That’d be a good name for a band. But now for what I really wanted to write about.

Someone was talking about renting DVDs, and I misheard something most important. I heard it as BVD rental.

Gross!

Cheap laughs. They’re called cheap because they can be gotten for very little effort. Cheap comes with a notoriously bad connotation because you think of a miserly old man sitting in the dark counting his precious pennies and clipping coupons. Why can’t it be something more positive like, oh I don’t know, economical laughs?

An economically effecient way to get more laughs out of joke, good or bad, is to introduce articles and plurals. Bonus points are earned if there’s a referential synonym in the form of a pun or social norm, but that’s a bit advanced for today’s lesson.

Let’s take something simple: Underwear. You could take the intuitive approach and simply use slang or slurs like tighty-whiteys, or skivvies, or simply BVDs. That last one technically doesn’t count anymore as Hanes and Fruit of the Loom are the big players underwear making game anymore. You could go that route, but before I divert, they’re already taking advantage of one of the rules: plurals. The rule they break though is being negative. I don’t care if you call me a hippie, but would you rather be wearing something called underwear or tighty-whiteys? Good comedy isn’t supposed to make someone feel bad, it’s supposed to make everyone laugh including the target.

So plurals enhance, but “Underwears” isn’t grammatically correct in any context, and in some cases can help, but since there is a correct equivalent we choose “underpants” instead. Instantly, “Underwear” has gotten funnier, and it’s not going to make anyone feel bad either. The next step is easy. Add an article and you get “the underpants!”

Now, I’ve gone around my elbow to get to my asshole on this one, but the formula is simple: Plurals and articles. If no equivalent plural is found, then just add an ’s’ and run with it! Even unfunny things can be made funny and if the plural changes the spelling too much, stick with the more ridiculous one. If the plural isn’t sticking, stand by the article addition.

• “I went outside to the orchard to pick the fruits.”
• “Coffee is good with the cremes.”
• “The birds are attacking me with the beaks!”

That last example shows the value of replacing the proper identifier with an improper one, namely from “their” to “the.”

I’ve just sucked all the fun out of comedy. You’re welcomes.

It’s that time again! What does the weird shit I say really mean? I’ve roped Ame into some of my habits and some of hers as well, so let’s get this party started!

• “Potato, potato.”
  Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends has a character named Eduardo. In one episode, he was handling potatos and would regularly say “potato, potato” in his goofy little way. Now whenever potatos are mentioned, I think of this and sometimes I break out with my own “potato, potato.”
• Belt Line
  In Dallas, there’s a road called Belt Line. This road sprawls allll over Dallas in a giant loop, and if you travel pretty much anywhere in the city, you’ll encounter it. For a short time, I did a fair amount of driving around the city and it seemed that Belt Line was everywhere. Eventually, I saw it as my nemesis (memesis!) and cursed its name every time I passed or crossed it. “Belt Line!” I’d say through gritted teeth, and shake and pound my fists in anger. Silly of course, but definitely cathartic. Now, I live kind of close to Belt Line and I got really tired of doing the whole theatrics thing, but Ame and I still use it as an expletive every now and then.
• Bananaphone (Boop-Boop-a-Doop-a-Doop!!)
  Another expletive for Ame and me, this is of course from Raffi’s instant classic, Bananaphone. Instead of saying “bullshit” or “what the fuck?” we might just burst out with “what’s all this bananaphone?” or simply “Bananaphone!” Another part of the song is “Boop-Boop-a-Doop-a-Doop!” (apparently the sound dialing a bananphone makes). We usually reserve this one for when someone is acting like an idiot or oblivious to their surroundings and we make fun of them to eachother.

  Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. Bananaphone!

• Fuzzy
  When the animals are acting bad, usually Eris, Ame and I say their being fuzzy. Eris’s pupils dilate to the size of small planets, and she gets super-alert. Welcome to FuzzCon 5. She tears around the house, jumps on things, terrorizes the dog, through chair legs, and over and under everything else. I’m not sure if the newspaper comic Get Fuzzy has anything to do with this phenomenon, but I do want to explain the FuzzCon sub-meme here. If you’ve seen War Games with Matthew Broderick, you’ll know that DefCon stands for Defense Confidence. DefCon 5 means the defenses are at their most confident, and DefCon 1 the least. With FuzzCon, the opposite is true, but it makes sense. Fuzzy Confidence 1 means there’s almost no fuzziness, and FuzzCon 5 means Eris is full on fuzzy.

One of the many things that makes me a bad person: black humor. No I don’t mean “soul humor.”

The other day, Ame and I were at Garden Ridge Pottery (If you don’t have one in your area, think a really big arts & crafts store), and on one of the bargain tables there was book titled The Bump on Santa’s Noggin. It was kind of cute until I thought about it a little further.

Ostensibly, one can assume the book is about how Santa hits his head and forgets Christmas. Of course this is a feel-good book, so he recovers his memory somehow (probably by huffing “reindeer dust” or something) and Christmas is saved, the end. Why does one lose their memory in the first place from a blow to the head? Brain damage. A better title would be Santa Gets TBI.

I knew it was bad, but I started chuckling in the store, trying to keep it to myself (yeah, right). Ame asked me what was so funny, so I told her and started laughing harder. I swear she thought it was at least a little funny, but she’d never admit it. In truth, TBI is no laughing matter, but that’s what makes it so funny! I told you, black humor.

I’ve managed to survive another solar rotation. I demand you celebrate my amazing accomplishment of staying alive! I don’t gotta do nuthin’ today… except take a physics test. Bah.

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”