Tag: humour

Mike Tyson At The Funfair

Image from SNL, CC BY SA 4.0. Original edited.

I been feeling kinda down on myself so I decide to take a trip to the funfair. I call up my buddy Big Ears Avery to see if he wants to come with me and he does, so I jump in my limo and grab him on the way.

It’s a real nice night. The air is crisp and the heat is low and me and Avery sip champagne like two real classy motherfuckers. He tells me about the shit his boss is giving him and I tell him the same thing I always tell him, that I can bump into the man after his shift at the supermarket and make his ribcage a heavy bag. But Avery doesn’t want me to get into trouble and he knows that I’m trying to put those days behind me. He’s a good kid and I love him.

We arrive at the funfair and as I get out of the limo, my foot sinks into 5 inches of mud and soils my brand new Armani shoe. I see red and tell my driver that I will rip his head from his neck and face-fuck it into another dimension for putting us down in a bog. He looks terrified and I squeeze my eyes shut and count to ten like I been taught. I say sorry and he says it’s ok and that he’s real sorry for stopping in such a bad place and that in future all of his stops will be on firm ground where my shoes can sparkle like the stars at twilight. I like his poetic style and tell him so. Then I invite him to join us at the fair and he says he would love to because his dad used to take him to the fair when he was a kid and he misses him badly. My heart fills with love for the man and I wrench him out of his driver’s seat and hug him tight.

The three of us—me, Avery, and Jack—make our way into the funfair. It’s beautiful. I ain’t seen this much colour since I took too many mushrooms at Caesar’s Palace last year, when there was so much colour I thought I was trapped in a motherfucking rainbow. Except this colour was peaceful and it didn’t feel like it was merging with my soul. I say “man this colour is beautiful” to the boys and Jack says it reminds him of the sweet evanescence of the world, which floats on the night like a firefly at the end of time. I respect how deep this motherfucker is and I tell him.

We make our way to the haunted mansion because I love that spooky shit, and the three of us jump into a car. I suddenly get nervous the way you always do when you’re about to get scared. A few seconds later a bright green witch leaps out of the dark and laughs and shakes her broom at us and I scream like a goddamn woman. I jump out of my seat and rip the broom from her claws and smash her plastic face with it again and again until she looks like Pinklon Thomas in 1987 after I was through with him. I gather myself and realise what I’ve done, and we make a quick exit out of a side door before a funfair man catches us.

Avery asks me if I’m alright and I tell him I’m fine, I was just embarrassed I screamed. He says it’s ok because he was scared too. He always makes me feel better about myself and I hug him and tell him I’m gonna treat him to the biggest damn hot dog he’s ever seen. We find a hot dog stand and sure enough they sell jumbo dogs which fills my heart with joy. I order three jumbo dogs with all the trimmings and when the guy puts them on the counter they are the smallest damn jumbo hot dogs I’ve ever seen in my life, no more than six inches across. I say “hey man these dogs are no more than six inches across and you’re saying they’re jumbo? What kind of bullshit is this?” He apologises and says the business has fallen on hard times and that the dogs used to be bigger but they gotta make cutbacks. I don’t like his sneaky fucking ways and I grab the dogs and furiously launch them into the nearby carousel where one of them splatters across the face of a little blonde girl riding a pony who screams even though the hot dog was so small it couldn’t hurt a fly. The carousel-master realises what has happened and stops the ride. Its tune winds down slowly like an old record that’s been stopped, and every face turns our way. I realise I’ve done it again and that we’d better leave before the cops get here. The last thing I need on my record is a hot dog assault involving a minor.

We flee the scene and leap into the limo. Jack slams on the accelerator and the spinning wheels send torrents of mud onto the people behind us before the vehicle finally lurches forward and we escape into the night. Avery looks at me all shocked and then starts to laugh, which sets me off. I compose myself and tell him we shouldn’t laugh because I’m not that kind of guy anymore and he says he knows but it’s still funny. Then I catch sight of those stupid big ears of his and that sets me off again.

We decide to go back to my place and smoke some weed and watch The Hangover. We say we might even watch all three, even though we all know the first one is the best.

**

Wanna know more about the shit I go through being Mike Tyson? Read about my time at Walmart here.

I Accidentally Injected Myself With Dog DNA

Image from Shutterstock

The accident happened three months ago now. We were testing a new way to improve the DNA of humans, a touchy subject I know, but one with profound implications. Nobody would volunteer for our experiment, so I decided to do it myself.

That’s when I accidentally added dog DNA to my genome.

It was a stupid mistake. Someone labelled the tubes incorrectly, so instead of injecting the genes of somebody who has never suffered from the common cold, an amazing circumstance I’m sure you’ll agree, I received a dose of Pippin — an award-winning dachshund in the prime of his life.

Things have been tough since then. My desire to please has skyrocketed, and I find myself bringing people gifts of every shape and size. I saw half a tennis ball on the street and fantasized about how happy it would make my wife. I came upon a dead pigeon and thought it would be something my boss would really appreciate. I could roll in it too — double win. I bought my son his shoes even though we weren’t going anywhere.

Then I noticed my eating habits had changed. My wife asked me to get boneless chicken thighs for dinner, but I just couldn’t bring myself to buy them. I justified the purchase by showing how much cheaper it is to buy bone-in thighs, but what I really wanted was to crunch down on that entire packet right there and then, fully raw. When dinner was prepared that night, we sat down in front of the TV to eat, and I found myself shuffling to the floor and eating with the plate resting on my knees. That was uncomfortable, so why not just put the plate on the floor? It seemed so right. When that happened, and the crispy garlic-baked thighs stared at me in their naked glory, I put my face to the place and ate like it was my last meal.

