> But, noticing I had the eyes of the whole class, I felt a grin take form on my face, and, looking at the disgruntled Mr. Reagan, I heard myself say with a shrug, “My waffles wouldn’t cook fast enough!” That was the first time that I can remember making a room of two dozen or so people (not including Mr. Reagan) bust up laughing. No one knew that was coming, including me.
As a social but introverted person, moments of the right funny words coming out at just the right moment, without consciously thinking about it, don't happen nearly as often as I'd like.
One memorable moment for me was maybe 15 years ago, at an event for prospective law students in Boston (kinda like a job fair, but all the tables are reps from law schools rather than companies).
So I'm introducing myself to these two law school reps, and it's going well, including my interest in technology policy. But when I say I want to represent the public interest, I sense sudden awkward. One of the reps says they have a research center that's an industry partnership, and my immediate thought is that I'm not sounding like a fit for that.
In that instant, I was making eye contact, and the words came out without conscious thought -- I felt a beaming grin, and heard a very clear and confident and determined tone of myself saying, "Know thy enemy." They crack up, and, as I joked to others afterwards, it felt like suddenly the application process was a mere formality. :)
I'm also an 'ambivert'. I'll have some months where I keep making clever little jokes during conversations that come out of nowhere, sometimes that even impress me. And then there are other months where I can't be humorous and light for the life of me. I really have no idea what it is. It's like that part of my brain only boots up once in a while.
Few years ago I wanted to invent something. I didn't have any idea what, so I thought I let computer decide.
What is the most simple way to describe something? A noun. Ok but that already exists, I need adjective too. Still too common, let's add another adjective. I used English corpus and generated random triplets in the form of adjective-adjective-noun.
Most of it was gibberish. Occasionally there was something plausible or even viable, even more rarely something interesting. As I was reading this long list, I stumbled upon this gem:
Creepy wet uncle
And I laughed. As I continue reading the list, every once in a while there was something funny. But not once have I found words that would make me cry. Before, I thought that laughter and crying are equal but opposite emotions, but they are not. Crying requires much deeper emotional connection while all it takes to make me laugh are 3 random words.
That day I also realize why Craig Ferguson was funny (this was back when he still had the late late show), he just say or do something random. That was his secret. I felt cheated, the cheapness of laugh was exposed.
(There was also someone featured on HN who wrote a daily post containing 3-4 product/service ideas for a while; those had a bit more thought put into them than a RNG can provide.)
Whenever I get this feeling, I start throwing search keywords at Algolia's HN index to see if I can find the article from who knows how long ago... no luck so far. But I got to Patrick Andrews' inventions page, which is very similar in style to what I'm looking for and also a fun read: https://iotd.patrickandrews.com/
I think being able to make people laugh in as few words as possible is a skill, and one that's very difficult to master. It's like poetry, constraints require creativity. Creepy wet uncle, to me at least, isn't very funny, but it was likely funny at the time because of the context. Unexpected things can be funny, and it's a common way to form a joke, but coming up with novel ideas that lots of people find funny isn't an easy thing to do for most people. If it was, we probably wouldn't find it that funny.
FWIW, I think this is what has made Twitter so popular. The original 140 character limit with out the ability to do tweet threads in the form we have now put a lot of constraints on people. Being thoughtful or funny in 140 characters is difficult, but a lot of folks came up with some pretty amazing insights and quips.
A lot of the humor I like is about hearing something unexpected and laughing in surprise
A man was golfing with his friend on a fine Sunday morning
A hearse with a funeral procession of cars passed by
The first man stood at attention with his hat over his heart
The second man said "Did you know them?"
The first replied, "Know them? She was my wife!"
In a real world case, I shared a cab with a stranger. We didn't speak a word. I was let out first. As I got out he smiled and said "Keep in touch!"
It was such an unexpected thing for him to say that I burst out laughing.
Nowhere near so evocative of historical crimes against humanity, but in the vein of dark humor I’ve deeply appreciated. From Angel:
> 2 men walk into a bar. The first man orders a scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he'd forgotten, and it doubles him over with pain. He falls to the floor shaking.... and then through the floor and into the Earth. He looks back up at the first man, but he doesn't call out to him. They're not that close.
Man, comedians who just blurt out a collection of one-liners exhaust me really quickly, maybe after 3 of them I'd find them tedious... There was another guy on Mock the Week who only does one-liners, I can't stand him.
I’d agree and I normally find the style of comedy boring… but then there was Mitch Hedberg. I don’t think most of his jokes were particularly great (though a few are very memorable!), but the way he queued and layered them was brilliant and often undermined the whole format he was using which made him laugh, which broke the fourth wall, which… well, it wasn’t a cheese grater but it ruined a sponge quite well.
