. Most people persist, and sort of shyly confirm their intentions by rephrasing the joke. Shyly because they hoped the first version would be clear enough without having said too much. But then when they've restated it and I still don't laugh, check mate. No coming back from the fact that you just told an unfunny, classless joke. But hey, I gave you the chance to recover.

Laughter is a delicate mechanism. It's hard to determine what makes us laugh and what makes us laugh more or less, depending on the particular context. In other words, if you take some group of strangers, it's hard to predict if they are going to laugh, and if so "how much". Not only because every person has a different sensibility, but also because laughter has a strong social influence.

When you react to something funny, you are affected by the reactions of people around you. Some people will burst out laughing even if they are the only person who thought it was funny. But a lot of people are a bit reluctant to be that exposed, so even if they are overcome they try to tone it down as much as possible.

Of course, when you are the recipient of something funny, you can't predict how it will affect you, there's no way to prepare yourself. It's like someone were to say "I want to try something on you, close your eyes". And you don't know what's coming.

But if *you* are the one making the utterance, with the expectation that it's going to be funny, it's like a controlled experiment. You can sort of plan it, what to say, how to say it, in what tone, in what expression etc. And when I say controlled experiment, what I mean is that you can examine how people's responses to your utterance affect you. For instance, if you say something that makes people laugh (intentionally), it often makes you laugh also, doesn't it? Or even if you were already laughing about it, it makes you laugh more. I'm surprised that it even works in cases where you wouldn't necessarily expect it to work. Like say if I send an email that is supposed to be funny, and hence the communication isn't continuous in time, I might get a response after 3 minutes, at which point I've moved on to something else, and getting a positive response to the joke makes me laugh again. Knowing that someone was laughing without even seeing or hearing it still triggers that reaction.

But back to saying funny things. People have different styles for this. Usually the funniest people are the ones who don't laugh (at least not initially) at their own jokes. They just say it, and sort of "put it out there", they *offer* the joke to anyone who will take it. And if it's obvious that it was a joke, and no one laughs, then it's awkward. But otherwise it could just be dismissed as an off the cuff remark. In fact, trying to disguise a joke so that either it's funny or it's not figured out as a bad joke is quite a skill in itself, some people do it really well.

Have you ever seen people who can't even get through the joke because they start laughing while telling it? I would still include them in this category, because if you can't help laughing you can't help it, plain and simple. So before you can even express what makes you laugh you're already laughing. Of course, if you do this then someone can't really determine whether you meant to laugh or not, if you hadn't been overcome, so it's a bit sketchy.

But then there's the other category of people, who utter something, pause and then start laughing hysterically. This is pretty strange, because you made it through telling it before it made you laugh, but then it seemed to have kicked in. So either you are saying something not (yet) realizing the joke in it, or you are purposely delaying your laughter to afterwards. Of course, the former can happen from time to time, but for people who always do this it makes me wonder what is happening. The thing is, if you laugh hysterically at your own jokes, and no one else does, this makes you look like a mental patient. This is why it's a lot more important for these people that you laugh with them, because they've already committed themselves with respect to the joke.

Typically, it's the people who laugh at their own jokes who put pressure on you to laugh also. This can give different results depending mostly on who the person is. If it's a person you are *used to* laughing with, it's almost like you laugh anyway even though this particular case isn't actually all that funny. However, if it's a person who is either never funny or just someone you don't know, most likely you won't laugh and you either make yourself laugh (which feels so uncomfortable and phony), or you stand your ground and don't laugh. At which point certain conceited people will accuse you of not having a sense of humor, to which you can respond "I do have one, and you just killed it."

However, there is also another angle to the self-laugher. Some people laugh very outwardly, like they care that other people should laugh too, this is important to them. There are also those who laugh more discretely. I would say semi-discretely, in the sense that they are not actually suppressing, but they are nevertheless laughing to themselves and not laying claims on other people's laughter. But I think that when they laugh in response to their own jokes, this is actually because they only then realize the joke in what they said, so this would place them closer to the first category, those who laugh because they can't help it, except the reaction comes late.

Have you heard people say this? It's a pretty popular expression. I find it a bit unlikely (or at the very least unsettling) myself.

The first thing to take into account is that falling asleep generally isn't instantaneous. So depending on the person it takes something like a few minutes to half an hour (or maybe more) to fall asleep from the moment you go to bed. Now, suppose you are exceptionally tired, then perhaps the time is shortened. But instantaneous? That seems unlikely.

Secondly there's a safety concern in play. Depending on the elevation of your fall, and the material the pillow is made from, you could have a concussion. If you were actually standing up at the time and you just literally *fell asleep* then let's hope it was a clean landing.

But the most striking omission here is that people never mention how aggravated they felt by being woken up less than a second after falling asleep! The first period of sleep, much like the last, is not deep sleep, it's not coma material. It's sensitive sleep, and if someone were to wake you up right after you fell asleep you would easily wake up. So a fall would definitely wake you up. How frustrating that must have been for you.

