Technological Breakthroughs in Humor

Today I am going to experiment with a completely revolutionary type of humor. This type of humor has been under development at Leftbanker Laboratories® under conditions of extreme secrecy. The conditions are so secret that even I didn’t know anything about the project until I got half-way through this cup of coffee I am drinking. Let me get a warm up and I will let you in on this daring new endeavor. By the way, I think that “endeavor” is a totally appropriate word to describe this bold and daring new endeavor.

I hate drinking luke warm coffee, don’t you? I think I put too much sugar in my coffee, don’t you hate that? OK, I’m stalling; I admit it. I don’t have a bold new approach to humor. While I am confessing things, there are no Leftbanker Laboratories® and they definitely aren’t registered. I just put the little ® symbol there because I think it looks cool and I just figured out how to do it, so expect a lot more use of cool little symbols. I suppose you could call my brain Leftbanker Laboratories® but that is kind of a stretch, and I still haven’t come up with a bold new comedy endeavor.

What makes a lot of things funny? I know, do you? Take television situation comedies; what makes them funny? Certainly not the writing. Have you ever had to sit through an episode of M*A*S*H or Friends? I have read directions on how to put together a bookshelf that has more humor. What makes those shows funny is the laugh track. The more tedious the dialogue the louder the technicians crank up the canned laughter. Not very sophisticated but it works.

Take a blockbuster disaster movie like The Day After Tomorrow. It is supposed to be a sci-fi, disaster, thriller and probably a few other genres. Add a laugh track and it would be about the funniest fucking movie in history. I saw the movie in a packed theater and every person over the age of about ten was laughing quite a bit. Had they intended it to be a comedy they could have inserted canned laughter when the wolves showed up after the twisters, killer hail storms, tidal waves, and the instant ice age. The audience would have died laughing.

In the wake of this startling discovery about humor, Leftbanker Industries® is offering the Personal Laugh Track™ for $39.95. The Personal Laugh Track™ is a small device that fits on your key chain. Simply push the button and the sound of about 25 people laughing hysterically will be broadcast from the device for as long as you hold down the button. Imagine how this will improve the lives of the humor-impaired in this country. The longer you hold down the button, the funnier your joke will be. Example: You are making a really pathetic attempt at humor. You are so utterly pathetic that you resort to telling a joke, a really dumb joke. In the past, you would have simply made everyone within fifty feet of you incredibly uncomfortable, not so with the Personal Laugh Track™.

You: A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

(push the button) Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Your friends (who used to pity you): Stop it, you’re killing us.

And so on for as long as you want the gag to last.

As long as the technology exists I don’t think there is any reason for you to be so tedious and humor-free. Listen, having zero sense of humor is a crippling disease. You were born with this crippling disease and there is finally help for you. I mean, if you had a badly infected foot you wouldn’t just walk around on it until it became gangrenous, would you? You retelling the plot to an episode of Golden Girls is the humor equivalent of that gangrenous foot. You wear glasses, right? Then what is so bad about a mechanical device that will actually make you fit to go out in public?