What's Funny?

Not this book. 

I was actually excited to delve into this book when I heard about it, so much so that I was looking forward to picking it up from the post office.

Ok, maybe it was just because I really like the emails they send out. "You Have a Package Waiting For You!" Really??!! For me??! Someone loves me enough to ship something to me???!!! Even when I know it's a book... that I ordered myself... still. 

So, I ran down to the post office, signed my name away, and tore open the paper like a kid on Christmas, or something to that extent.

Then, with a wide open mind, I opened this book. 

Instant disappointment. How a book on humor can be created without one ounce of actual humor is, almost, in itself funny. This book could not be more dry, boring, or less amusing. It's like Morreall denied humor's existence in some reverse-psychological attempt to prove his theories on humor.

According to Morreall's research, humor is beneficial to our mental, physical, and spiritual health. However, reading this book seemed to degrade all three.

Mentally: I love humor, I use it every day, and I am a firm believer in its benefits. I think that humor keeps the wits sharp, and can only add to intellect. I even wrote my college essay on the positive outcome of a well placed pun! However, while mentally struggling through Morreall's monologue, (I imagine a guy reading this book in a very monotone voice in front of a large sleeping crowd) I seemed to forget everything that I loved so much about humor. This theoretical dissection of the joke and punch line had the effect of making jokes less funny. In humor, naïveté is bliss. I’m laughing because it’s funny. Not because of the incongruency theory and a drastic cognitive shift due to my current state of play. It’s a joke. Let it be one, and leave it at that.

Physically: I fell asleep reading this book. Twice. So, actually, I guess you could say it benefitted me physically because I was able to catch some much needed “z’s”

Spiritually: Humor is like a religion to me, in the sense that I look to it for guidance through my troubles and doubts. Morreall agreed with this aspect of humor, but because of his dreadfully boring diction, I was less excited to read, less interested to learn, and in the end, lost my will to appreciate the basis of my outlook on life. (ok a little drastic but sometimes exaggeration is required for humor.)

Maybe if Morreall would have used more of the “bon mots” he spoke of, I would consider him a eutrapelos, but alas, his book bored the humor out of me.

In fact, the only line that I chuckled out loud at was the part of humor in 15^th century Paris, where “burning cats was a form of home entertainment.” 

Maybe I experienced a cognitive shift because I was not expecting that brief sentence of pure hilarity to come out of the doldrums of Morreall’s book, and ironically enough, it was not intentionally placed as a bit of humor. Maybe I was in the play zone, maybe I was experiencing the False Alarm effect, maybe it was a grand exaggeration, or maybe it was just FUNNY.

So, to answer my own question of “what’s funny?” Thanks to Morreall I have learned one thing:

Burning cats, apparently.