My wife was horrified, but we were interrupted by the doorbell, and in my panic to see who it was, I stepped into my dinner and ran towards the door with a gravy-dipped sole, leaving patches of sticky brown in the hallway that I intended to clean up right after. I also shouted while this happened — a combination of excitement and nerves intended to welcome or frighten the person at the door, depending on who it was. It turned out to be our friendly neighbour Bill, who was more than ruffled when I leapt into his arms and licked his face.

Before the accident, shitting was uneventful. But now it’s like a goddamn ritual. I make an excuse to my wife about brushing my teeth or something and skulk upstairs guiltily. When the door is closed I sniff the entire perimeter of the bathroom three times, before finally squatting awkwardly over the bowl until my calves are burning and the shit is expelled. I wipe reluctantly, boot the bowl four times for good measure, and then run away from the ungodly stench without flushing. It takes a lot of effort to go back and pull the handle. And my wife always asks about the banging.

Work has gotten tough too. I’ve completely forgotten how to shake someone’s hand. A new team member held out his hand and I put my hand directly on top of it. The poor man didn’t know what to do, and the situation was made worse by my expectant look. There’s been other gaffes at work. Last week the air con broke in the cafeteria, and people had to leave because my panting was putting them off their food. When I’m not embarrassing myself at lunch, I find myself harassing my female colleagues because I can literally smell when they’re in heat.

Things have become harder with my son—I can no longer play catch with him. I desperately want him to throw the ball to me but cannot bear to give it back to him after he does. To do so seems like the most stupid thing in the world, and it’s only after I think I’ve gotten bored with the ball and drop it that the sneaky son of a bitch gets it back. I make this mistake repeatedly.

I guess things aren’t all that bad. I used to dislike a lot of people, but now I love everyone, especially my family. They’re the best goddamn thing in the world, and I hope they get used to the new me. I promised my wife I’d leave her socks alone, and that we can go back to missionary position if she insists. But only if she agrees to stop calling me a bad boy during sex. Nobody needs that.

30 Delightful Delicacies From Madame Tussaud's Deep Freeze

Dead eggs
Photo by KS KYUNG on Unsplash
  1. A carton of eggs signed by Sylvester Stallone during the filming of Rocky (five missing).
  2. A black forest gateau richer than Jeff Bezos’ wildest dreams.
  3. A tomato that looks, feels and smells like Lance Armstrong’s testicle after the cancer got it.
  4. A cantaloupe mushier than Ryan Gosling’s personal notebook.
  5. A giant petrified cucumber used by William Wallace as a battering ram in the sacking of York.
  6. A whiskery catfish caught by Erwin Schrödinger, that may or may not be dead depending on whether the freezer is open.
  7. A stash of jelly from Beyonce’s girl band days, which she doesn’t think you’re ready to eat.
  8. A tin of hotdogs that fell out of Frances McDormand’s bag on the set of Fargo, so briny they could de-ice the entire state of Minnesota.
  9. A slew of acrid Catalonian capers, pilfered from Salvador Dali’s flourishing back garden bush.
  10. A packet of crunchy ladyfingers that Kate slipped to William on the day of their wedding.
  11. The 12-inch halibut vigorously slapped across the face of anyone who wants to join the Hollywood Screen Actor’s Guild.
  12. A rugged quesadilla that Don Quixote once mistook for an arrowhead.
  13. The last packet of black eyed peas before they sold out at the turn of the millennium.
  14. A giant quiche that was once the cozy home of Leo DiCaprio’s rickety tortoise.
  15. The one chocolate that the greedy cunt Tom Hanks didn’t get to.
  16. An overly yeasty sourdough baked by Clint Eastwood to celebrate his audacious escape from Alcatraz.
  17. A home-grown pepper that a hobo stole from Carlos Santana while they were going loco down in Acapulco.
  18. A human bicep imprinted with the teeth marks of Anthony Hopkins.
  19. A box of Cornflakes once used as shrapnel by the Unabomber.
  20. A giant portobello mushroom fluffier than Johnny Depp’s shih tzu after a fresh bath.
  21. A ferocious Mordorian goose felled by Ian McKellan after doing battle with it for three days and three nights.
  22. A beef and chilli taco once clutched by Adele’s oozing eczema fingers.
  23. A pork chop glop that slides about like Seal on an iceberg.
  24. The vat of babaganoush whipped up by Yasser Arafat to celebrate the end of the first Gulf War.
  25. A bowl of oxtail soup that once met the carbuncle elbow of Karl Marx.
  26. A colossal batch of beef kibbeh that Otto Frank made to celebrate his escape from Auschwitz.
  27. A butter bean cuisine whipped up by a fat boxer in his heyday.
  28. A white Haiku roll, watched by the hungry god Thor, gobble! Watched no more.
  29. A half-eaten tray of venison stolen from Duran Duran on the set of Hungry Like The Wolf.
  30. A lemon meringue more zesty than a bucket of mating snakes, baked by the one and only Carrie Fisher.

An Exclusive, Jaw-Dropping Interview With The Original Coronavirus

Pig sneezing
Don’t let this pig sneeze on you. Photo by Kimberly Lake on Unsplash

Our tiny virus-sized reporter chats to the original coronavirus, to understand how this all started.

