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Laugh
Lab
By
D. Barry
The scientific community, having run out of things to clone,
is trying to identify the World's Funniest Joke. I refer to
a project called Laugh Lab, being conducted by Dr. Richard
Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire (pronounced "Scotland").
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Wiseman has set up a site on the
Internet -- www.laughlab.co.uk/home.html -- that has received
more than 10,000 jokes, which have been rated by more than 100,000
people, most of them wrong. I say this because the joke they
have so far rated as the funniest is this:
"Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are going camping. They
pitch their tent under the stars and go to sleep. Sometime in
the middle of the night Holmes wakes up Watson. 'Watson, look
up at the stars and tell me what you deduce.'
"Watson says, 'I see millions of stars, and even if a few
of those have planets, it's quite likely there are some planets
like Earth. And if there are a few planets like Earth out there,
there might also be life.'
"Holmes replied: 'Watson, you idiot, somebody stole our
tent!'"
Now, I'm not saying this is a bad joke. I'm just saying this
is not even close to being the funniest joke in the world. It
would be funnier if Holmes woke up Watson and said, "Watson,
there's a weasel chomping on my privates!" I'm not sure
where the joke would go from there, but you can't go wrong with
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setup like that.
Of course, some would disagree. And when I say "some,"
I of course mean "women." Women generally dislike
groinular humor; this is one of the startling findings -- and
when I say "startling," I mean "not startling"
-- of the Laugh Lab project. I have been listening to people
-- and when I say "people," I mean "men"
-- tell jokes for longer than 50 years (I don't mean the jokes
take longer than 50 years to tell, although some of them come
close), and I can state for a scientific fact that the funnier
a joke is, the more likely a woman is to react by saying: "That's
disgusting!" As if that's a bad thing.
According to a Laugh Lab news release, women don't like jokes
that involve aggression, sexuality or offensiveness -- also
known as the three building blocks of humor. The release states
that women prefer "jokes involving word plays." It
gives the following example of a joke that women like but men
dislike:
"A man had a dog called Minton. One day Minton ate two
shuttlecocks. When the owner found out, he said, 'Bad Minton!!'"
Whoo-HOO! "Bad Minton!!" Get it? Here, sniff these
smelling salts.
I'll tell you who else has a serious humor deficiency: Canadians.
I say this because, according to Laugh Lab, the following joke
was rated highest by Canadians: "What do you call a woman
who can balance four pints of beer on her head? Beatrix."
Get it? "Beatrix!" Which sounds sort of, but not quite
enough, like "Beer Tricks!" Ha ha! Maybe it would
be funnier if they called her Minton.
Laugh Lab also had people rate jokes that were generated by
a computer. This is important research, because if computers
can produce workable jokes, humanity may finally see the long-awaited
day when humor columnists have to work even less than they do
now.
Unfortunately, the highest- rated joke that the computer produced
was: "What kind of murderer has fiber? A cereal killer."
Granted, that's better than what Canada came up with. But it's
not up to the standards of, say, Yemen.
Anyway, if you want to participate in the Laugh Lab project,
you can go to the Internet site and rate some jokes. But I warn
you: Don't have food in your mouth! Because the hilarity level
of these jokes is sure to make you go: "Huh?"
For example, here's one I was asked to rate: "Why do elephants
have big ears? Noddy wouldn't pay the ransom." Allegedly
this joke is funny in England, which uses metric humour.
But here's the good part: You can also submit a joke to the
Laugh Lab. In the interest of improving the overall joke quality,
I urge everybody reading this column to submit a joke incorporating
some variation of the phrase: "There's a weasel chomping
on my privates." (Example: "Why do elephants have
big ears? Because there's a weasel chomping on their privates.")
Also, if you see this phrase in a joke you're being asked to
rate, give that joke the highest rating. Do it now. Do it for
humanity. Do it for the most noble of all possible reasons:
to get to the other side.
Dave Barry is a humor columnist for the Miami (Fla.) Herald. |
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