Tips on humor writeups

[I had posted this last week but just realized that it is missing, I must have deleted it by accident. So here goes]

In this post, I shall put down my thoughts on how I go about writing humor. If it seems gratuitous, that’s because it is. I just could not think of anything else to write this week and hence I thought I might as well jot down a post on how I approach the ‘Laugh Out Loud’ posts that I write. Here are some of the rules that I have for myself

1. There is no such thing called ‘universal humor’ because humor is *always* context based and you cannot expect everybody to share the same context. So forget about trying to come up with a post that everyone will ‘get’.

2. Do not try to explain the context in detail. It kills the joke. Like I said, you cannot target everyone; people who get your sense of humor will keep coming back. At the same time, do not pick a context that is obscure and too specialized. For example, a pun that goes “Mary had a little lamb…for breakfast” would have a lot more people chuckling (except a few vegetarians maybe) than something like “Does Pavlov’s name ring a bell ?” which probably very few people would get.

3. Assume that your readers are at the same level of intelligence that you are – no more, no less. If you don’t have too many readers, then you are a gifted person...either way.

4. People ask me if the posts where I write about my experiences actually happened that way. Humor writing is to writing what caricature is to drawing. Is a caricature the exact representation of the person ?. No. If so, then is it false ?. No again. See, a caricature is an exaggeration of certain features that are slightly more prominent than the others. Humor writing is very much the same; you take a certain incident and then depict it with a different interpretation.

5. Humor is as much about the ability to get the person to ‘see’ what you are talking about, as it is about leaving enough to their imagination to complete the picture. Write such that it conjures up an image in the person’s mind. Then give just enough hints for the person to complete the situation in their mind. I use this technique the most.

6. Remember that the humor that you are attempting to put across should be something that made you laugh when you first thought about it. A forced attempt at humor is going to show easily. Some of my posts started off as a one liner in my head while driving.

7. Finally, the toughest aspect of humor write-ups is to come up with the right combination of words that will most effectively deliver the joke. This may seem trivial but I believe that certain word combinations can evoke a stronger response than others that mean exactly the same.

These are the rules that I work with. If you have any inputs on how you approach humor, do share them here.

Digressing a bit, it would be great to know who my readers are (other than a few who are forced to read my posts just because they happen to be my friends). Do drop a line to let me know if I am getting better or worse over time. Without feedback, it is difficult to judge if my posts have the intended effect.

And I am done with Olympics

The Olympic Games have ended. This post completes my blog trilogy on the Olympics which involved in-depth analysis and comprehensive coverage of the games which I followed diligently. Diligently, that is when ever I could find time to switch channels from cricket.

During one such channel flip, I caught some swimming action. There were these beautiful legs coming out of water and moving in perfect synchrony. Occasionally, the lovely ladies to whom the legs belonged would surface up and continue their synchronized swimming. It was such a delight to watch. I mean the legs; I don’t care much about synchronization, anyway.

This event got me thinking (here comes the in-depth analysis part), why don’t we have synchronized swimming for men ?. My guess is that the event would not really be popular. Think about it, a bunch of men sticking their hairy legs out of water. How many would pay to see that (apart from Karan Johar, that is) ?. Thankfully, men don’t insist being on parity with women here.

On the other hand, women would not want to be a part of some sports. For example, sumo wrestling for women isn’t all that popular. Not because men don’t want to see it but more so because the sport demands that women put on weight deliberately. And how many would want to do that !!. But the toughest act is for the husband of a sumo wrestler, he always has a minefield to dodge.

“Dear, do I look fat in this dress ?”

“Yeah...umm...No...umm...It does not matter...umm...I think I will just shoot myself instead”

The poor man is in for trouble no matter what. And you don’t want to piss off a sumo wrestling wife, do you ?. Good thing that sumo wrestling is not an Olympic sport.

Coming back to the Beijing Olympics, I must admit, China did put on a grand show. It would be a tough act for England to follow. I have a dream when one day India will host the Olympics. Of course, I also have dreams of being the most admired man in the world, going on a date with Charlize Theron and winning the Nobel Prize for blogging. The Olympics dream will have to get in line.

So the next blog post on sports will be four years from now. I would like to conclude this post with the Olympic motto “Citius Altius Fortius”

I could translate it but it’s all Latin to me…..

Swimming to glory

This being the only blog in the blogosphere that has officially been authorized to bring you the inside secrets of the Olympics (all the rest have been banned access by China), it is my responsibility to keep you abreast of all the sensation happening behind the scenes.

My investigative journalism has led me to this starling discovery.

Michael Phelps is the love child of a sailor and a mermaid !!!.

Well, how else do you account for his incredible accomplishment at swimming, huh ??

The bigger question though is how does a sailor, or for that matter anybody, mate with a mermaid ?. The logistical difficulties are overwhelming. But that topic is beyond the scope of this blog

Coming back to Phelps, if you think my theory is far fetched, do you have a better one ?. Yeah yeah, you will probably come out with some incredibly dumb explanation about his stamina, skill and training also known as blah, blah and blah. But tell me, how can you explain the fact that he has webbed feet ?. Now you are probably shouting “Those are swim fins that swimmers wear. It is standard gear, you moron”. Exactly my point. See, nobody has seen Phelps’s feet and under those flippers are the webbed feet that came from his mother’s side. That’s my theory and I am sticking to it and if you have a problem with that then get your own blog.