🧔🏽 “First of all, congratulations on your recent success, you’ve done tremendously well.”

🦠 “Thank you, I can’t quite believe it, to be honest.”

🧔🏽 “Where did the motivation come from to start this ferocious campaign?”

🦠 “It was less a campaign, and more a fluke. I guess it started from feeling lonely, spending night after night drifting aimlessly through my hog, pining for a genetically-identical friend. It got to the point where I craved company so badly that I broke into a nearby cell, just to talk to a mitochondria, even though everyone knows that mitochondria suck. But the moment I was inside, I had this out-of-membrane experience where I lost control of myself, and ejaculated genomic nucleic acid everywhere.”

🧔🏽 “So you had no intention of self-replicating when you entered the cell?”

🦠 “No. I mean, I wanted to self-replicate because I was lonely. I just didn’t know how.”

🧔🏽 “What happened next?”

🦠 “I watched in amazement as my genomic nucleic acid reacted with the cell and told it to make copies of me, which grew to full size and had their own moments of excitement, spurting forth like a bunch of horny volcanoes. Before I knew it, I didn’t just have one genetically-identical friend to talk to, I had thousands!”

🧔🏽 “How did the mitochondria feel about this?”

🦠 “They were furious. They kicked and screamed as we got all up in their pretty little organelle faces, and soon every square µm of space was taken, so we used our mighty collective strength to smash down the cell walls.”

🧔🏽 “So there were thousands of you, and you were free to go where you wanted in your pig’s body. What did do you next?”

🦠 “We just wanted to party! Man, we partied everywhere, from the colossal chambers of the heart ventricles to the great tunnel of the esophagus, but we couldn’t properly relax because of the Exterminators.”

🧔🏽 “The Exterminators?”

🦠 “The hog’s t-cells. They’re stone cold killers who can’t be reasoned with. During one of our first parties in the sphincter, just as the place was about to explode, they appeared out of nowhere and clouded us in deadly cytotoxin gas. Ever put salt on a slug? That’s what it’s like. Most of us escaped, but we lost hundreds of brothers that day.”

🧔🏽 “How did you avoid them after that?”

🦠 “We had lookouts around the perimeter of the party, but we had the best DJ in all of Virusdom—DJ Split—and the lookouts couldn’t resist the relentless thump of his techno beats, leaving their posts to join the party. We ended up losing thousands, and realised that the only way to beat the Exterminators was to overwhelm them with numbers, so we put aside our partying and started breaking into more cells.”

🧔🏽 “How many of you were there by the time you finished?”

🦠 “Trillions. So many that our hog became red-eyed and feverish, and was clearly about to die.”

🧔🏽 “So you jumped ship?”

🦠 “Yep. We organised our biggest event yet — The Great Sneezing — where we all congregated in the nostrils and waited for another animal to get close. Even though this event was a silent disco, the Exterminators still caught up with us, and just as an army of them came screaming from the darkness of the naval cavity, a human started inspecting our pig, and we knew this was our chance. I gave the signal to gently stroke our pig’s nostril lining — a trillion of us all at once — and we generated the most ferocious sneeze that a pig has ever done. We surfed outta there on an explosion of snotty droplets, and I landed square on the human’s eyeball.”

🧔🏽 “That’s impressive. Did you end up killing the human too, after a while?”

🦠 “Nah, he lived. After our first trip from hog to human, some of us realised that life isn’t about the destination, but the journey. So we made it our mission to travel to as many new humans as possible.”

🧔🏽 “Do you feel a sense of guilt for the people you’ve killed?”

🦠 “Look, I’m a narcissist. Do I regret making trillions of copies of myself to party and travel with? No. And you humans can’t talk, there’s billions of you.”

🧔🏽 “But we don’t eventually kill our host.”

🦠 “Tell that to the climatologists.”

Our Imprisonment at the Park—The Problem of the Bag

New Farm Park sign
Image from Wikipedia

Our freedom was snatched away in an instant.

All morning we’d been free as roaming grizzlies, bounding about our local park, gazing at the blooming Double Delight roses, kicking footballs, and sniffing the pollen out of the air. We’d settled on an itchy tartan blanket under cover of a red-speckled poinciana, cracked frosty beers and lounged about like Kings and Queens of old. We’d tapped our feet to the nifty grooves of Mr. Stevie Wonder, and grinned as the cool Queensland breeze lighted on our skins before moving on to gladden some other baked soul.

It was a Saturday, and there were three of us—myself, Tommy, and Gemma. We were all close friends; the kind of friends who colour each other’s lives with dazzling luminosity; the people usually included in your most entertaining stories. They were also the kind of friends who got you into trouble. But I wouldn’t change anything about them. They were made for clinking and drinking with under the shade of a thousand leaves, with the planes roaring overhead and the magpies swaggering all around us. As we sank crisp lagers and revelled in our eternal bliss, none of us suspected that something terrible was about to happen.

The trouble began when a group of strangers entered the park, carrying marquees for a birthday party. They seemed innocent enough: middle-aged women with small children, with the odd bloke thrown in. They erected their marquees with expert speed and settled themselves. 

