How To Be Funny

I always wondered what it is that makes things funny. If one would know it would be so much easier to actually be funny.

Recently I eventually got a hint. Nury had published a column about Twitter heavily disliking it. That is fair enough, I know a lot of people not liking it. It’s either just not their thing or they don’t get the concept and hence not knowing how to use it properly.

Of course he got a lot of comments hitting the head of the same nail, and of course I couldn’t help but give my own two pence. I was rather serious and tried to tease Nury a bit to tickle a response out of this funny little community… - and not a single one picked up on it. They all were all rather self indulging in their own ideas of why Twitter should be considered rubbish and creating new imaginary tweet-lines supposedly showing the irrelevance of posts.

And that was when it occurred to me: Things are funny when they are rubbish or go wrong.

This is 'cute' - but not funny!

... ate them all, and it was gooood!

The biggest cat ever on the bird table is - funny! And NO! He didn't eat the birds, the birds were fed with cat food and he stole it from them. ...or ... a friend just skyped: "I nearly fell off the bike yesterday - I breathed in a fly and then choked on it and made the bike wobble." The poor thing! But this is somewhat funny, isn't it? In regard to Twitter there are all sorts of funny scenarios imaginable if Twitter is considered rubbish. Me insisting in liking it makes me nothing but a geek, and geeks are boring.

So, what else can I do to be funny? Well, I could do more movies. I am pretty rubbish at that, and people seem to like it. I could go shopping more often; that opens up to topics like overspending, buying the wrong things and getting in a fight with the shop attendant.

I really admire people who open their mouths and something funny comes out. Sometimes I don’t see the wit although it is sitting right there on my nose.

Is that old age? Is it the fact that before I hook into my grave I eventually would like to be successful in something? Oh THAT is something I should bank on. I could easily be the queen of un-successful and according to the rules that is supposed to be funny. My life under the funny-meter:

School life - Rather successful, hence not funny at all.

University years - utterly funny, all 15 of them. Beginning with chemistry studies without really knowing what a chemist does and breaking up after three semesters, liking the idea of becoming an architect but being horribly scared of the amount of maths involved and eventually studying computer science without really knowing what a computer scientist does and with an even bigger amount of maths involved... and I didn’t even mention all the little interludes screaming for laughter.

What was I thinking?

Well, without all that I wouldn’t be the person I am these days, and … – see, there the ‘being funny’ thing goes down the drain again – … I quite like the person I am. Luckily there are still a few bits and pieces I’d like to change like the size of my legs and the volume of my voice… so, there is hope for future drollery.