Bunch of his jokes has the audience laugh, then pause, then laugh even louder due to the layers within one joke. He was really great. (Though there are some live recordings where he bombs really bad with the same jokes. Drugs i suppose.)
After discovering Stewart Lee, I find most comedians incredibly boring, especially after seeing him deconstruct their usual material and delivery a few times.
I've got a family friend, she's my parents' age (so, in her 70s), and she posts these sorts of jokes _endlessly_. I'll share her most recent three.
A couple is married 40 yrs when the wife suddenly dies - After the funeral, the pallbearers are carrying the casket out when they accidentally bump into a wall, jarring the casket. They hear a faint moan, open the casket, and are shocked to find the wife is actually alive... She lives for ten more years and then dies again. A funeral is held and once again the pallbearers are carrying out the casket. As they are walking down the hallway, the husband points and yells to the pallbearers "Watch out for that wall!"
---
Boy to dad: how was I born? Dad: well your mom and I got together in a chat room on Yahoo, then I set up an email date and we met at a cyber-cafe. We sneaked into a secluded room googled each other and your mom agreed to a download from my hard drive. When I was ready to upload we discovered neither one of us used a firewall… It was too late to hit the delete button and 9 months later a pop-up appeared that said, “You’ve got Male"
---
A father buys a lie detector robot that slaps people when they lie. He decides to test it out at dinner one night. The father asks his son what he did that afternoon. The son says, "I did some schoolwork." The robot slaps the son. The son says, "Ok, Ok. I was at a friend's house watching movies." Dad asks, "What movie did you watch?" Son says, "Toy Story." The robot slaps the son. Son says, "Ok, Ok, we were watching porn."
Dad says, "What? At your age I didn't even know what porn was." The robot slaps the father. Mom laughs and says, "Well, he certainly is your son." The robot slaps the mother.
Robot for sale.
---
Alright one more:
I am now proud to announce that I am selling adult toys. I hope no one is embarrassed to ask for them. I have all kinds, sizes and styles according to your needs. Discretion is guaranteed!! I am more then willing and able to demonstrate any items listed for you. Ask for yours anytime. I have everything listed below if needed:
Walkers, wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, canes, disposable diapers etc etc.
> he caught you at recess or lunch moving after the freeze bell, he would blow his whistle and run at you—his tall and skinny form gliding in a way that resembled an ostrich—then blow his whistle again, signaling you, and everyone else, to unfreeze and go back to class.
I had never heard of this, but it's quite amazing what strange rules we impose on children.
It's the absurdity of a near-certain mythical creature needing something as mundane and trivial as a paltry sum of money, in particular the fifty cents. It's pre-calculated and specific, like that is how much a burrito costs down at the gas station it goes to.
Plus, it's rather persistent about it. Then you think, well, even if the Loch Ness monster were real, and it somehow understood and needed money, that would be a tall order, so here is this anachronistic marvel reduced to begging, just so it could get that gas station burrito.
Beyond social bonding, play (of which laughter is a part) is critical for learning. It changes brain chemistry and fosters neuroplasticity. You see play in all mammals - most of which are subject to similar evolutionary logic: few offspring, extensive nurturing out of the womb, learning phase extends into and beyond adolescence, social.
This is harnessable in our lives: laugh more and play more to be more flexible and to continuously learn. And to have friends!
"All kinds of incongruity can get us laughing" I first heard from a talk or interview by John Cleese (and impossible to find, with his serious stuff on the science behind humor lost in all the results of him being funny). And it ties into evolutionary biology. We find the unexpected "funny", which chemically reinforces our memory of the unexpected, so we learn and next time it might not be unexpected and we react faster. And laughter signals others, so they can learn from it too. We even learned to reenact and verbalize, allowing others not even present to learn. So we laugh at pratfalls and are later morally aghast at ourselves thinking the lucky escape from serious or fatal injury was funny.
35 comments
[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 88.8 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4Ph02gzqmY
As a social but introverted person, moments of the right funny words coming out at just the right moment, without consciously thinking about it, don't happen nearly as often as I'd like.
One memorable moment for me was maybe 15 years ago, at an event for prospective law students in Boston (kinda like a job fair, but all the tables are reps from law schools rather than companies).
So I'm introducing myself to these two law school reps, and it's going well, including my interest in technology policy. But when I say I want to represent the public interest, I sense sudden awkward. One of the reps says they have a research center that's an industry partnership, and my immediate thought is that I'm not sounding like a fit for that.