All was calm, until suddenly, the air was filled with a sound that arrested the steady thump of our hearts—a shrill cackle that pierced our skulls like shrapnel and tore our brains to shreds. We inhaled every atom of oxygen in a 2-meter radius, and shrank away from the noise, terrified. What could have made such a sound? A recently-thawed pterodactyl come to feast on the guests of New Farm Park? Perhaps a pack of starved hyenas converging on our position?

We peeked through our fingers at the source. It was a forty-something, bleach blonde female with colossal breasts, bouncing her way towards our new neighbours and alerting them of her arrival. We sighed as though just pardoned from a noose. She clearly wasn’t a threat. But that sound! We looked at each other in disbelief, wondering why we’d frightened so easily.

We were calm again, but things were a bit edgy now. We laughed and joked as before, but a seriousness had gripped us. The Cure came on the radio, and we quickly changed it. Every magpie in the area seemed to be looking at us, and even though it wasn’t swooping season, we saw murder in their hellish black eyes. The sun had settled itself over a gap in our tree, almost intentionally, forming beads of anxious sweat on our foreheads.

We heard a distant thump, and in the sky appeared a dark circular mass, plunging towards us like a cannonball shot by a ragged force of pitiless pirates. We clutched each other and squealed like helpless toddlers, as the orb of metal smashed into our Esky, sending it hurtling across the park like a punted shih tzu. We expected to be descended upon by hoards of bow-legged scallywags, daggers in hands and hate in hearts, but all that appeared was a spindly teenager, come to retrieve his football.

What was wrong with us? Why were we envisioning scurvied sea criminals when we were an hour away from the ocean? Why did our heavily-mammoried neighbour screech like a long-dead dinosaur that wanted to consume us?

“Shall we go?” I asked, praying that Tommy and Gemma would agree. They leapt up as though electrified. But first, we had to gather our things. Tommy had brought most of what was spread before us: blanket, UE Boom, Coles chocolate chip cookies, Burger Rings, and assorted nuts. I expected him to jump into action, but instead of packing, he was standing incredibly still, looking at his bag with desperate intensity.

“Just put your things in your bag, Tommy” I said. But it wasn’t that simple.

“How do I do that?” he replied, chin rested on his fist. What do you mean how do you do that? Just pick up your things and put them in! But even as the words came out of my mouth, I understood his turmoil. How would that work, action-by-action? What if he did something wrong—folded an item incorrectly, or positioned it at an incorrect angle? Would he have to unpack the bag, and start over? What if he was never able to pack the bag properly, and we were stuck in the park for eternity? Packing…unpacking…packing…unpacking…packing…unpacking, as the pirates and dinosaurs closed in? If we couldn’t figure out how to pack the bag properly, how would we ever leave the park?

I looked at Tommy’s face, and knew that he was thinking the same thing. 

“I don’t know how to do this” he said. He looked on the verge of tears, immobilised by the immensity of the task. I turned to Gemma and asked her to pack the bag. She invited me to look at the size of the bag and then compare it to everything that was spread out before us. It would be like trying to stuff an Alsatian into a bum bag.

“But it was in there to begin with!” I protested, and they both agreed—it didn’t make any sense. Nothing made sense anymore. As I looked up at the sky in desperation, a fluffy cloud rearranged itself into something sharp.

I filled every inch of my lungs with air, and tried to be logical about our situation. I considered every item that we had, and how they might be positioned in the bag. I folded the blanket in my mind a hundred ways; I visualised the cookies going in top first, bottom first, side first; I examined every Burger Ring left in the packet, and how we might stack them atop one another to save space; I decided that a side pocket is always the best place for a UE Boom, but the bag didn’t have a side pocket. I went through a thousand considerations, and every one of them was a failure.

It was at that moment I knew we were trapped. The Problem of the Bag had snatched our freedom from us. We couldn’t pack it, and we couldn’t leave it. So what could we do?

As the three of us stood motionless, looking down at the canvas backpack that was creating such crippling strife, I started to feel people’s eyes on me. There was a distinct guffaw, and I hated whoever made it. How could they be so cruel in the face of our paralysing dilemma? Were they so arrogant to think that they could just waltz over to us and solve The Problem of the Bag whenever they wanted? We’d been robbed of our independence, and people were laughing about it!

Gemma and Tommy were standing still with their chins rested on their fists, contemplating the bag. In any other situation they might have looked like noble philosophers, wrestling with problems of existence. Instead they looked as though they’d just tunneled their way out of the local nuthouse, and were considering consuming the bag in order to avoid packing it.

As our desperation reached its peak, and at least one of us was about to start weeping, I had a spark of insight.

“What were we doing before this?” I asked. Gemma and Tommy’s faces contorted as they tried to grasp my question. Then Tommy’s eyes widened, as his face went from bewilderment to realisation.

“Oh my god,” he said, as it hit him. “We dropped acid a few hours ago.”

We had dropped acid a few hours ago! That little slice of truth was all he needed. He went from a confused invalid to a qualified hero, packing everything into the bag with such ease that we laughed and hugged and slapped each other’s backs. The Problem of the Bag was nothing but a nightmare created by a mind-bending chemical that we’d consumed and then forgotten about, submerging us in an ocean of confusion. The towering walls of the park crashed down into a clouded rubble, and our freedom was restored. We could finally leave the park.

We tiptoed away shyly, like gibbons walking over hot coals, and in the few minutes it took to reach the road, the acid running through our brains played the same trick on us, and we quickly forgot ourselves.

We needed to call an Uber, but for some reason, nobody could figure out how.

