The Inverse Population Law of Humor

As the number of people who will find something funny gets smaller, the degree to which they'll find it funny gets larger. This works for three reasons:

1. You get to feel smart because you "get it" when the majority of others receiving the same joke do not. This segues into the next reason:

2. You get to feel special because it feels aimed at you. Being one of if not the only one to get the joke means the joke was tailored to fit you and not those around you.

3. You're not expecting it. Humor relies in part on the element of surprise, and the more obscure a joke is, the less likely you are to hear anyone make it, and thus the more it surprises you when someone does.



Exempli gratia, "Nanny Skeksis".

A karma twofer

So today I was at Schnuck's (the reason why I was at Schnuck's is a story for another time), and was more or less accosted by some guy from a radio station who was collecting various grocery-style donations for troops overseas. On the list were various items, one of which was candy. I shrugged and accepted the list, and shortly after entering the store in search of my desired goods (which, by the way, I did not find and was thereupon utterly disappointed) I came upon a stand of special pink M&M's, which were giving proceeds to a breast cancer foundation.

I'm not one to be particularly susceptible to guilt trips, but I decided that this was quite possibly some message from above, so I purchased two of the fairly hefty sized bags for five dollars, and then donated them to the radio station people.

If anyone "up there" is keeping track, I do hope you took note.

"Some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don't help."

The last stage is always acceptance

taken from languagetrainers.co.uk :

The “Moutza”
Opening your palm to your target and stretching out your fingers seems harmless enough to most Westerners. Most of us would think you’re waving. In Greece, however, the gesture is known as a moutza, and is one of their most traditional manual insults. With fingers slightly apart, you thrust your hand into your target’s face, usually coupling the gesture with a brash “na!”, meaning “here you go!”. The basic suggestion is something like “eat shit”, implying that you’re not particularly impressed and would rather the target of the moutza leave you alone – comparable to the American interpretation of the same signal as “talk to the hand, because the face isn’t listening”.

Amusingly, Microsoft used to use a very similar-looking hand signal as an icon for warning dialogs in previous versions of Windows – what Greek users must have thought of that, I don’t know… “This application has performed an illegal operation - now, eat shit!”.