What makes you laugh?
Goofy tricks? Dry sarcasm? Slapstick jokes? Or simply random things?
I have observed that the liking or disliking a person has a lot to do with laughing at same jokes. How many times have you cracked a joke and ended up the only one laughing while the other person looks blankly at you? In such situations, two things can happen. Either you derive a perverse pleasure by looking at the blank, no-I-didn't-get-it expression and that person becomes your ideal company when bored. Or, you feel insulted and dislike the person almost immediately. I have a great adaptibility to diffrent kinds of humour. I have personally categorized them into different brands.
Brand Dumb:
They are so dumb, that you laugh becomes somebody actually had the gall to crack it. Example: "What did the duck say to the butler? Ans. Quack Quack.". Ha ha.
Brand Witty:
These are the ones which you don't get immediately. But, once you do, you are under their effect as long as someone makes a wry face and tells you that the joke has outlived its utility.
Then you laugh even harder.
Brand Sarcastic:
This one is my personal favorite and I put it to good use almost all the time. They are multipurpose actually. You can use Sarcasm to make someone laugh, to insult or just make them feel stupid. My high school maths teacher used it to great effect and was a resounding success among the students. Some of my favorite lines by her are:
"I can see some arborial (the biological class to which monkeys belong) animals getting distracted." (if someone was caught looking outside the window)
" If you have finished hibernating, you can answer the question I just asked" (If someone was found with their head-down. Especially, the last benchers, i.e me)
"What is all this Z-Security outside your classroom?" (meaning the act of running inside the classroom shouting " aa gayi! aa gayi (she's come! she's come!)", whenever a teacher was seen exiting the staffroom)
and so on and so forth.
Brand Oh-I-am-SO-funny:
Perhaps the most exasperating and irritating category of all. Most of the time, these jokes tend to defeat the purpose. They would sound anything but funny. Mostly such jokes are a double whammy 'coz they come along with an added disadvantage of the I-am-so-perfect-that-I-have-tears-in-my-eyes cracky (As in the person who cracks the joke. It's just a term I invented.)
Example: "Do you like guys? G-U-Y-S and G-A-A-Y-S (meaning cows in hindi) did you see? Hahahaha".
Kill me or Kill them.
Brand WTF:
These jokes are neither dumb,nor witty. They are absoloute nonsense.
Cracky- " Did you know what happened to Jyotish Roy?"
Victim- "No."
Cracky- "Me too! HAHAAHAHA!"
Go figure.
Brand Cough-Cough-Wink-Wink:
Usually not cracked in polite company, these are a hit with everybody. Even the most holier-than-thou personality has one of these in his or her closet. The only problem with this brand is that, it's success largely depends on the subtle skill of the cracky as the line between the Funny and the Tasteless is very thin. I am not giving any examples for propriety's sake.
Brand copied-from-facebook-likes:
They are not unique in their own right but I am mentioning them because of their virulent quality. These are generally funny oneliners posted on facebook which rapidly become sms joke and then with the speed even greater than light are posted on their walls by every single person on your friendlist. They are repeated so often and so many times that you wonder what had you found so funny about them in the first place.
Example: " Angrezo ko bolo Bharat chhod do (same line repeated n times), Daya darwaza tod do" (I am not writing a translation because it will sound so moronic that you would threaten to put me in asylum)
Brand Random:
They are not jokes, just sentences. But people still laugh at them because they are so unfunny. Usually cracked at the oddest of times, these jokes are most instrumental in helping you survive through a sleep-inducing lecture or coma-inducing seminar. The funny thing about them is that they are completely out of context. (I confess, I am gulity of cracking these with an alarming frequency.)
Example: Question asked to the general audience- "What is that thing which is as essential to living as breathing and which takes our conciousness to another level and evokes a deep embedded spiriuality?"
Cracky's ans.-" I have an electric toothbrush which goes buzzzzzzzzzzz......zzzzzz".
These are only some of the distinct brands that I have mentioned. There are other, more obscure and weird brands like, Brand I-feel--queazy, Brand why-me?, Brand what-did-you-just-say? etc. etc.
Humour, like breathing, is an effortless thing. You can't study or mug it up or analyze it. Some people, like those in the reality comedy shows, try too hard. Then it's grates.
It's simple really. If it makes you laugh, it's funny. And if your cheek muscles refuse to form a fake smile, try another joke.
