His predicament has nearly become amusing to him; he has been bested, but still regards his attacker with woeful, wanting eyes.
Sometimes, a weird hysteria takes hold of you, and the strangest things become amusing.
"They're mean and abusive, but they haven't raised the nastiness to that mythical level of New York obnoxiousness that becomes amusing and charming, where you'd deliberately patronize the bakery simply to be insulted.
It's an in-house comedy: she was using Scott Joplin music, which, early in her career, she would beg her lover and adviser, Louis Horst, to play to ease her tension on bad days, and the earnestness, even ponderousness, of Graham style here becomes amusing.
Social psychologists may call this an engineered mass catharsis, and language deconstructionist Derrida may have been provoked to call it a perverse example of media as entertainment, where the act of apprehending the text becomes amusing in and of itself!
While he admitted that he found a couple of scenes funny, he argued that the episode over relied on broad gags and "never threatens to become inspired or amusing".
Johnson is rising up the ranks of funny politicians: with 13 entries in the dictionary he outwits Margaret Thatcher (11) and Harold Macmillan (9) to become the third-most amusing British politician, behind Winston Churchill (32) and Benjamin Disraeli (28).
IF THE world is to tackle the problem of climate change in earnest, "clean coal" has to become more than just an amusing oxymoron.
But Grayson Perry, winner of the Turner Prize a decade ago, has risen lately to become one of the most amusing and eloquent artists in England.
