How to Kill a Joke Essay

Humor impedes good writing in some instances. If the people reading or watching the piece are sensitive, the writer runs the risk of offending the audience. It entirely depends on an individual's

Recently, cigarettes have been getting a bad rap. No one seems to understand that the real problem at hand is not the negative effects of smoking cigarettes, but those who abstain from smoking cigarettes. These people are nothing but a nuisance, a lousy bunch of no-gooders that just want to ruin your fun. In fact, smoking cigarettes is an activity that the entire population can benefit from. The world relies on the production and consumption of tobacco, and there are many positives of smoking that outweigh the negatives. For example, smokers dedicate a large portion of their life buying packs upon packs of cigarettes, which in turn gives a huge profit to the country. Surely if you consider yourself a

No one in the ward responded with any real response but confusion. No body knew what laughter was in the ward, it was taken

The most obvious form of humor used by the author shows itself as a series of outrageous statements throughout the text. While hyperbole is usually used as a way to emphasize things without taking them literally, Vonnegut uses it in a slightly different way. Instead of emphasizing a point through exaggeration, the author chooses to make literal statements that are far too outrageous to believe. For example, mental handicaps imposed by the Handicapper General are absolutely unbelievable (Vonnegut 1). In the story, George Bergeron, a middle-aged man, is subjected to carrying 47 pounds of birdshot around his neck without being allowed to release a single

So the last two newsletters, in my opinion, were a pleasant diversion and definitely cathartic for me! Soaring rhetoric and amazing separation of independent clauses with perfectly placed semi-colons, passing references to Zero Mostel, zombie apocalypses, orange urine, loan calculations; plus, an obscure Bible reference, regarding seed sowing and free range donkeys. However, no matter how high you fly, someone always seems to be there ready, willing, and eager to shoot you down, and when the other shoe finally does drop from the sky, it usually lands in a steaming pile of doggy doo! So back to the old grindstone W.E. go; but, before unflinchingly diving headlong into number two, let me

A baby- A baby is sitting on a high chair in a restaurant. He is pulling his bib and at the same time he is looking at his mom. He  has his mouth opened as if trying to take the bib out and eat it. He does this for a few minutes and then screams loudly. All the people in the restaurant look at the baby. The baby without worrying continues pulling his bib again. His mom laughs and says sorry to

Plip Plop goes the pitter patter of the rain on the freshly cut grass on the sidewalk leading to the inside of the school. I walk slowly to my locker as my friends and I talk about the football game that was going to be playing after school. I open my locker and grab my books out of it. I shove my fat backpack and heavy jacket into it and run before the first bell rings. I plop my books onto the desk next to Samantha Miller, the most popular girl in school. She instantly starts talking. Especially first period. Social Studies is the worst to have in the morning. Getting up early in the morning, to come to school all groggy only to hear about a bunch of old dead people who apparently just couldn’t stop asking for freedom. Like STOP LIVING IN THE PAST.

The sun’s rays somehow find a way to penetrate the clouds on a dismal Saturday morning. When I turn to see what time it is, a sharp pain hits me like a truck. The lower left-hand side of my body is purple and blue, with the ugly yellowing of the skin. The clouds somehow symbolize what the bruise looks like. It’s about the size of a small apple, an upside to being the size of a softball a week ago. As I walk to the bathroom to check it in the mirror, I make sure that my brother and mom are still asleep so I can have my privacy.

She coughed. She was sick. She had the flu. She didn’t know how she caught it. She went to see the doctor. She didn’t like the clinic. The clinic was small and damp. There were always people waiting. She sat in the waiting room. Kids were running around. People were sitting next to her. They were coughing and sneezing. She was also coughing and sneezing, too. She felt terrible. She waited for hours. They finally called her name. She quickly went to the nurse. “The doctor will see you now”, the nurse said. She went into a small room. She sat down on a bed. The doctor walked in. “Hello, Susan,” the doctor said. She told him that she had the flu. The doctors checked her symptoms. He gave her prescription. “Feel better”, the doctor said. “Thank you, doctor”, she said.

Humor is the art of turning something serious, and sometimes even heartbreaking into something that makes people laugh until they can’t breathe. As well as being incredibly entertaining, the skill of making something funny can be used to change the world. In his book Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton correctly argues that the role of humorists as messengers of taboo or restricted topics is vital to society. When presented with a serious topic, many people shy away out of fear of being offensive, but humorists revel in the idea of not only talking about that offensive subject but making jokes about it as well. But why do they get away with it?

“Rather than placing comedy as a creator of puppet-like illusion (making the living seem mechanical), this approach reconsiders comedy as a revealer of truth (as it deconstructs lies). It is certainly not uncommon to hear “it’s funny because it’s true” when witnessing a standup comedian’s act”. For example, when at the beginning of the movie the two guys confuse the Dude with the millionaire Lebowski and break into his home and then realize that the Dude is not a millionaire because of his bowling ball.The Dude replies by saying” obesely you’re not a golfer” but it was a bowling ball.When one of the guys said that the dude was a loser he replies by saying “but at least I was housebroken”. “One might be able to argue that some of the greatest comic moments are those which are able to make comedy out of this difficult reality (e.g. Borat, This is Spinal Tap, certain types of stand up, etc.); however, as a general comic principle, we can agree that emotional involvement creates an obstacle to our ability to laugh”. When we involve our emotions into something that might be funny to other and not our self might be because we have gone through the experience or someone close to us has. For example, the kidnapping of Bunny can seem like a joke, but somebody that has lived through one and survived it can bring up emotions that remind them of that

Mary Jane came running from the outdoors to ask me a question, she said “mother dear, could I go out marching with the other children. I turned from the stove and said “sweetie that isn't a place for children your age to be going, there are too many clubs, guns firing, and many more things. Instead you are going to the Children Church to sang in the children's choir.” Mary Jane replied “Yes Ma'am” and she went into her room to get dressed.

A Columbia woman was rushed to the hospital with stomach pains. Doctors were shocked to find out what caused the woman's pain. They found out that the cause of the woman's pains was actually a common vegetable. The woman's mother told her that she could avoid pregnancy by sticking a potato up her vagina. However, that was when the trouble started.

As Esperanza and her family boarded on a train full of poor peasants to go to California, Esperanza opened her valise to check on her doll. A little poor girl walked towards Esperanza and reached up to touch the doll when Esperanza rapidly jerked it and put it back in her valise. The little girl ran back to her mother and started crying! Mama also Hortensia stopped their needle work to see what Esperanza did to the poor little girl and they were sort of disappointed in Esperanza. Mama looked across to the little poor girl’s mother and said, “I am sorry for my daughter's bad manners.” Esperanza was actually surprised that her own Mama would say that and was thinking, “why was Mama apologizing to those peasants?” Esperanza doesn’t want poor peasants touching

It seems as if this show was trying to convey to the audiences that overweight people have high self-esteem. On the other hand, I think if projected the opposite. Telling jokes about yourself or others with the same characteristics as you can be viewed as a form of self-hatred. Sometimes people crack jokes about themselves to make other thinks they do not care about what others think of them and at other times they may joke about themselves to prevent others from doing so. Weight is a sensitive topic, and it is in no form or shapes a laughing matter. The jokes may or may not have been offensive to the characters, but could have had an adverse impact on some of the audiences. I think the show should have done away with the self-deprecation