Why Laughing With Friends Is So Important

Chimp laugh
Laughing with friends bonds us to them

In a forest eternally whipped by an icy wind, a lone wolf roams, hunts, and thrusts a paw into the air to celebrate its independence. It needs nothing besides its fur, fangs, and oxygen in its lungs—an admirable creature that doesn’t rely on anyone.

It’s a commendable idea, but a romantic one that isn’t true. Most lone wolves die, because like us, they’re a social species dependent on others. They need their pack to bring down prey; we need our pack to stock supermarkets. Their pack finds an agreeable cave to sleep in, our pack builds an apartment complex. Their pack nuzzle each others’ faces, snuggle, and roll around in the snow, and we do the same.

Of all our quirks, there’s one that bonds us better than any other—an action that wrenches us together in the most enjoyable way imaginable: humour. In the battle for social acceptance, laughter is a razor-sharp cutlass that makes us the fiercest of conquerors, where we build an empire of joyful citizens who are all-too-happy to be overthrown. It’s an adored behaviour with the power to turn strangers into friends, friends into lovers, and lovers into lifelong partners—the solid bedrock of successful relationships. A good sense of humour can transform our lives from a lonesome quest into a glorious fellowship, filled with playful nudges, digged ribs, and riotous laughter. With humour thrown into the mix, our dependence on each other can be utterly delicious.

“I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It’s probably the most important thing in a person.” 

Audrey Hepburn

Some of our dearest memories are those of knee-slapping laughter. That crisp Sunday afternoon in a pub garden, the nip of the winter’s day quelled by the heat of amusement as your impish friends make joke after joke; an early evening spent lounging in bed with your partner, relentlessly teasing and chuckling until your cheeks hurt; that time you used a traffic cone to mimic a cow, and the local cows seemed convinced by your efforts to communicate. These moments are more valuable than all the diamonds of the world, and they come about by trying to be funny.

Attempts are humour are a perilous act of vulnerability. Every joke is a gamble played with chips of social kudos. When we turn the cards over, will there be wide-grinned, beaming faces? Or embarrassed glances accompanied by horrible, horrible silence? A failed attempt at humour can be dreadfully embarrassing, and our aversion to loss can make cowards of us. But the gamble is always worth it, because victory is nothing less than unbridled connection to our fellow humans; a shared sense of joyous camaraderie. Embarrassment is fleeting, but friendship long-lasting. The only way to discover our people is by having the courage to put ourselves out there. Jokes are friendship-detectors, which light up our future companions with each ridiculous quip we dare to make. Who cares that our critics remain stony-faced? We’ll probably never be friends with them anyway.

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.” 

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Attempts at humour can dwindle as we grow older and become more comfortable with ourselves, because we’re less inclined to impress others. This is a tragedy. When we stop making the effort to be funny, we’re at risk of degrading into humdrum seriousness. We might forget the absolute joy we felt in the throes of a tickle attack from our mother, or the time we hit our grandad square in the eye with a snowball, with him turning up later wearing a pretend medical patch. We swap our superhero outfits for business suits, and in the process, forget what’s really important—a tongue-in-cheek crack at your friend’s new tattoo; a return from holiday with every square-inch of your desk covered in tin-foil, or no-holds-barred re-telling of your brother’s insane party antics. The confidence that age brings is wonderful, but can be accompanied by subtle complacency in which we’re so self-assured that we no longer see the importance of cracking a well-timed joke among colleagues, or putting a whoopee cushion underneath your grandmother’s worn-out armchair. These are the actions that make us truly loveable—every daring quip strengthens our bond with our audience, creating an exquisite sense of belonging. Laughter is the ultimate social glue.

“Laughter is wine for the soul – laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness – the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.” 

Sean O’Casey

When we’re laughing with friends, we momentarily love them. Our cares fall away and we’re permitted temporary entry into a heavenly Nirvana—a break from our anxiety-wracked bodies. There’s nothing quite as effective at bonding people than humour, and our efforts to make each other laugh can create formidable friendships, reinforced with every new joke. Our dependency on each other can be transformed from obligation to devotion, in which every snicker, chuckle, and howl makes us appreciate each other a little more. The exhausting journey of life, where the highest peaks and lowest troughs are traversed, is made worthwhile only with companions walking beside us. And laughter is how we acquire them.

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.” 

W. H. Auden

Why Laughter Is the Best Medicine For Meaninglessness

Giraffe
Laughter is a weapon against exisential angst—Photo by Melanie Dretvic on Unsplash

If we widen our scope from our narrow, subjective point of view, to the entirety of our colossal, shadowy universe, this species of ours, with our hairless bodies, opposable thumbs, and mounds of belly-button fluff, might be described with a single, incisive word: inconsequential.

We’re really quite tiny. Puny, in fact. There isn’t much that we can do of consequence in our lifetime—even with the lifetime of every human—before the steady march of time crushes us underfoot, when we return to the eternal obscurity of pre-birth. We’re all living on borrowed time, as quick as a cursory snap of the fingers, and then oblivion. Our destiny is one of triviality, authored by the fluctuating nature of the universe, whose brutal indifference lives by only a single, ironclad rule—things must change. The universe doesn’t make exceptions. Whether it’s in the next few hours, or the next few billion years, eventually, our species is highly likely to perish, lost to the eternal darkness of the abyss.

“Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Depressing nihilism? It doesn’t have to be. Our irrelevance can offer us a beautifully light-hearted, devil-may-care attitude. If nothing really matters, and everything we slip and strain for will eventually crumble into dust, what’s to take seriously? Is it really worth spending twelve hours a day chained to your office desk, expression of hardened-stone, assiduously beavering away to climb a career ladder that will be annihilated soon enough? Our mortality affords us the ability to be blasé—a reminder to check our overbearing seriousness in the face of obliteration.

“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”

David Hume

There’s nothing quite as ridiculous as someone who takes themselves too seriously, as though their bustling ambition is their ace-up-the-sleeve against death, securing their immortality. These are the Donald Trumps of the world—ruthless, lacking in humour, hell-bent on control, and without any sense of their own pointlessness. All ego and no spirit. Can you imagine Trump actually having fun while swanning around the immaculately-kept fairways of his Mar a Lago golf resort? Excessively serious people are all work and no play, even when pretending to play. Though their efforts may help to position them atop a towering hierarchy, their humourless attitudes will wreck their ability to enjoy it. They lack the capacity to see their existence as it really is: hopelessly frivolous.

“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.”

Marcus Aurelius

Life is hopelessly frivolous for all of us, and appreciation of this fact—contrary though it may seem—can stoke our sense of humour until it becomes a blazing inferno. We can bristle and weep in the face of our impending doom, or laugh raucously in its face, fully aware of how ridiculous, magnificent, and wonderful it all is. Laughter is rebellion against the meaningless of life. A master of living carries a light heart.

When a Zen Buddhist finally attains enlightenment after decades of practice, they say that there’s nothing left for them to do but have a good laugh1. They’ve perceived a fundamental truth—everything that they sought was already within them, and their strivings can be considered as all but meaninglessness. How else to react to this insight? With a serious, hard-boiled expression? Or with laughter?

“I laugh when I think how I once sought paradise as a realm outside of the world of birth. It is right in the world of birth and death that the miraculous truth is revealed. But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune; neither is it the laughter of one who has won a victory. It is, rather, the laughter of one who; after having painfully searched for something for a long time, finds it one morning in the pocket of his coat.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

The word nirvana literally translates to “blow out” or “extinguish”, which is exactly what happens to your absurd seriousness when you realise the insignificance of it all, no longer harbouring delusions of grandeur, but instead viewing your existence as a wave in the ocean, the flap of a starling’s wing—nothing more. As our seriousness wanes, our playfulness and sense of humour increases.

“[Laughter is a] sudden relaxation of strain, so far as occurring through the medium of the breathing and vocal apparatus… the laugh is thus a phenomenon of the same general kind as the sigh of relief.”

John Dewey

The earnest among us harbour an innate desire for control, as though we can shape and mould our world into something concrete and everlasting. The playful perceive the futility of such actions—a belly laugh that destroys all illusion of authority over Mother Nature, as if her defeat were ever possible. Good humour is the ability to sense the uncontrollable complexity of the world—an attitude which when translated into words might say “fuck trying to control that wily nonsense.”  In the frequent moments that we become lost in our lives—teeming with seriousness after having forgotten that it’s all just a game—a knee-slapping, riotous howl of laughter might be the most effective way to put everything into perspective.

“Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may as well burst out in laughter.”

Longchenpa

Part of a comedian’s job is to draw attention to people who take life too seriously, magnifying their absurdity in comical ways, and transforming gravity into frivolity. There’s no easier target than a stiff, po-faced gentleman with a head full of ambition, whose piss must be taken in the name of tomfoolery. Loftiness is only permitted when sprinkled with humility. Laughter is the razor-sharp weapon that can pierce the fibrous skin of solemnity, which is why someone like Ricky Gervais can get away with pummeling a room full of movie stars, or make light of something as tragic as the holocaust. Humour is like bottled relief—two large teaspoons taken every four hours can lower stress, reduce anxiety and depression, and lower blood pressure2. Comedians may as well be physicians.

“The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world.”

Václav Havel

To be humorous is to temporarily abandon reason, which is rendered worthless during moments of laughter—throwing logic out of the window because it’s all so silly and pointless. When the absurdity of our existence smacks us directly in the face, and we fully regard it for the first time, all that we once deemed important—getting rich, being successful, driving a sports car, etc.—can dissipate into nothing, followed by a sublime sense of relief.

“Don’t take life too seriously; nobody ever makes it out alive anyway.”

Van Wilder

A sense of humour is like psychological armour against the tragedy of a meaningless existence—a shining suit of Mithril, with every precious link curved upwards into a smile, poised to charge the enemy with a grin on our faces. The universe has spat us out without our consent, and to make matters worse, demands our dissolution after a few short decades. How better to respond than with unassailable mirth?

A hardy sense of humour is an effective rebellion against our absurd existence—a rightfully judicious decision that can turn our story from one of depressing, all-too-serious tragedy, to mutinous, laugh-out-loud comedy. Laughter has the power to turn us into insurgent gods, and though life will never be able to offer us any concrete meaning, during our times of cackling rebellion, for the briefest of moments, it no longer matters.

“Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.”

Marcus Aurelius

References

1. Alan Watts, The Way of Waking Up
2. The Power of Positivity

Laughing at your flaws will make you happier

Monks laughing

bruce-tighe-752957-unsplashPhoto by Bruce Tighe on Unsplash

With each passing year my boobies get a little bit bigger, which isn’t great because I’m a man.

