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Giving lessons on laughter

(Note: To achieve the proper effect I’m going for with the following paragraph, I need you to do me a favor and imagine thick rolling fog, red and blue lasers shooting up from the floor, and a screaming electric guitar solo.)
Welcome to Harding University Fall 2004! Woo!
(OK, I’m done; you can turn off the special effects now.)
I’m in an awkward position here, as your Bison (a Harding University Student Publication) humor columnist. I realize that humor is a highly subjective thing. Personally, I can laugh at anything. Some people, however, wouldn’t know a joke if it jumped up and kicked them in the nose, which I would actually find pretty funny.
But I do hope that throughout the course of the year I can entertain and amuse most of you, and offend a minimum number of you. Let me go ahead and apologize now if I hurt anybody’s feelings, I promise I didn’t mean it. (Well, OK, there is one glaring exception… If you’re an accounting major, expect the occasional literary barb aimed your way.)
I realize full and well that being funny isn’t easy. I think it’s safe to say that I realize this a great deal better than the majority of people. People often ask how I can be so funny all the time, and what I can do to help them be just as funny as I am.
So now, I am proud to say that yes, you too can be the life of parties and the only reason some people ever pick up the school newspaper! It's humor made easy, the Aaron Rushton way, with the Aaron Rushton Guaranteed Laugh Kit!
Here's what you do!
1) Think of a situation where it would be acceptable for you to be humorous.
- Good examples include: large meals, parties, long car trips, and knock-down drag-out fights with that punk you've hated since first grade. Yeah, him. You know who I'm talking about.
- Bad examples include: Your funeral, operating rooms, chainsaw testing facilities, or the dentist's office. The dentist's office is already a black hole of suffering and misery, and while that seems the ideal place to be funny, anything you say is immediately killed by the fact that everybody sitting in that building will at one point in the day have a sharp metal pokey thing in their mouth while a 57 year old man with bad-tasting rubber gloves tries to hit every single exposed nerve in the cavity he's currently guilt-tripping you about.
2) Consider your audience.
- If you're going to be attempting humor for an audience that has graduated high school, feel free to use a college-level vocabulary to evoke laughter. This is perfectly acceptable. If the joke works with little words, it works better with big words. Shout a lot.
- If you're going to be attempting humor for an audience that acts as if they're running on the brain capacity of a half-eaten jar of Crisco, skip on down to step 2b and read your final instructions.
3) Consider a shared topic for satirization (making fun of) or humorous discussion.
- It is entirely possible to have intelligent and humorous conversation with most football players, but joking around about geological time is not going to get you anywhere. (Now, please, I want you to understand, I'm not saying football players are dumb. Not by any means am I saying that. I happen to know several football players who can count to 20 without taking their shoes off, and even some who graduated in the upper 95% of their high school class.)
- It is entirely possible to have intelligent and humorous conversations about calculus, but it might be wisest to avoid attempting to do so with the kid at Taco Bell who has a problem counting out change for a $5 on a $4.50 order.
- Similarly, girls... Whatever weird female thing it is… We guys don't know, and we don't want to know, and no matter how funny you think it is, the only thing it's doing is scaring us away from marriage forever.
4) Be original.
- Stand-up comedians get paid to do their thing, so let them do it, don't go around mooching their stuff. I don't get paid, I just get instant celebrity status on a campus of about 4,000. Don't steal from me, either.
- Avoid clichés like the plague.
- If simply telling a joke, feel free to add on. Don't turn it into a two hour lecture, but feel free to embellish and/or exaggerate if it will serve to make the story funnier. Remember, though... the first time, you let it go. But the second time somebody's eyes roll into the back of their head and they fall over asleep only to wake up as they hit the table... you should probably get to the punch line soon.
5) Timing really is everything!
- Everything is funny if you're staying up until 4:00 AM, but if you're getting up at 4:00 AM, nothing is funny.
6) Send me $10, your topic, your time, your audience, and your situation, and I'll write something up for you, complete with vocal inflection instructions so you can read it aloud and really hit the punches in all the right places, assuring your position as the "funny" friend.
2b) Sure-fire funny for morons: "Pee-pee and doo-doo, doo-doo and pee-pee, gimme some candy."
So there it is: How To Be Funny in 6 easy steps, 2 ½ if you’re dealing with idiots. See you next time.

Aaron Rushton is the humor columnist for the Bison, which gives you all the reason in the world to not take him seriously. Aaron can be reached at (501)305-8453, by e-mailing AaronRushton@hotmail.com, or at campus box 14613. Supplies are limited.

BY THE WAY! Aaron Rushton will be performing Stand-up Comedy at Thanks-a-Latté on Friday, September 24th, at 9:00 PM, entirely for free! Show up early, it looks good on your transcript.