Ok, here’s a quick one:

It’s not easy trying to be funny all the time. In fact, sometimes it seems like the harder I try to be funny, the less funny I become. Comedy, I think in a lot of ways, just happens. Oh sure, you can work on it, polish it up, make it even funnier with word choice or presentation, but if that original grain of comedy isn’t there to begin with, it just ain’t gonna be funny. That’s why there are so few Holocaust jokes.

Let me give you an example: The other night, we’re getting ready to call it a night. I get up and take some dishes to the kitchen, and behind me I hear my wife, the lovely and understanding Jess say she needed to go to the bathroom before we took the dogs out one last time. Now, we’ve been dieting (sort of), and eating a lot of salads, which means there’s a lot more fiber and roughage in my diet than normal, with all the drawbacks that accompany that sort of dietary change. So I’m thinking, great, she’ll be in the bathroom, so here’s a perfect opportunity to vent a little internal pressure while she’s not around. So I did. You wouldn’t think that the human digestive system could withstand that kind of pressure, you know? Just another one of God’s engineering marvels, I guess.

So, naturally, as soon as I’d released enough natural gas to propel a small car across the continental United States, the loving and apparently potassium-deprived Jess got up and immediately started shrieking about a cramp in her foot. Unfortunately, instead of sitting back down where she was, she staggered across the house and into the kitchen, where she proceeded to brace herself against the counter right next to me while she gasped in pain. Now, I’m not totally insensitive, so I asked her if there was anything I could do for her, hoping that, while I hate to see her in pain, maybe it would be enough to distract her from the air’s newly aromatic qualities. It didn’t.

She replied, “You mean besides not farting?”, and then proceeded to alternate between crying with pain, and telling me I need to see a doctor because there’s something seriously wrong with me, and complaining, “Oh God, it’s gotten in my mouth!”

I pointed out to her that it was not my fault because: 1) She wasn’t even supposed to be in the kitchen, she was supposed to be in the bathroom, far away from my fetid glory, 2) I had vented before I knew she was coming into the kitchen, and 3) The diet and all the salads were her idea. Unfortunately, my protestations of innocence fell on deaf ears. She wasn’t having any of it.

Fortunately, once her cramp faded and she was able to escape outside to the fresh air, she soon began to see the funny side of it, and was even able (eventually) to laugh about it.

Anyway, so that’s an example of a funny story that just happened. It is, I hope, made even funnier by my own inimitable style of storytelling (of course, if I can’t make a fart story funny, I should just give up). But it’s not always that easy. This is about the fourth blog post I’ve started this week. Each one started out pretty funny, but then got less and less funny until, by the time I’d gotten to the point, I was really just kind of griping, and/or preaching, and not funny at all. Let’s face it, you’re not reading this blog looking for depth of thought, insight, or analysis (unless there’s seriously wrong with you), you’re here just looking for a good laugh.

I hope this gave you one.