I've always been inclined to think of dreams by trying to relate them to the time I spent asleep. Especially when I wake up remembering several dreams and they all seem quite "long" I start thinking about how long I might have been dreaming out of the whole time I was asleep. (Is it me or does sleep when dreaming seem like "you get more out of it"? :D )

Of course, dreaming doesn't happen the whole time being asleep, only in certain periods (that's all I know about it), so you will never have a night's sleep where you dream from beginning to end.

But that got me thinking. Why do we assume that the "speed" of dreams is the same as the speed of consciousness? What we do in our conscious state is a constant sort of data processing function, we perceive things and respond to them. But while asleep there is no perception happening. And so there is no need to respond to anything either. Which means.. there is no reason to assume that dreams "happen" at the same speed, is there?

In fact, dreams are supposed to be spawned by the brain as a way to keep you asleep while detecting that you are about to wakeup. But it stands to reason that this reaction must be rather quick, it doesn't seem likely that you start waking up and then the dream kicks in and you sort of teeter on the brink of waking up but still sleep another two hours. What seems more likely to me is that this is a quick response, so you start waking up, you start dreaming, but that only keeps you asleep for a short period of time.

How short? Well, since there is no perception involved, you're not actually responding to sensory perception at all, it's just a (pre-calculated?) simulation. So dreams could actually be extremely short, and you wouldn't know it, because it's just a representation of things in the brain.

So when people say things like "my life flashed before my eyes", we think that is silly, because how could you relive so much "real time" of life in such a short period of time? But if you think about it in the terms stated so far, it makes perfect sense. It doesn't take much time to experience fragments from your whole life, because you aren't responding to perception, you are just replaying it in your head. And you don't need any time to think about it either, you aren't thinking about it, just feeling it.

So how fast? Well, considering how fast you brain can respond to sensory perception that you aren't thinking about consciously, like recognize faces, voices, associate images with each other, recognize patterns and so on, this could actually be pretty damn fast.

Back in Norway the winters are long. And cold. And dark. I don't know which of those properties is the most depressing, but it's probably the darkness.

In college we sometimes had classes at 8am. In the midst of winter I would wake up at 7 all sleepy and dread getting up, because it meant leaving my warm bed and stepping into the zone of cold. And once you wake up feeling cold that sensation doesn't go away that quick. If you wake up feeling cold, you're gonna be feeling cold until you find yourself in a place where you can really warm up for several hours. But it wasn't just cold, it was dark. So I turn on the light and get dressed. I would leave the house at 7:30 and start walking to school. Pitch black outside, all you have is the light from streetlights. And cold. That 30 minute walk was the least favorite part of my day. Better yet if it was slushy with 10cm of soft, wet snow, and sporadic puddles of water underneath that are sometimes hard to avoid stepping into. Then your shoes are pretty much soaked by the time you get there. (At least if it's slushy it's not that cold.)

On a long day I would be in school until 4pm. After the first block of classes there would be a break, which was just in time to witness that it had become light out, at 10. Around noon there was lunch and another chance to enjoy daylight. At 2pm we had another break and it was still light out. But by 4 daylight was long gone, and I was left with the prospect of a 30min walk back home in the dark. At least it wasn't cold, it would be warmer than it is in the morning and I had had plenty of time to defrost from the brutal wakeup.

When you're in college you don't have classes all day everyday, so some days you do actually experience daylight. The working people on the other hand... Understandably therefore, on the weekends people are trying to catch a break from this routine.

After a winter that starts in November and ends in April spring can't come soon enough. Which is why people are super keen to get excited about the first signs of spring, however meager they may be. There is a time every year when spring is just visible on the horizon and people celebrate prematurely on one of those weekend break-aways.

It will typically be a Sunday. The days are much longer now, so when you wake up it's already light out. And people are quick to say "what a nice day, let's go somewhere". That somewhere is a walk. Now keep in mind this is like a seasonal feast, spring is here and we're all excited. So you drive out somewhere, most of the snow is gone, and you don't have to dress that warm anymore. It's noon on a Sunday, the sun is up, and everything is nice.

Except it still sucks. The sun is up, but since Norway is so far north it's like 30 degrees above the horizon, blinding you. And although the snow is gone, the ground is still frozen 1m deep, so the plant life is pretty much disabled. Furthermore, everything that was there before the snow fell is now visible, whether it's firework remains from new year's or old leaves and decomposing plants dating back to the fall or just random trash. And since the ground is frozen it will pretty much remain intact for a month.

Worst of all, there is absolutely nothing to do at a time like this (that's why you're out walking). There's probably some snow left in the hills for those not yet sick of skiing. But every football pitch is frozen, so even though the snow is *finally* gone you still can't play. And this is supposed to be an uplifting experience, yay spring is here. :lazy:

That's what I don't miss at all about Norway. After everything winter puts you through, what people perceive as a glimpse of hope completely sucks. And in some ways that's more depressing than winter itself.