Homorology - the Study of Laughter and its Opposite

I’m thinking of becoming a research scientist just for the sake of studying laughter – its causes, effects in the body and so forth. Yawning is still a mystery to scientists – there’s the old “your body needs more oxygen” theory floating around in the public mind, but I don’t it’s been proven conclusively or anything. Certainly not the way Prozac has been proven to cause flatulence in 6% of all test subjects!

In the first place, possessing a “sense of humor” is a lot like having a “sixth sense”, but I guess it would have to be a seventh if you already have a sixth sense. I do, so that means I have a total of seven senses altogether. I’m working very hard to attain the all-important eighth sense, “common” sense.

One method of my research would be to subject thousands of people to a viewing of “Monty Python’s Search For the Holy Grail”, one at a time. Recording eye movements and body language during the Black Knight scene would be crucial to my studies. Did people recoil in horror when the Knight’s limbs were severed, or did they buckle over in fits of convulsive laughter?

You see, I’m sure I would gradually begin to observe a pattern that transcends gender, race and all environmental conditioning. My research could uncover the secret to laughter itself, its actual causes in the body, similar to the “No Oxygen” theory the Yawn Scientists set forth sometime last century. But my claims will be backed by solid research instead of empty theory. So people who are deprived of oxygen must yawn themselves to death, right? I don’t think so.

You laugh, which is good. But laughter is a serious matter. Comedians, jesters and humorists of all kinds have been trying to “crack the code” for centuries, nay, for millennia. But sourpussery takes many forms, wears many disguises, and is firmly entrenched in our deep unconscious minds. The sourpuss is the humorist’s greatest enemy, and a sourpuss is not so much a person but an element in nature. The sourpuss element has yet to be discovered, but then so does the source of the laughter reflex in the body.

Can’t you see that when I hit upon the actual source of the laughter reflex and can learn to stimulate it directly that I will be able to take over the world? Not that I would want to, that would be a management nightmare. Too much responsibility for too many people and no reasonable exit strategy the way I see it. Only an alien race would be able to take it off your hands. But knowing that I could if I wished would have a nice feeling to it.

One of the funny skits in the Monty Python TV series was the Joke Bomb. It was a joke that was so funny that people died laughing when they heard it. I wish I had written that skit; I would still be getting royalties from the PBS reruns, which would be a good thing. The military got involved with the Joke Bomb, of course, and used it on the battlefield. You can only imagine how much fun they had with that one. But there are actually people in the world who don’t laugh at the sight of soldiers advancing on the battlefield telling jokes to the enemy and watching them fall to the ground in fits of laughter! I mean, that’s funny, isn’t it?

If it isn’t, I’ve got a 32-page questionnaire I would like you to fill out. This questionnaire will help me to uncover the sourpuss element as it exists in you and compare it to other instances, eventually honing in to the sourpuss “gland”, as it were, in our subtle bodies. You may laugh at the idea of a subtle body, and that is good too – I’ve got another questionnaire for that.

How did Jerry Seinfeld manage to sell ABC a story about two guys who write a story about nothing? I think that was basically the premise. Sure, the characters were key to the show’s success, but the writing is what made it work. The viewer ratings of a popular TV show will provide a gold mine of information to my research labs (thank you, networks). Seinfeld obviously hit upon a Mother Lode in the humor vein or it would not have become the top show around.

Kramer just looked funny to begin with. Every movement he made and every sound he uttered was funny, so it hardly even mattered what he said (even though the writers made excellent use of his character). This means that the “humor gland” can be stimulated by visual sources alone. Even a deaf person could laugh at Seinfeld whenever Kramer was on the screen!

I am, of course, always looking for human guinea pigs, monkeys and all the usual trappings of a research scientist’s laboratory. A sense of humor is a lot like what attracts us to the opposite sex – why did People Magazine uncover such a large percentage of women who thought Woody Allen was the sexiest man alive? I would like those women’s phone numbers or email addresses, because we are pretty much the same height and body type. I’ll buy the horn-rimmed glasses, no problem.

What could women find attractive about THAT guy? It must be his sense of humor is all I can think. But then Woody Allen himself is a prime example of “divination” in the alchemical transformation our bodies undergo in the process of laughter inducement – some people think he’s very funny and some people think not! The list goes on and on.

Comedy has certainly evolved along with humankind. I’m sure the cavemen would collapse in laughter over jokes about crazy mastodons who don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground! But I doubt those jokes would bring the house down anymore, do you? Maybe so, but only amongst the less evolved in our midst.

Have you ever met anyone who seems to have been born without a humor gland? Or someone who had an overly active sourpuss gland (which overcomes the humor gland and makes it atrophy)?

Here’s a question – would you say that laughter is influenced more by our minds than our emotions? I think many people think of laughter as an emotional state – do you? I think that’s only because we typically have a hard time laughing when they are feeling bad, and hence the mistaken correlation. Bad feelings do stimulate the sourpuss gland, that’s for sure. Getting people to laugh when they are feeling good is easy. But George Washington getting his soldiers to crack a smile at Valley Forge was a whole different matter. If he wasn’t such a sourpuss he probably could have pulled it off on just Tea Party jokes alone. "Man, what a party that was, eh guys? It was Plen-Tea tiring is what I hear" (sounds of starving soldiers giggling in the freezing cold).

I don’t want to get off on a rant here, because the above paragraphs suit that purpose quite nicely for today. So in the meantime, before I start the next chapter, I will just say this:

Either laugh or fart at least once every hour or your humor gland will not receive enough subtle nourishment, and your sourpuss gland will commence secreting its wicked bile into your body. Of this I am already perfectly certain. Over time it will kill you. Better to die laughing the way I see it.