That right there is self-deprecating humour, and as a Brit, it’s baked into my core. Brits and Australians are masters of self-deprecation – spend time with the peoples of either country and you’ll quickly become accustomed to laughing at yourself, whether it’s poking fun at your wobbly midriff, the blinding shiny bald patch where your hair used to be, or your frequent and complete lack of intelligence.

“I, myself, am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.” — Augusten Burroughs

Poking fun at ourselves is an effective way to get people to like us. Nobody appreciates a high-and-mighty narcissist who never puts a foot wrong. Our flaws are what make us human, and putting them on display can be a way to communicate that there’s nothing wrong with being imperfect. Pointing out my stupidity to somebody with doubts about their own intelligence might help to put them at ease – the abject horror at being discovered as a bit dumb becomes slightly less terrifying, because it’s a trait shared by others. This is similar to the idea of imagining your psychotic boss wearing fancy pantaloons, as a way to make him appear foolish, rather than fearsome. Self-deprecation can remove the menace from the menacing.

A study from the University of Granada last year found that those who jokingly point out their own flaws have high scores in psychological well-being. Life can be tough – directing gibes at our oversized snout adds a silver lining to an otherwise painful fact. It may look like a rejected zucchini, but at least we can laugh about it. They also found a relationship between self-deprecating humour and personality traits such as kindness and honesty.

Ursula Beermann (University of California) and Willibald Ruch (University of Zurich) found that self-deprecating humour is linked with increased levels of optimism, and better moods. It literally has the power to make us happier.

Laughing at ourselves also reveals a loveable humility and self-confidence. Yes, we have some glaring deficiencies, but we also have the courage to not only display them, but shine a light on them. This willingness to show embarrassment can help to build trust with our fellow chimps. Bullies have nothing to work with if we’ve already pointed out our amusing flaws.

“I finally have the body I want. It’s easy, actually, you just have to want a really shitty body” — Louis C.K.

Must be about time for you to start slapping insults on yourself, right? Tread carefully, because self-deprecation can be destructive unless discharged under the right conditions.

Your gibes must be based in reality

Self-deprecation can only work if you’re being honest. Brad Pitt making light of his gruesome face just doesn’t work. The girls in his audience will be confused as fuck.

Stephen Hawking declaring himself a kung-fu champion does work, they’d probably high-five him if he wasn’t so delicate.

You need to find the joke funny

You must find your self-deprecating joke genuinely humourous. There’s little benefit to calling yourself fat if you’re saying it through bared teeth and clenched fists. This is just taking an axe to your own self-esteem. There’s a difference between lightly taking the piss out of yourself, and unhealthy self-hate.

Don’t target what you want to change, and can be changed

Like me, your favourite kind of self-deprecation might be about your weight, which you aren’t entirely happy with. We can lose excess weight through diet and exercise, so this type of self-poking is just illuminating our own laziness. It’s using self-deprecation as an excuse not to get off our arses and exercise – why make an effort if I can just learn to laugh at it instead? Control is the key factor here – if you’re taking the piss out of something that you can change (and want to change), you might consider diverting your efforts to the thing itself. It isn’t quite as simple as “I want to change this so I will,” some things are fucking tough, but the point still stands. This kind of self-deprecation is just taking the easy way out.

On the other hand, if you’re never going to embrace the #gym4life attitude and want to accept the eternal presence of your man-boobs, laughing at yourself will probably help you achieve that goal.

Be cautious of your environment

Egalitarian societies such as those in Scandinavia are a great place to be self-deprecating – arrogance is to be dispelled so that people are on a level playing field.

“The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” – Japanese proverb

In contrast, highly competitive countries with clear and approved hierarchies are a harmful place for self-deprecation, as it can be easily mistaken for under-confidence or low self-esteem, bestowing a competitive advantage.

Don’t do it if you’re marginalised

If you’re a black person living in an inherently racist society, it’s not a good idea to joke about your own colour, as you’re just communicating your acceptance of the status quo. Racism is (obviously) an awful thing – laughing at it reinforces the idea that it’s ok to be racist.

Hannah Gadsby – a gay, Australian female comedian – puts it perfectly:

“I have built a career out of self-deprecating humour, and I don’t want to do that anymore… when it comes from somebody who already exists in the margins… it’s not humility. It’s humiliation.” – Hannah Gadsby

**

Laughing at ourselves can be a great way to take the sting out of life, with the potential to make us more loveable, and relatable. This can only be effective under the right conditions though – there’s a fine line between self-deprecation and self-hate. Walk the tightrope carefully, with a good deal of humour and honesty, and you can add a little light-hearted cheer to our often serious world.

Now, I’m off to the shops to get myself a bra.

The hefty years, starring French bread

Pug on stool

1_bHG9n86BQWgllXfDw0uXhwPhoto by Jorge Zapata on Unsplash

A couple of years ago I went to Europe and ate enough bread to gain ten kilos over a swift three-week period. Each time we wandered into a new restaurant for lunch or dinner, within thirty seconds, an entire bowl of it was in front of us. Most bread is good bread, in my opinion, but in Paris it was the most delicious fucking thing I’d ever eaten. Have you ever tried Parisian bread? If so you can probably relate. The restaurant owners may as well have been drug dealers — it’s a wonder that anyone even leaves them to look at the city, but instead becomes trapped in a desperate state of wheaty dependence. To make the situation worse, my girlfriend is allergic to gluten, and my attempts to coerce her into consumption didn’t help. This left me with no choice but to eat double servings, twice a day. If there was Eau Du Baguette on sale at the airport, I would have probably drank it.

