I do have, what I call, cultural blindspots, guilty pleasures- things which make me breathless with laughter, tears streaming down my face. (You get the picture)

Jackass is one of them. Adore it. Makes me wheeze with laughter.

South Park is another.

I shouldn’t find this funny. It’s a dilberately poorly animated child singing about a friend’s mother being a bitch. The humour is too direct, too obvious and yet it makes me smile.

When Cartman dresses up as the various children from around the world. I Laugh.

When Cartman does the “chaa” and jazz hands at the end. I Laugh.

Is there hope for me?

Where/When: Christmas Day in our kitchen

Event: Luke comes into our kitchen whilst I’m cooking Christ dinner and proclaims sagely, “ahhh the kitchen is the *soul* of the house!” nodding knowingly.

mirthometer: 3 I <3 uncharacteristic wisdom

Where/When: My facebook feed

Event: Amy has just asked me “How are things in Bubblygum?”

I shall be stating this as my address henceforth!

Mirthometer: 3 – Fits of teary giggles. Small things etc…..!

Where/When: Outside kidlets’ school at hometime today

Event: At the Year 5 & 6 Christmas disco, some bright spark thought it was a fab idea to give them all a party blower each….

Have you ever been in the middle of a 120-strong throng of 9 to 11 year olds with party blowers?!? Bear in mind, the audioboo was recorded *after* the main body of them had moved away!

Listen!

Mirthometer: 3 – Would be funnier without the headache!!

Where/When: In a university in London.

Event: A mailing list was set up pre-subscribed with all the researchers – a bad idea really. A message was sent out and hundreds of researchers replied asking to be subscribed to the list. This meant that everyone got all these messages, so hundreds then sent a message asking to be unsubscribed from the list. With each message they got more and more angry insisting on being unsubscribed as if it was a human at the other end which would do this for them. Of course this just meant all these emails was sent to everyone. Eventually someone explained how mailing lists worked. Just goes to show a PhD doesn’t mean you’re clever about everything.

Mirthometer: A lowly schadenfreude 0.5 – you had to be there to enjoy it.

Where/When: enormous recreation of Viking Longboat, at least 50 ft in each direction, on the beach, in the moonlight.

Event
She: “who put that down there?”
Crowd in jocular good humour: “we did missis”
She: “where on earth did you get it from?”
Crowd “we made it missis”
She: “you made it? Goodness! What a shame for them to burn it like that”
Crowd: haha haha ha ha ha and face-palm expletive nudge chuckle

Mirthometer: 6 for originality + I for alienation factor = a mighty 7!

ref: http://www.skinningrovebonfire.org.uk

Where/When: online @ http://xkcd.com/657/large/

Event: This is both a cleaver piece of information visualisation, and at the same time funny, educational, informational, and clearly lots of effort. It is the mapping of character groupings through the plot line of various films.

Mirthometer: 5 – for being so smart.

Where/When: on http://www.lumalin.com/lumalin_films/last_lecture.php

Event: This is cringingly funny, but unfortunately the cat is let out the bag early on the video. Still worth a watch just because you are glad you were not an unwitting member of the audience. Oh, and watch out for the videos in a video.

Mirthometer: 5* – because I’ve been involved in tech demos that have gone disastrously wrong.

Where/When: yesterday on Twitter

Event: She thinks my mirth is “out of character” and that I’m full of grrr and the need to vent my spleen, whereas my boss complains that I’m far too happy and nice to people. This I find most humorous.

Mirthometer: 3 – low because I need to improve my blog-acting abilities and stupidly I posted this!