In that instant, I was making eye contact, and the words came out without conscious thought -- I felt a beaming grin, and heard a very clear and confident and determined tone of myself saying, "Know thy enemy." They crack up, and, as I joked to others afterwards, it felt like suddenly the application process was a mere formality. :)
What is the most simple way to describe something? A noun. Ok but that already exists, I need adjective too. Still too common, let's add another adjective. I used English corpus and generated random triplets in the form of adjective-adjective-noun.
Most of it was gibberish. Occasionally there was something plausible or even viable, even more rarely something interesting. As I was reading this long list, I stumbled upon this gem:
Creepy wet uncle
And I laughed. As I continue reading the list, every once in a while there was something funny. But not once have I found words that would make me cry. Before, I thought that laughter and crying are equal but opposite emotions, but they are not. Crying requires much deeper emotional connection while all it takes to make me laugh are 3 random words.
That day I also realize why Craig Ferguson was funny (this was back when he still had the late late show), he just say or do something random. That was his secret. I felt cheated, the cheapness of laugh was exposed.
(There was also someone featured on HN who wrote a daily post containing 3-4 product/service ideas for a while; those had a bit more thought put into them than a RNG can provide.)
This may be the most reductive thing I've ever read. It did make me laugh, though!
FWIW, I think this is what has made Twitter so popular. The original 140 character limit with out the ability to do tweet threads in the form we have now put a lot of constraints on people. Being thoughtful or funny in 140 characters is difficult, but a lot of folks came up with some pretty amazing insights and quips.
It was such an unexpected thing for him to say that I burst out laughing.
> 2 men walk into a bar. The first man orders a scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he'd forgotten, and it doubles him over with pain. He falls to the floor shaking.... and then through the floor and into the Earth. He looks back up at the first man, but he doesn't call out to him. They're not that close.
It doesn't last long for fat people.
"The other night I saw a couple weaving all over the street, I said 'Honestly; get a loom'".
"Chair of the Dyslexic Society was recently given an OBE[1], he said "What's the point, I can't play the bloody thing'".
"Friend of mine had a penis extension. Now his house looks really stupid."
"The hardest part about making skimmed milk must be throwing the cows across the lake".
- Gary Delaney, 31 minute of best one-liners, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4hcOgFHd7o (some nsfw)
[1] Order of the British Empire award from the monarch.
A couple is married 40 yrs when the wife suddenly dies - After the funeral, the pallbearers are carrying the casket out when they accidentally bump into a wall, jarring the casket. They hear a faint moan, open the casket, and are shocked to find the wife is actually alive... She lives for ten more years and then dies again. A funeral is held and once again the pallbearers are carrying out the casket. As they are walking down the hallway, the husband points and yells to the pallbearers "Watch out for that wall!"
---
Boy to dad: how was I born? Dad: well your mom and I got together in a chat room on Yahoo, then I set up an email date and we met at a cyber-cafe. We sneaked into a secluded room googled each other and your mom agreed to a download from my hard drive. When I was ready to upload we discovered neither one of us used a firewall… It was too late to hit the delete button and 9 months later a pop-up appeared that said, “You’ve got Male"
---
A father buys a lie detector robot that slaps people when they lie. He decides to test it out at dinner one night. The father asks his son what he did that afternoon. The son says, "I did some schoolwork." The robot slaps the son. The son says, "Ok, Ok. I was at a friend's house watching movies." Dad asks, "What movie did you watch?" Son says, "Toy Story." The robot slaps the son. Son says, "Ok, Ok, we were watching porn."
Dad says, "What? At your age I didn't even know what porn was." The robot slaps the father. Mom laughs and says, "Well, he certainly is your son." The robot slaps the mother.
Robot for sale.
---
Alright one more:
I am now proud to announce that I am selling adult toys. I hope no one is embarrassed to ask for them. I have all kinds, sizes and styles according to your needs. Discretion is guaranteed!! I am more then willing and able to demonstrate any items listed for you. Ask for yours anytime. I have everything listed below if needed:
Walkers, wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, canes, disposable diapers etc etc.
---
p.s. you'd probably love Steven Wright.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/181771.Steven_Wright
But they are best heard in his deadpan delivery:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB8ZDrNb3B0
I had never heard of this, but it's quite amazing what strange rules we impose on children.
I was sure it must be reference to something but apparently it's not. It's funny to people all by itself.
Plus, it's rather persistent about it. Then you think, well, even if the Loch Ness monster were real, and it somehow understood and needed money, that would be a tall order, so here is this anachronistic marvel reduced to begging, just so it could get that gas station burrito.
https://archive.org/details/isaac-asimov-jokester
This is harnessable in our lives: laugh more and play more to be more flexible and to continuously learn. And to have friends!