The essence of Funny

Something I never really bothered to think about until the other day. I received this link which had a list of some incredibly hilarious stuff, and some not so funny. It occurred to me then to question what was it that made those things so humorous!

Would your preference of humour depend on:

1) Genetics aka your parents (blame everything on them)
- Not too sure about this one. My parents still laugh at Chinese serials while I cringe.

2) Your childhood peers
- Coupled with the fact that it's these years where you develop the foundation of your psyche, it's probably an era where you feel even more inclined to be socially accepted. Through conditioning, you'd find funny what your closest buddies then find funny too.

3) The type of entertainment you had available
- Growing up with cable and MTV WILL have an effect on you. And we wonder why Americans bother filming Scary Movie 452.

4) The amount of sunshine you had
- Well with photosynthe... nah.

How do Evil Masterminds recruit?

After watching enough movies, you start wondering about silly things. The latest to cross my mind was after watching "Planet Terror", an awesome Quentin Tarantino flick. That, and pretty much any other movie with a lead villain has to have his henchmen.

Like my title says, how the heck do these baddies recruit? Perhaps they could:

1) Register at Jobstreet.com and post the following
"Full time employee wanted. Preferably only PMR level education (maximum). Males should be 6 footers and well built. Females with modeling careers are encouraged to apply. No initiative spirit needed, but must love team work. Applicants cannot be allergic or adverse to metal, grease, canvas, blood, Rambo. A short but once in a lifetime experience awaits you!"

2) Pose as border police and 'persuade' all foreign illegals to join them

3) Recruit direct from government authorities

Exercising humour

With the help of icanhascheezburger.com, I created this yesterday (the captions). If you're unfamiliar with why it's written that way, please Google 'lolspeak'. It's hilarious!

I was quite proud of my creation and showed it off to a friend. Her feedback was that it was 'okay'. Recovering from my burst ego, I realized she was right! I could do better captions! So here we gooooo.

1) I'm in ur bukkits, etting ur lefovers.
2) U LIE! U ONY KONT TO 3!
3) Jamp on in. Waterz fien!
4) Wat u meen dis not doilet?
5) Is 2 dollah per howre. Want?
6) Me bukkit si su bukkit.

Mat Motor Mania

If you're a driver around KL, you might've noticed this. Anytime you run into a bunch of Mat Motors, they seem to know nearly every other rider. Whether they're stopping by the side of the road to hide from the rain, traffic lights, or even while riding, you keep seeing them talking to each other.

Flawed assumptions time!
1) Motorcyclists are friendlier people
2) Companies that sell motorcycles aggressively promote 'Friend Get Friend' deals
3) Natural abilities include Small Talk, and Sound Filtering
4) Riding solo all the time makes you so lonely you'll talk to anyone
5) They're all part of a secret social network that only riders get access to at the cost of being bound to ride for all eternity (agenda unknown...)

Wastrels

This is a 2 in 1 vent. If you're living in KL and read the papers fairly regularly, you'd probably have heard of the extravagant proposal this young dude did on a massive billboard a month back. If you haven't, it's simply his mug shot and him holding up a ring asking his girl to marry him. The estimated cost was RM 40,000 for the spot.

Unanimously, every girl I've spoken to has said what a dumbass he was. He should've just blown the cash on a bigger ring / better holiday / a downpayment for a house / car / taste?

Now the 2nd biggest waste is by a brand called 'Brands'. Great position on the Federal Highway, no doubt costing them heaps, plus what looked like good production values. They bothered to have a headline, but with all that space, they decided to put the words "Oh, Brands".

Yep. That's it. Some people just need to be shot.

Story #9 - Last Song

The seed of this one hit me as I was listening to the radio. I know that there's 'virtually' unlimited variations of how music can sound, but imagine if it was finite. Since music is really something special amongst man, perhaps the end of everything begins with the last song? ;)

-.-

One day, far into the future, there appeared a man who claimed he had the last song in the world. Most laughed and ignored him. Others jeered and taunted. However, his agenda wasn’t to gather followers. Satisfied that the very last person heard his claim, he sat down with man’s first instrument and began to sing. Around the world, people paused and strained their ears, wondering what it was they heard in the wind; What feeling was it they felt on their skin. As the final note rang, tears streamed down their smiling faces. They knew they were being called.

-.-

Beautiful people

My definition for beautiful people here will be 'people that exhibit physical qualities that are above average and are desirable to the majority of the specific society'. What a mouthful, but with a word like 'beauty', it's best to get everyone on the same page. =)

Now civilization has been around for a long time and in each age and/or culture, there are always those identified as 'beautiful'. I shall conveniently blame Westernization for the onset of increased pressure for people to become 'beautiful'. This practice has obviously spread eastward, as the rest of the developing world joins in this massive beauty pageant.

So we have:
1) The pressures and standards of beauty increasing
2) The near-instantaneous communication of it, across multiple society's
3) The increased production and availability of products that 'make you beautiful'

Which leads me to my million ringgit question (about USD 310k now haha).

Are there more beautiful people in the world today?
If a bunch of cavemen thought 20% of their cave-dwellers were beautiful, would we coke-light-sipping first-worlders find more than that amount to be qualified as beautiful?

I'm tempted to say no, simply because standards have gone increasingly higher, but we aren't exactly X-men'ing our evolution into beauty. However, thank the many advances of science for cosmetics, Botox, collagen, and boob jobs.

So what do you think?