My Book Idea
I’ve been kicking around the idea that I should write a book one day, and it would pretty much be useless theories, and completely over analyzed breakdowns, and charts of why simple things are the way they are. Oh, there would be graphs, and theories, and all sorts of goodness.
One such theory of mine that would be an obvious topic, is my bathtub curve of humor. It started out as a simple observation with my older brother about 5 years ago, and it has yet to fail me. The theory is simply that dumb inside jokes, and their ability to make you pee your pants with glee, or have orange soda come out of your nose, will have a high point, followed by a sharp drop off. There will be a seemingly long unfunny period, that i like to call the “inside laugh zone”, or ILZ for short. Then depending on the delivery, and timing, there will be a gradual increase of the inside joke effectiveness. This is due to the irony of using something that is no longer funny to such a point where you begin to laugh at the fact that you said, or made use of the inside joke, rather than how funny the original usage was. This is where the old joke is dead, and the new fun begins. The curve itself can actually have many layers, as inside jokes like this tend to spawn children, or perhaps even by accident, two very distinct inside jokes can combine into something of its own. Then there is also 3rd party mutation syndrome, where there is a noticeable evolution of a joke based on 3rd party inside joke pick ups. This can happen when a 3rd party individual can pick up a joke somewhere during it’s life cycle, and because of possibly mis-interpretation, or inappropriate use can add new meaning, or life to a joke.
One other thing I’ve noticed is that the longer the ILZ, the more unpredictable the timing of of the curve can be. Humor can be very fragile, but never give up on something, even when you’re pretty sure it’s completely dead. These are moments that can never be lost if you time everything correctly.
Anyway. I hope to shore more of my thoughts like this very soon.