Sept. 11, 2006 george w. uhall Jr.

Its only funny when I laugh Work, being what it is, often tests my strength and personal resources. nce, after struggling with a difficult task for what seemed like days, ! found myself staring at that moment dreaded by all, the moment when accepting failure is a better option than carrying on. !t was at this moment that a colleague noticing my predicament said, "If quitters never win, and winners never quit, what fool came up with, Quit while you're ahead? " #hat $oke worked like grease on a dry bearing. !t made me laugh, broke my mood and allowed me to reset. #hat little twist of linguistic logic helped me look at my problem from a different %iewpoint and e%entually work out a solution. !f you are human you en$oy a good $oke. #here is something about a good chuckle that can lift a dreary day, ele%ate a tedious task and makes a gloomy situation tolerable. &ut, $ust what is it that makes a $oke, good' r makes a turn of phrase, a $oke' ! suppose you could start cataloging $okes, puns, funny stories or other turns of humorous %erbiage to see if you could spot a trend or two. (nd, you might e%en find some items of note. &ut, %ery )uickly you will run into "#he Wall of *normous Scope+. !t,s the same obstacle computer programmers writing language translators run into all the time. #o illustrate, consider this simple $okeA big moron and a little moron were walking along a steep cliff. uddenly, the big moron fell over the side, but, the little moron stayed on ! "hy? #ecause he was a little $more on%. ! would classify this $oke as "cute+, but not necessarily funny. #he $okes payoff, if there is any, is in the reader,s ability to interpret the authors mangling of the *nglish language. Word twisting pro%ides a %ery fertile ground for humorous language teasers. .onsider these bumper sticker one/liners$&lones are people two'% $(epression is merely anger without enthusiasm.% $I started out with nothing and I still have most of it left.% #he intent of each line,s construction is to distort and emphasi0e a word,s meaning. #he $oke becomes e%en more intense if the reader,s personal history can relate to the $oke on some le%el. .an we not see oursel%es described in the last one/liner as that person starting out in the basement and still able to dig himself into a deeper hole'

!t,s the shared e1perience that creates the funniest of all $okes. .omedians lo%e to tell $okes about uncomfortable situations we ha%e all e1perienced or stupid things we do when our basic needs smack up against our higher intellect. Whate%er the theme of the $oke, the $oke ne%er fails if it e1poses our humanity and contains a common thread that can bind us to the $oke. Jokes can and do fail. Jokes will fail if that common ground between the $oke,s content and the reader is missing, absent or misconstrued. $I don)t think I deserve an *+ A, on this ,-I.% $+either do I, but it)s the lowest grade I)m permitted to assign.% !f you are not 2a%y oriented, you may not know that 32S(# is short for unsatisfactory and #4! is an acronym meaning #echnical 4roficiency !nspection. !f these elements are unfamiliar to the reader, the $oke degrades to a benign con%ersational e1change. (nother reason for $okes floating like lead balloons is the relationship of the audience to the $oke. .are must be taken to separate the reader from the $oke. #ry telling the priest, minister and a rabbi $oke at a meeting of the (ssociation of 5eligious 6ata (rchi%es. *%en if the $oke is funny, it will not be well recei%ed. 7aking direct fun of your audience can e%en be ha0ardous to your health. 7odern day comedians are e1tremely sensiti%e to this fact and ha%e adapted se%eral cle%er techni)ues to a%oid this pitfall. 5odney 6angerfield was one of the funniest modern day comedians until his death in 2008. #ake a look at some e1amples of his work.y wife made me /oin a bridge club. I /ump off ne0t ,uesday. I worked in a pet shop and people kept asking how big I'd get. I tell you, my wife, she keeps me in line 1 no matter how many guys are ahead of me. I could tell that my parents hated me. .y bath toys were a toaster and a radio. "hen I played in the sandbo0 the cat kept covering me up. 9rom the e1amples abo%e you can see that 5odney makes himself the focus of the $okes. !n this way, the audience is safe and protected. !t,s ok to laugh, because we are laughing at 5odney, forgetting that we too may ha%e a spouse that hates us, are uglier than the animals at the pet store or were once $ilted by a lo%er.

(nother techni)ue for isolating the audience from the sharp barbs of a $oke is e1emplified by Jeff 9o1worthy,s ":ou might be a 5edneck if;.+ Jeff,s approach to shielding his audience is to make fun of this nebulous, ill/defined, group of people called 5ednecks, one of which might be you, if you are as dumb as they are. 9or e1ample, :ou might be a 5edneck if;.2ou think -ossum is 3,he 4ther "hite .eat3 2ou carried a fishing pole into ea "orld. 2ou think a quarter horse is a ride out in front of the "al1.art. 2ou lit a match in the bathroom and your house e0ploded right off its wheels. 2ou think safe se0 is a padded headboard. 2ou think the last words to ,he tar pangled #anner are 35entlemen, start your engines.3 Jeff 9o1worthy,s hyperbole pokes fun at the absurd beha%ior and dim/witted beliefs of these imaginary, uneducated folk. *ach of us can relate to his obser%ations because we all ha%e done something or belie%ed in something so stupid that later it ama0ed us the e1tent of our own foolishness. 6escribing the ridiculous as it applies to an imaginary group of people surely isolates the audience from the $oke. &ut, comedians like <ewis &lack and =eorge .arlin take a much different approach toward protecting their listeners. &oth .arlin and &lack comment upon the silly and illogical, but )uite real things we do e%eryday. #ake for e1ample, <ewis &lack on buying gifts for .hristmas"ell, we /ust finished the busiest shopping weekend of the year, and despite an economy that's in the toilet, Americans are still buying a lot of crap. .e, I avoid the crowd and catalogue shop. And nothing says you care and you're cheap like the 6illian 7ernon &atalogue' "here else can you get your own monogrammed boo8e globe? It's a sure1fire way to get your teenager interested in geography' r =eorge .arlin,s thoughts on aging(o you reali8e that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 9: years old, you're so e0cited about aging that you think in fractions. 3;ow old are you?3 3I'm four and a half'3 2ou're never thirty1si0 and a half.

&oth .arlin and <ewis include their audience in the $oke, because their audience,s beha%ior is the $oke. &ut, they get away with telling us we are dumb oafs because, we all do it. #his style of $oke telling is like a big group hug. Sure we are laughing at oursel%es, but it is ok, because we are all in on the $oke. So, what is a good $oke' 6o $okes fall into the same category as pornography' .an we only identify them as Supreme .ourt Justice 4otter Stuart stated, "! know it when ! see it+' ne thing is for certain, whether the $oke is absurd or cle%er, silly or insightful> it,s a good $oke if it makes you laugh. .an anyone resist snickering at the following blonde $oke' ,wo blondes were walking down the road and the first blonde said, 36ook at that dog with one eye'3 ,he other blonde covers one of her eyes and says, 3"here?3