Josh on Nearly Nothing At All or Everything He can Think of

I must apologize to the readership for the extended length of time between this and the last super hot issue of the Joshua Dudley Fan Club. My major excuse is that all of my “funny” ideas have been going towards amateur night at a comedy club I have been frequenting, so whereas before I was a regular fountain of topics to write about once a month or so, I must confess to being a bit dry this month as I hate repeating material that I have used or performed before. Now I know that doesn’t seem like a good excuse, but it’s the only one I have. Keep in mind of course that I said “major excuse” implying that I had more than one. Obviously some form of procrastination must have ultimately taken hold of my physical body at some point, otherwise there would be hot piping fresh new material here a month ago. That would be the minor excuse I suppose, since I had to have one.

With that in mind, let’s take a close look on where “funny” actually comes from. At its base, funny is whatever strikes anyone in the entire world as amusing. Unfortunately, if you happen to be the only person on the whole planet to whom the content of this funny is actually “funny” then you will likely be unable to relate why you were laughing so hard while telling the story, and will probably end up with the phrase “I guess you just had to be there”, and your friends will just stare you at go “….yeah I guess so…he heh hah ha…” The uncomfortable silence that will likely ensue won’t help matters either, you’ll be much better off enquiring of your friends about something of the neutral category of questions, one that won’t be treated with quite so many puzzled looks, maybe something like “So….what’s up?” Sure, most of your friends will probably tell you that in fact nothing is up, and will then ask you the same question leading you to wonder why you asked in the first place, since the conversation has looped into an infinite circle and has rounded itself back to the beginning.

There are several broad categories for things that are funny, but here’s one of the main ones that most people can readily relate to: things that don’t go quite right.

If someone is walking along like they normally do, and then they suddenly trip, there is a good chance that people will laugh at them and say super intelligent things like “walk much?” They don’t really mean to ask this person if in fact he has actually walked a lot in his entire adult life before, it’s just sort of a sarcastic question that if into non-sarcastic language would go something like this “Hey I noticed that you tripped, and I found it funny, because you were just walking along minding your own business, and then your feet happened to hit something because you weren’t looking where you were going. Also it’s not like walking is a really hard task, so you really dropped the ball there ball. Try walking better next time.”

People also laugh at things that are unexpected and bizarre at the same time. For instance, just imagine you’re at an office party, and your friend comes into the room wearing an elephant suit. The whole party would break out into a titter laughing, “Bob” they might say, “You really shouldn’t be wearing an elephant suit to an office party.” Then they might notice how hot and stuffy they feel in their fancy suits and ties and then get a little jealous over Bob’s outfit. Bob’s outfit was not considered proper under normal office party standards, but it was quite funny due to the bizarre nature of it. In addition, keep in mind, that Bob was wearing an elephant suit to work. Think about it. That’s really funny.

Come to think of it this issue wasn’t really about nothing at all, and I didn’t really closely examine where funny comes from. To be honest, according to scientists, there is probably some pleasure sensor tied into your brain somewhere that compels you to laugh when things are funny. If you don’t get what funny is yet, let me give you a few more examples:

Example 1: Let’s say you’re watching a live broadcast of anything, and out of nowhere a carrot falls on the newscaster’s head. You’d probably say, “Hey that was a carrot!” and the newscaster would have to ignore it and pretend that nothing happened. Newscasters are good at that, that’s why they can report with a straight face about how many people died in whichever war or mass murder and just say, “What a horrible tragedy. Now back to Jim for sports.”

Example 2: Your family is sitting down to enjoy a nice meal when out of nowhere a goat runs into the room and throws up on the floor. Then your father chases him out of the house screaming, “I’m gonna kill that goat!”

That last example was pretty funny.

Words that you’re not used to hearing in public can be funny too. Try going around telling your friends that you’re feeling all a “twitter” and see if they don’t give you weird looks at first, and then eventually laugh if you say it enough.

There’s so much laughter in the world, so much laughter.

Laugh with me. Won’t you?