That's certainly what he wants you to think. It's not always borne out by his behavior, though. He's actually extremely uptight but takes great pains to conceal it.
With regard to my making a funny, he'd be pissed because he likes to portray me as humorless. Re "He might be pissed off to find that I'd made a crack someone had found funny": He doesn't strike me as an uptight character who easily takes offence. On a related theme. "Bad-taste humour" is an intriguing "genre". I've had lots of belly laughs from bad-taste jokes but it does raise a philosophical puzzler. Take this rather lame example: The NME didn't publish the interview with Stevie Wonder. NME: "Stevie, what's it like being blind?" Stevie: "Well. it could have been worse. I could've been black." Now those who are offended by such cracks always say that the joke in question is offensive and in bad taste. But that is an idiotic complaint as it is obviously precisely what makes it a "bad-taste" jest. Although much of such humour is too disturbing (or malicious) for me to enjoy, I would defend the genre as being a liberating experience because it's a chance to escape the suffocating conformity we normally have to consent to. We are guilty, inadequate and contradictory creatures and we need to break loose from our "mind-forg'd manacles" if we're to stay sane. I don't mind most bad-taste humor as long as it's, well, funny. Set and setting and tone can make a big difference too. And I agree, it can be liberating.
