The modern era is all about differentiating factors. These can take many forms. Some of them may be physical (i.e. A skew eye, one leg shorter than the other, wearing your underpants outside your pants or a skin condition) some of them may be mental (i.e. Being incredibly stupid) and others still may have to do with your personality (i.e. Being an asshole, not being an asshole and the very subject of this piece: being funny). The thing is, we are all unique – just like everyone else and therefore people feel the neehd to “stand out” and “make a statement”. A great physical differentiating factor that I have is that I can click my knuckles, just by making a fist. I see it as “investing in my future”. Another differentiating factor I have is the ability to use the so-called, “inverted commas.” See, I just did it there.
But enough of this, “poppycock” and “lollygagging”, let us now open Door Number One and see what is behind it – “How to be funny in the modern era.”
There are many ways to be funny. For example: slapstick comedy. Slapstick comedy usually works well on the mentally ill and the young. It basically involves falling over and hurting yourself. Kind of like when your grandmother fell over, broke her hip and then whimpered about it until her leg went gangrenous and died and they had to amputate her face – except she wasn’t doing it to be funny, she was doing it because she had a weak character and terrible balance – ever since that incident with the blank CD and the roquefort. Should you want to make people laugh in a style of slapstick, HEADLINE payoff suggests that you fall over at random times, preferably when people are watching. With no laughs to assuage your pain, slapstick comedy can be a painful experience to say the least and a debilitating experience to say the most. Remember that you could be falling over into a campfire, or some spikes or even a vat full of acid, so always look before you attempt this manoeuvre. Other ways to engage in a bit of the old slapstick include: throwing pies at yourself (to do this, simply bake a boomerang into a pie), hitting people with things (like an octopus for example – slapstick to the max) or driving your car at 120km/h into a wall.
To segue into the next method, let me just say that slapstick comedy is basically a stick you use to slap someone in the face with – thereby gaining some laughs.
Yes, it’s time to pun my people. A pun is a play on words. Many people find puns to be funny (or is that punny?), I do myself – because I like words. Other than asshole, I have been called “Wordy William” before. Puns generally rely on a word having a double meaning. Permit me to demonstrate.
A young boy comes up to you with some paper wings stuck to his schoolbag. You tell him that, that just isn’t going to fly. He cries. You laugh. A pun.
A young boy comes up to you with some paper wings stuck to his schoolbag. You tell him that you have herpes. He gets confused. You cry. Not a pun.
Right, I hope that you’ve got that all cleared up. (To be punny at this point, consider making a joke linking “cleared up” to acne or linking “right” to write.)
Another way to be funny is the knock-knock joke. I am quite sure that the majority of you are au fait with such humour so instead, I will show you some knock-knock jokes that don’t work at all (one could argue also that jokes that aren’t funny are funny, but there are only so many people with such an intricate understanding of the spiky quagmire that is post modernism that will be able to appreciate such (anti?) humour.)
l Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Your mother.
My mother who?
Your mother’s dead. She died of Tuberculosis of the foot.
l Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Table.
Table who?
Table cloth that matches your serviettes.
l Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Stephen.
Stephen who?
Gerald.
Now, let me carry on to a surefire yet simple method to be funny that I have come up with myself, after sucking up many minutes of humour into my lifehole, digesting it, assimilating it and forming my own opinions about it, after making minutes of all the humour I assimilated and emailing it to my email address I use for work related issues. This method will henceforth be known as my audaciously divine rule of 3. The method works thusly: list 3 things, make the first two very normal and make the final one something off the wall (no, not a painting, punballs). It is this contrast that makes the third thing mentioned so funny. It is this same principle that made you laugh so much when your little sister had an accident in church. On the priest.
So, without being any more prolix than I have to be (even though mentioning prolix, may itself be prolix – good Christhell I am off my tits on post modernism), let me get on to some examples of my audaciously divine rule of 3. NB: The third word often has a sexual connotation but it does not have to have one.
- Boiled eggs, lawnmowers and masturbating.
- Keyboards, microchips and Jesus’ beard.
- Running, stamp-collecting and frottage.
- Bench press, carpets and brain surgery.
- Blank CD’s, a fan with 3 variable speed settings and Michael Jackson.
Perhaps what makes this method so funny is that there is an inherent narrative between the three things mentioned. Imagine the story that revolves around boiled eggs, lawnmowers and masturbating. Definitely a story I would like to read. This method can be used in response to questions as well. Take a look under this antique armoire here and see what I’m talking about:
Q: So, what did you eat for breakfast today?
A: Eggs, bacon and a G-Strap I got from my dog’s bed.
Q: So what’s wrong with you, why weren’t you at work yesterday?
A: I had: emphysema, asthma and a large hotdog.
Right, well my squidsausages – if that’s not enough for you to be funny, you could always just send people our way – sometimes just knowing what’s funny can count as a sense of humour – and as far as we’re concerned – we’re pretty funny. If you’re still battling with the idea of differentiating factors in the modern era, I am sure I can rustle up a piece explaining that for you.
Enjoy the meat, potatoes and salad tossing,
Paul
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