Oops! Missed a few days. I've been trying to think of something to write about. Actually, I have something to write about. I've been trying to think of what to write.

Whenever somebody asks what the qualities are that one looks for in a potential mate, sense of humour always pops up. Usually somewhere in the top five and certainly somewhere in the top ten. People say "He (or she) has to have a sense of humour." Well everybody has a sense of humour. What they mean, is that he has to have a sense of humour similar to them. You see? Clearly, people who think that torturing innocent souls is great fun would get along best with other people who think that torturing innocent souls is fun.

For such an important part of the potential mate selection, humour is surprisingly little understood. At least by most people. I think. Each person has a slightly different sense of humour. I guess if you wanted, you could divide people up into those who find slapstick funny, those who find irony funny, those who find wit funny, those who find farts funny.....but even among the similarities, everybody is a little bit different. The question then is, what causes a sense of humour to fall one way or another.

One of the factors is of course knowledge of the context of the joke. If you don't know that something is supposed to be funny, you don't stand a chance in hell of finding it funny.

Other than this very general rule, there seems to be little governing things. Many highly intelligent people find stupid things funny. I don't know how many stupid people find intelligent humour funny, but if they didn't, then it's because they don't know it's supposed to be funny. Guys tend to find pleasure in cruder humour? Well, in some ways. I find that toilet humour appeals to both guys and girls. Bawdy humour though, if not intelligent, appeals more to guys than girls. If you are the object of humour, more often than not, you will not find it funny.

Is a person's sense of humour due to his very nature? Is he born predisposed to certain types of humour? Or is it a product of his environment? The safe and sensible thing to do is to claim that it is a combination of the two.

You see the type of questions I have to wrestle with every day? No wonder I'm going crazy.....

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