"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth." - George Bernard Shaw
I have always read newspapers starting with the funny pages. I read (and pass on) the jokes in my e-mail before opening any other message. I watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but not CNN. And my first choice of movie is usually a comedy.
Costa and Mallick include Finding Humor as one of their Habits of Mind.
- those attributes shown by people "having a disposition toward
behaving intelligently when confronted with problems, the answers to
which are not immediately known" - and write:
People who
engage in the mystery of humor have the ability to perceive situations
from an original and often interesting vantage point. They tend to
initiate humor more often, to place greater value on having a sense of
humor, to appreciate and understand others' humor and to be verbally
playful when interacting with others. Having a whimsical frame of
mind, they thrive on finding incongruity and perceiving absurdities,
ironies and satire; finding discontinuities and being able to laugh at
situations and themselves.
Not a bad habit to cultivate. And a person's sense of humor needs cultivation. To that end, I have some must-read humor websites that I read on a regular basis:
- Most peope know of Garrison Keillor from his NPR Prairie Home Companion programs (that are available as audio downloads), but I enjoy his Old Scout political columns even more. (You need to be a wee bit left of Ann Coulter to appreciate the writing.) My only complaint about them is that I can't seem to find an RSS feed on the Minnesota Public Radio site.
- I think we all know The Onion's hard hitting print newstories (National Endowment For The Arts Funds Construction of $1.3 Billion Poem), but their website is also a great source of audio and videocasts as well.
- And of course Despair.com has my favorite greeting cards but also has a blog, videos and podcasts.
One chapter in Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part, reads
34. Work a little humor into every communication effort.
What did Ole say when the Kinsey Sex Survey called and asked him if he smoked after sex? “Don’t know. Never looked.”
All right, it’s an old joke, but it made you keep on reading. There is really no excuse whatsoever not to inject at least a little humor in to every communication effort you make. It’s a mistake to confuse dryness with professionalism.
If you want the head paying attention, you have to get the heart involved. Humor is probably the easiest way to evoke an emotional response. (A groan is an emotional response, right?) You can elicit anger, fear or sadness to get attention as well, but for my money smiles do the job better.
Oh. I wouldn’t make my jokes any racier than the one above.
Your favorite source of humor? Blue Skunk readers want to know! Oh, and next time I read something
you've written, it better include at least one chuckle!
Illustration by Brady Johnson.
Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 03:39PM 