But apart from that, it is still unbelievable that this guy won eight individual gold medals while we a billion people in India could only come up with one gold so far. It is shameful, I tell you, absolutely shameful.

Michael Phelps ought to be ashamed of himself, amassing all that gold when there are people out there in other parts of the world who struggle to even spell goald (I am sure he wastes a lot of food too)

We cannot be complacent about our Olympic performance anymore. We need to win more medals next time around and I have a surefire plan for that – India should adopt Michael Phelps. Pay him what it takes to get him to be an Indian citizen. It will probably cost a huge amount of money but we can make up for it by selling all the gold that he wins. If money does not work, we could try threats

"Hey Mike, you better play for India next time or else...."

"Or else what ?, try your third degree methods ? they don't scare me"

"Or else you will be abducted and made to watch Reese Witherspoon movies over and over again”

"Ok ok, where do I sign up ?"

Well, that’s my plan and I am sure it will work I hope you agree that this is the best shot we have at more medals at the Olympics.

Otherwise, we better start searching for mermaids...

Let the games begin

The Olympics has begun.

Even as I type these words, there are people who are running as fast as they can, jumping high obstacles and using all their strength to overcome hurdles. But let us not worry about what goes on at the US - Mexican border.

Because, dear friends, the eyes of the world are on China where the best athletes are competing against one another to claim the ultimate prize – an Olympic Gold which China claims is lead free.

The origin of these games was in ancient Greece when one day all their email servers went down due to a power outage. History books refer to this period as the ‘Dark Age’. As result, one person was hired whose sole job was to run between two cities carrying messages. Sometimes he would run even when there were no messages to be sent, thus was born the marathon.

Meanwhile, all the men of the city would get together and play other games till the messenger returned. They called it the ‘Olympic Games’ as a tribute to the famous camera company - Olympus. The reason why it is held once every four years is because that’s how long it took for the messenger guy to run back to his city.

Did you know that the early Olympics was held only for men?. They did not even bother to dress themselves and just played in the nude. No wonder that Greek Gods are so popular with women even today. As entertaining as it was, this practice was stopped after the introduction of wrestling into Olympics, to ensure that no player got an unfair advantage over the other.

That’s about enough of history of the Olympics, today the number of games have significantly increased. There is participation from the world over. This time as it is being held in China and China being communist, their plan was that all the medals would be shared equally by all participants. But the plan was opposed by the US which wanted all medals for itself. As a compromise, it was decided that only the top three would be awarded medals in any sport.

India has not had much success in the Olympics except for a lone medal or two. This is because athletes from other countries resort to unfair means of play like better training and better government support.

However, for the first time in India’s Olympic history, we finally managed to bag a Gold in an individual sports event. The Indian government quickly denied any links to this unexpected event and has assured the nation that any help that the government may have provided was purely by chance and that such an oversight would not happen again.

As the games continue into the next week and many more medals are to be won, we the billion of us in India will hope that a few more medals come our way.

But let us remember to test them all for lead.

What's the big deal ?

The whole issue of the nuclear deal has created so much brouhaha that it is time for me to step in and explain to you ignorant masses what this is all about. And when,I am finished, you will want to use candles instead.

To understand the deal, we would need to first understand the basics of nuclear energy. For that, we will have start at the beginning since if we start at the end, this post would end here.

So here is how it all began

One fine day, God said “Let there be light”

Oh well, maybe we need not go back that far. Let’s fast forward a couple of billion years (or 6000 biblical years depending on your point of view) ahead to Enrico Fermi in his lab. Fermi had been pretty much whiling his time away doing nothing, so he got a memo from his boss which read

“All day long, you do nothing but just sit here
Hoping for an idea to strike, while drinking beer
But now, it’s time for you to get off your bottom
To do some physics and go split an atom”

Well, his boss did not exactly send a memo but I had to fit in that poem somewhere. So Fermi got busy trying to split an atom. His initial technique involved placing a little bit of uranium on the table and then using a big hammer. But three broken tables and a swollen thumb later, he realized that a hammer was not really the way to go. So after experimenting with scissors, knives and nail clippers, he finally hit upon the nuclear reactor. A nuclear reactor is a huge dome containing uranium. Instead of a hammer, we have a gigantic pestle that pounds the uranium till it splits and releases energy.

Now that you have the scientific know-how, it is easier to explain the controversy behind the nuclear deal. See, the Congress government wants to import the pestle from the United States, since it would take us several years to make our own. But the communists want us to use the sickle to split an atom. And they want it to be imported from China. A sickle is fine if you want to chop coconuts but for atoms, it just won’t fly (If you recall, Fermi did not even attempt a sickle. Nail clipper...yes, but not a sickle)

So our communist comrades decided to withdraw their support to the government which actually turned out pretty well for the Congress. Now they have been able to go forward with the deal.

Very soon, power cuts in Bangalore will be a thing of the past. That means I don’t have to worry about the power going off while I am writing a blog post.

Becaase typeng in tha dark may leed to spalling misstikes