Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

George Bernard Shaw said that over a century ago. I know that ’cause I like to collect quotes from famous people. I’ve got eight quote books back at my bunk. I’m trying to catalog them all to remove the duplicates. This one’s one of my favorites. Even though I’m not very funny, I love thinking about what is funny and what makes us laugh.

I don’t get it why people get mad when I laugh when other people die.

Everyone’s got their own way of dealing with grief, you know?

I just wish their way of dealing with it wasn’t beating me up or yelling at me.

It’s just my way of taking things seriously.

I used to try and explain myself to them and tell them about George Bernard Shaw, but that just made them madder. They started calling me Shaw. They’re ignorant. I’m not. I know– because Shaw taught me–that when something is funny, you should search it carefully for a hidden truth.

People dying makes life funny, which makes me laugh, which makes life serious.

I don’t know what the hidden truth is yet. Maybe that’s because life is serious, not funny. Maybe there is no hidden truth. But does that make life funny because the lack of a hidden truth is a hidden truth?

I don’t know yet. I’m going to keep looking anyway. People keep dying, so there’s no shortage of laughter. If I’m going to find that hidden truth, it’s going to be somewhere around the Zone. Probably with a Z chewing on its ass.

That would be seriously hilarious.