Stuff that occurs to me

All of my 'how to' posts are tagged here. The most popular posts are about blocking and private accounts on Twitter, also the science communication jobs list. None of the science or medical information I might post to this blog should be taken as medical advice (I'm not medically trained).

Think of this blog as a sort of nursery for my half-baked ideas hence 'stuff that occurs to me'.

Contact: @JoBrodie Email: jo DOT brodie AT gmail DOT com

Science in London: The 2018/19 scientific society talks in London blog post

Tuesday 6 October 2020

Things that have made me laugh so much I couldn't breathe

Table of Contents

1. Things that have made me laugh so much I couldn't breathe
2. Things that have made me chuckle
3. Context 

Sometimes stuff just strikes you as funny, here's what did it for me. I'm sure I've forgotten LOADS!


1. Things that have made me laugh so much I couldn't breathe

Mitsubishi car advert - polar bear mascot can't stay on his feet




@abuttguy's "Male writers writing female characters" (shared by Scott Baiowulf)



 

Woman amused by sock mask




Man seeks mercy from hotel that banned him after seagulls trashed his room

Huffpost story



Table-cat memes



Zak McFlimby's response to Marshall amplifiers - from b3ta





 


















See original and context here.

Mark Twain's 'The Awful German Language' 

On the challenges of learning a language whose rules appear to be out to get you, with suggestions for improvement. 

"In the next place, I would move the Verb further up to the front. You may load up with ever so good a Verb, but I notice that you never really bring down a subject with it at the present German range--you only cripple it. So I insist that this important part of speech should be brought forward to a position where it may be easily seen with the naked eye. "

https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html 

The Clbuttic Mistake: when obscenity filters go wrong

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2667634/The-Clbuttic-Mistake-When-obscenity-filters-go-wrong.html (£)

The Simpsons (1): Call of The Simpsons




The Simpsons (2): Homer jumps Springfield Gorge



To craunch a marmoset

The entirety of Stephen Pile's Book of Heroic Failures killed me age 10 and the bit I remember the most was the chap who took it upon himself to create a Portuguese-English conversational book having only a French-English dictionary and an Portuguese-French phrasebook.

As paredes têm ouvidos (Portuguese original)

The walls have hearsay (English translation)
The walls have ears (correct, idiomatic translation).

My mum telling jokes

She couldn't do it. Every joke had the punch-line "Oh no, wait a wee minute - that can't be right" and Dad and I would be laughing so much anyway it didn't really matter.  


Guy Goma being interviewed by the BBC

His facial expressions!


 

Misc

I have also laughed myself silly seeing Boothby Graffoe (London) and Miles Jupp (Edinburgh Festival) live.



2. Things that have made me chuckle

Cats hiding behind food


 I'm afraid I saved the pictures without making a note of who took them. 


Gye gye cruel world




Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan on The Day Today

Patrick Marber should be on the telly more, his comic timing is *chef's kiss*. That little 'German' at 0.48. Dead :)




Alan Partridge after eating a chocolate mousse


The out-take version is also fabulous.




All of Monty Python especially...

The matter-of-fact way in which John Cleese says "The plumage don't enter into it" in The Dead Parrot sketch.

The mere idea of the All-England Summarise Proust competition. 

Ripping Yarns

When the camera pans back and Terry Jones realises what's going on. Hahahaha. 



The radio ventriloquist

My mum told me about this when I was little. Laughed for days. I assume she meant Peter Brough

 

Bob Katter, same sex marriage and avoiding death by crocodile 

 



Blackadder - Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking


Remember watching this with my mum and howling with laughter




Every Street in Manchester closed. No, wait I mean...

 

Bus ping

I once had to get off the 380 bus early after I got the giggles. The bus had had an upgrade and now had a new STOPPING sign at the front that lit up in orange whenever anyone pressed the button. There was new music too - a gently falling three tone ping-ping-ping motif which accompanied the bus press and the illumination. Unfortunately the first four letters (STOP) of the sign didn't light up properly. So whenever someone pressed the button the sign just lit up as PING while the musical accompaniment pinged along - I lost all sense of reason every time someone pressed the button (and also in anticipation when I could see someone was about to) and had to get off and walk the last few stops.

Help Bury animals




I'm on a horse (moo)






Man puts 3.5m dinosaur in the family garden to prank his wife...

...she takes the dog out for a midnight wee and gets quite a surprise

The Leamington Courier



Face swap baby nose

The Telegraph


Lawyer on conference call with kitten filter


Pakistan Minister gets cats' ears filter during live press conference


 

3. Context

Being very easily amused I spend quite a lot of my time giggling or rather trying not to giggle, particularly when I'm in public where giggling by yourself just unnerves everyone. 

Finding something amusing and trying not to laugh seems to set off some horrendous feedback loop, where I find myself giggling not just at the thing that's made me laugh in the first place but also at the terrible predicament I'm now in (where I'm not supposed to laugh) and finding that funny as well.

I once heard that people tend not to laugh by themselves as much as they do in public and I'm sure it's true - laughter has an important social function - but I certainly laugh out loud by myself at funny television programmes and articles / books (I wouldn't read Bill Bryson in public again after losing it on a tube train during one of his tall stories).

What we find funny is so personal so I can easily imagine people reading the examples above and not even managing to raise a chuckle for some of them. Of course now that I've laughed at these in the past I probably will never laugh at them in quite the same way again.
 




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