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Author : Graham Parry
Are you a sender or a receiver? If you are a receiver,
do you do it gratefully, or with a sense of annoyance?
I'm referring to the mass mailing of friends and
acquaintances with the latest must see funny video or joke.
You either have an email group that you regularly send funny
content to as soon as you discover it, or you are one of the
recipients. At lot of humour mass mailing happens
during normal work hours and you have to wonder if the
sender has not got anything better to be getting on with.
With a lot of companies the IT department will crack down on
any sort of email trivia, and will either be seen as
spoilsports or quite rightly putting a stop to unwanted
distractions. In that case all the jokes and videos
get sent to home emails after hours.
And what's the content like when you do receive it? Was it
worth the wait? I guess in a lot of cases the answer
will be a resounding "No!" You may well have seen it
all before because the same 'hot' jokes tend to get
circulated by everyone.
The sad thing about this activity is that we are all relying
on someone out there to come up with, or who can point us in
the direction of, these daily funnies. It never occurs to us
that maybe we could come up with a joke ourselves. To create
a joke that no-one has heard before, and start it on a world
wide internet adventure is an exhilarating feeling, but too
much like hard work for most. They'd rather spend time
posting the same tired old gags on internet joke forums, or
trawling joke sites in the vain hope of spotting something
new.
Yet jokes don't just materialise out of digital nowhere.
Someone somewhere has created them. Admittedly a lot are
taken from routines of well known comedians, albeit in most
cases without due credit, or lifted from comedy shows, but a
significant amount are created by ordinary folk who had a
lightbulb moment. So why shouldn't that creator be you?
We can all do it if we take the time. We often say funny or
amusing things that we immediately forget about, or
something will happen during the day that raises a smile,
or, better still, forces a laugh. Imagine being able to
recall all those wonderful moments and write them down. What
a wealth of material. You could undoubtedly write your own
comedy series.
If you visit the Workshop section of this site you'll find
the English language is just ripe for the picking when it
comes to puns, misunderstandings, double entendre and
bizarre pronunciations that work a treat. Any English
dictionary is the biggest source of jokes you will find
anywhere. Pick a page at random and run your finger
down a few words.
When you're looking at definitions, make a note too of
common terms and phrases associated with that word. Use a
well known phrase as your punchline and work backwards. The
more you train yourself to look for amusing connections, the
easier it becomes to create funny lines. Given a few
practice runs there's no reason why your creation shouldn't
be the latest hot joke doing the Internet rounds.
I'll leave you with a joke I created a while ago, but which
came about when I was playing cards. The two key words here
are hand and trump. I came up with the
punchline first and then filled in the rest.
A Doctor is not surprised to see
the name of a particular patient on his list. The elderly
gent in question has recently had heart surgery and
treatment for painful arthritis in his hand. However, there
is another reason for his visit.
"It`s very embarrassing, Doctor. But I keep breaking wind in
company. I was at the golf club Thursday and couldn`t stop
myself. On Friday it was all quiet in the chess club until I
let one go. Same thing has happened at the Dancing Club, the
Social Club and the Gardeners Club. I can`t seem to stop
blowing off."
"Alright" says the Doctor, "Let`s check a couple of things.
Are you wearing any gold or precious stones?"
The old man is somewhat puzzled but says, "Good Lord, no.
Never been into wearing anything like that."
"And are you still digging vegetables on your allotment?"
"No. The wife was concerned it was too much for me, so she
put my shovels away in the loft where I can`t get at them."
"Mmmm" says the Doctor, "I think I see your problem. High
spades, a dodgy heart, too many clubs and no diamonds. With
a hand like yours you`re bound to trump!"
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