On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, White Wolf wrote:

On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, Ranma al'Thor <ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu> wrote:

Find at least 10 jokes that don't involve someone or something being 
humiliated in one way or another.

Why did the Chicken cross the road?
To get to the other side.

Poking fun at the chicken.

Not at all.  The reasoning behind that joke is that one is going to 
expect a complicated and subtle answer, and then gets a simple, blatantly 
obvious one.  It's an incongruity of expectations, not anyone's pain, 
really.  If you want to stretch things intolerably, I guess you could say 
that there's the 'pain' of the listener having his expectations let down 
or betrayed, but I think that's going way too far to try to make a point.

My local Denny's advertises Breakfast Any Time.
So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.

...Denny's.

Explain.  It doesn't assume that Denny's is stupid or worth humiliating 
in any way, it just points out a possible double meaning in the wording.  
Again, it's the switch in expectations.

The local Drivein had a sign that says "Adults $5.00, Children $2.50."  
I've always wanted children, so I told them I'd like two boys and a girl.

...The joke teller.

See Dennys, above.

I bought a coffee table yesterday.  It's decaffinated.

...Caffine addicts.

You must be joking.  I can vaguely see how you could get this chain of 
reasoning, but you've got to admit, you're *really* stretching here.  The 
rationale, again, is that people expect a coffee table to be a low table 
for the living room (or some such), but this takes the words literally - 
a table made of coffee.  It's basically a pun, or a play on words.  No 
pain that I can see, unless you're the kind who winces at puns.

I used to work at a place that makes "No Parking signs", but I had to 
quit because I couldn't find anywhere to park.

...Factory workers.

Not particularly.

I came home one night and accidentally put my car key in the front door 
of my apartment building. The engine started up, so I decided to take it 
out for a drive.

...Locksmiths.

This is even more of a stretch than the coffee table one above.  It's 
simply surrealistic incongruity - putting a key in the wrong lock isn't 
*supposed* to do anything, and you're not *supposed* to be able to drive 
apartment buildings around, but in this joke, it's taken for granted.  
Surrealistic incongruity, again.

My upstairs neighbor makes artifical hairballs for ceramic cats.

...Cat lovers.

No.  It's just a twisted sort of logic - well, the cats can't make their 
own hairballs, of course, but hairballs are something of an integral part 
of having cats, so...

I decided to paint my house, so I went down to Sherwin Williams and 
bought some used paint in the shape of my house....

...Lazy painters.

No.

I couldn't find my socks this morning, so I called Information.  She told 
me they had fallen down under the bed.  

...Ma' Bell.

Ma Bell's pain?  If anything, Information comes out on top in this joke.  
It's not about their pain, it's about their triumph - they know *everything.*

I got in an elevator the other day, then noticed one of the buttons said 
"Phoenix", so I pushed it to see what would happen.  The elevator moved 
for a while, then the doors opened and two tumbleweeds blew in. I got out 
and was in Phoenix.  

...Elevator Operators.

No.  It's just surreal, again.

There's this button in my house that doesn't do anything.  Well, I 
thought it didn't.  So I used to push it periodically, just for fun.  One 
day I got a letter from this lady in West Germany:  "Will you please stop 
that?"

...Electricians.

Got to be kidding me.

I used to live in a house powered by static electricity.  To get the 
toaster to work, you had to rub balloons on your head.  To get the 
microwave to work, one of us had to keep putting on and taking off a 
sweater...

...Power company.

I could vaguely see this, but if at all, it's a very subtle jab.  More 
likely, you're stretching it to try and stick to a theory that doesn't 
appear to work.

Frankly, I think that as usual, Heinlein was full of shit.  The core of 
humor isn't pain, it's incongruity...the reversal of expectations.  Yes, 
this can often involve pain, but can just as often involve puns, word 
play, and unexpected events.

Gee, I found someone being made fun of for each of those.  Guess he isn't 
so far off, is he?

And I found that you were rather stretching to make the point.  Guess he 
might be a bit off, ne?

%% Its hard isn't it?  And if you've thought of 10, examine them more 
%% closely.  And if you don't grok any of this, the joke is on you.

No, actually it's rather easy.  

Sorry Jhon, you didn't grok.

I think that he grokked, he just didn't agree.  Certainly laughing at 
someone else's pain is the easiest sort of humor to do.  That's why 
slapstick goes over so well, and it's a lot of the reason we laugh at, 
say, Ranma 1/2, by seeing all the improbably humiliating situations Ranma 
can get into.  But 'improbably' is the key word there - would we find a 
show where the lead character tripped and sprained his ankle, got beaten 
up by a gang of street thugs, fired from his job, mugged, and hit by a car 
inherently funny?  Probably not.  There's ways to make it funny, 
certainly, but they mostly come from playing against type, inserting 
comical exaggerations of the real, adding wordplay, compounding 
improbability upon improbability, and so on.  Puns aren't humorous 
because they hurt (although they do make some people cringe, but that's 
more of a side-effect), but because they bring out new meanings of words 
usually un-thought of, in ways that people don't expect.

For an excellent, current example of humor that doesn't rely on pain, 
listen to Weird Al's new album.  "Everything You Know Is Wrong" certainly 
has pain, but it's glossed over and mostly ignored - the real humor comes 
in such surreal situations being taken so matter-of-factly.  And "Amish 
Paradise" is a more subtle example - on a surface level, sure, it might 
look like it's making fun of (or 'causing pain to') both the Amish and 
rappers, but really it's funny because of the incongruity of having Amish 
*act like* rappers.  The same or similar lyrics sung to a waltz or 
country music just wouldn't have the same effect.

(Also, just what pain would my .sig be playing off of?)

--
Scott Johnson |
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