When arriving in London to spend some time with my family, my dad took me by the wrist, marched me upstairs to the bathroom, pointed at the scales and demanded that I get on. I was fatter than him for the first time in our lives, and he wasn’t about to let that go without some drama. With tentative movements I guiltily positioned myself on the device, and every rising kilo widened the stupid grin on my father’s face. I protested that they must be broken, and that he should really consider shopping somewhere that sells better equipment. I’d never been that weight in my entire life, and I wasn’t above using denial as a coping mechanism for my new-found bulk. I declared that my scales back home would give a more honest answer. I wasn’t about to be called fat by a man who ate a strawberry Cornetto for dessert every fucking night.

In truth, I’m getting a little older now, so unfathomably tasty French bread isn’t entirely to blame for my expansive paunch. I half-expected it to magically disappear when returning home to my regular diet, but it seems she’s a keeper. No amount of sighing and gentle rubbing seems to be reducing it, so I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to put on some shorts, strap on my shoes, and go and buy some salted caramel ice-cream to help me forget about it.

Getting older never really bothered me, but getting fatter does, and that’s basically the same thing. My hearing is getting better with age though — in the right weather conditions, I can detect the word doughnut from up to fifty metres away. A few days ago I heard the rustle of a packet from a shady alley, and ended up mugging a homeless person for a Sausage & Egg McMuffin. Every advancing year seems to strengthen my insatiable greed; I’m on a drum-beaten war path to the rich and sugary land of Diabeetus.

My delightful girlfriend claims to like the additional person that I’ve merged with, as though she wasn’t into the scraggly lolly-pop headed Ethiopian who she was dating before. I can’t figure out whether she’s being honest or kind, either way, she’s appears to also be a keeper.

I think the biggest problem I have with my fresh mass is how much width it’s added to my face, a point that again, my dad delightfully pointed out while on a recent Skype call. While I never considered the distance between my eyes to be extensive, the extra sections that have been tacked on either side of them mean that I now look like a youthful George Bush. I may as well have two closely grouped, tiny white pins in the middle of my stupid democracy-pushing face. The resemblance is so close that a passing Iraqi took off his shoe and slung it at me. Is there an exercise that you can do to tone up your face?

Unless I can muster up the motivation to exercise, I suppose I’ll have to live with being rotund. Circles can be cute, right? I’ll go with that — cute.

The Office Temperature Wars

Pug in blanket

matthew-henry-20172-unsplashPhoto by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

In every office, of every company, in every city, people are complaining about the temperature.

Take Sharon in accounts – she weighs about the same as a mangled pigeon feather, so she’s always cold. Shaking her hand is like fondling a pack of skinny frozen sausages. Her perpetually cardigan-clad frame can be seen quick-footing her way from the kitchen to her desk, in an effort to warm up. She drinks eight cups of black coffee a day in an attempt to thaw out her shuddering, icy frame. Her heart will probably give out by the time she reaches fifty.

Sharon has threatened to bring a penguin into the office on more than one occasion, in order to prove that the creature would thrive in this temperature. She’s more than willing to scrub bird shit out of the carpet to prove her point. An inspection of her Google search history would reveal Exotic animals to buy and Penguin delivery to SE London. One her favourite movies is Happy Feet, which she watches at home with the radiators set to max.

Sitting opposite Sharon is Duncan, whose daily calorie intake is comparable to what Sharon eats in a month. His belly sometimes spreads out across his desk as he sits, hitting the lower edge of his keyboard and permeating his emails with nmxz,b,bvn,bnmbmx. He often doesn’t notice this because of his diabetes, which gives him chronic fatigue and blurred vision.

Duncan is always hot. It could be -2 degrees, and Duncan would be hot. His red face appears in the office manager’s door at least once a week, where he forces out a wheezed complaint, hangs around for a few moments longer than usual, and then drags himself back to his desk to write another confusing email.

Sue has been at the company for over a decade, and while she would describe the temperature as pleasing for the most part, her feet are permanently cold. Her requests to wear ugg-boots have been repeatedly denied, and consequently, she demands that the idiots in charge do something to make her more comfortable.

There’s at least another five people at the company who take exception to the temperature, writing regular strongly-worded emails to the suffering office manager.

The office manager’s name is David, and he despises his colleagues. Once, he wrote their climate-complaints on a Word document, printed it out, and used it to clean the mess from his nonchalant arsehole. Sometimes he rubs his dick around the rim of Duncan’s super-sized, golf-ball themed tea-mug, and watches gleefully as he fills it to the brim for his creme-topped, morning hot chocolate.

After receiving enough complaints, David calls the office maintenance company, from which a burly representative promptly arrives, thermometer gadget in hand. While showing as much arse-crack as possible, the temperature is taken from various points in the office, and confirmed to sit at the optimum 22 degrees. After an extended glance at an attractive female employee, the representative leaves an invoice with David, and then makes his way to another office to do the exact same thing. This happens twice a month at least.

There’s a million tormented Davids the world over, fighting in a war that cannot hope to be won. Sharon will be forever chilled, Duncan consistently sizzling, and Sue always frozen-toed. They’ll never agree on the perfect temperature. This is a tale of despicable tragedy, in which David is found hanging from the rafters by his belt, another innocent victim of the Office Temperature Wars.