Getting Midieval on the Ass of a Perfect Stranger

Does anyone else ever have the experience where you watch, read, or hear something and you can't really decide if it is more humorous than disturbing? Before I go further, I have to kindly insist that you watch the following, the perfect example of such an imbroglio.

Click here.

Now, the first time I watched this, I proclaimed it "The Funniest Thing on Mother Earth (Gaia, to her friends)". Sure, I was aware that it is quite admittedly odd. And a bit random. Hell, I'd even call it idiosyncratic. All right, let's be honest...whoever made this is likely f&%$ed in the head five ways from Sunday. But still, I have to admit that I was openly giggling the first time I saw it, and making health care students all around me increasingly nervous. You haven't lived until you've seen a shaggy 6'8" guy giggling uncontrollably. It's breathtaking, I assure you.

But what does it mean that I find this, at the very least, VERY amusing? To more quantitatively put this (I'm a scientist and general geek, after all), I would have given it 8 AFUs the first time I saw it. AFUs, of course, are 'arbitrary funny units', a term I have just created to try and manifest the way the left side of my brain works. I should give credit to my college basketball coach for the creation of the 'arbitrary _____ units' device, at this point, as I'm sure it will arise again here at SixFootTwoInches. At one point during my playing career, he explained to us that on every single possession, we have 10 'arbitrary energy units', and then proceeded to explicate how many of those mystical units we should expend in each task (ie. 3 to get back on defense, 1 to stay in your defensive triangle, and 6 to scope out the blonde with the tube top in the third row of the student section).

Now, having seen this thing several times now, I am giving it a final AFU grade of 6.5. If you don't like it, suck it. However, I have definitely noticed that the more random and non-sensical something is, it is generally all the more amusing to me. And this isn't the case for everyone. I'm sure a good portion of the people wasting precious working hours watching such a thing will be completely unimpressed and only think it is Just Weird. More power to you. You probably get a lot more done during the day. Huzzah to you! But I'm willing to bet that a lot of my friends will think it's pretty good. And I think those odds increase if you fit in any of the following categories:

1. Grew up during the 80's and/or watched Perfect Strangers (when that song came on the first time, I just lost it -- I mean, when was the last time you heard that? There's something nostalgiac that leads to the increased perceived hilarity of things)

2. Have edited video before (and can therefore appreciate the mind-numbing time and effort someone put in to creating this thing -- hope it was worth it, buddy)

3. Cat lover.

What it all comes down to should be this....anytime Balki Bartakomous is involved in something, it is flat out funny. Just look at the Surreal Life.

All right, you still don't think it's THAT funny? Fair enough. But a photo-journal through a Renaissance Festival, with amusingly mean-spirited shots taken at the participants who may be the very people who created the cat video....that's freaking priceless.

(props to Michelle Collins for the cat video heads-up)