What's Better than Breasts and Drinking?

    Out of today's readings, my favorite was definitely Nora Ephron's "A Few Words about Breasts." I predict that the majority of the class will have the same thoughts as me because Ephron's story is easy to relate to. We're all young college kids who somewhat recently went through the awkward stages of "development." Though I didn't necessarily have to deal with "cramps," I was somewhat similar to Ephron in high school considering she was younger than everyone. I have a late August birthday, and most of my friends were at least 8 or 9 months older than me. Combining this with my braces, fairly short stature, and friends that already had full beards, my high school life was fairly interesting. Reading this story brought me back to the days of sophomore year when there was never a time I wasn't asked for an ID at a PG-13 movie. Many people shared these same experiences, and that's what makes Ephron's story so easy to laugh at. Past times may have been slightly uncomfortable, but looking back at them now can be very amusing.
      My next favorite reading was Donald Barthelme's "In the Morning Post." Barthelme seems very quick and witty, and I loved his sarcastic answers and analysis of certain questions from the Writers Digest questionnaire. His humor reminded me a lot of my dad's growing up.Like my dad, Barthelme never really me burst out laughing, but his comments about drinking with Thomas Aquinas definitely made me smile. He kept a playful, amusing style throughout the short reading that really made it enjoyable for me.
     I didn't like Blount's or Ivin's stories as much as the previous two. They both played off stereotypes that were amusing, but just not as funny to me. However, I can see my friends and family back in Nebraska enjoying Ivin's remarks on Texas drawls because they make fun of me every time I say "y'all." Stories like Ivin's and Ephron's make me think that past experiences and cultural background play a big role on what makes people laugh. 

3 Comic Relief Take Aways

Here are 3 things that I found most important in Morreal's Comic Relief:

1. The concept of humor as a cognitive shift.
One of the most interesting things that I got from Comic Relief was the pattern of us enjoying a cognitive shift. The pattern basically starts with a cognitive shift, which is a rapid change in our perceptions or thoughts. After the shift, we are in a play mode rather than a serious mode, so we are disengaged from conceptual and practical concerns. Because we are in this play mode, we enjoy this shift, which we express with laughter. This basic pattern is seen in many jokes.

2. Amusement is not an emotion
Morreal explains that the feeling of amusement is not an actual emotion because it does not have the typical characteristics of emotions:
1. Beliefs and desires
2. physiological changes
3. adaptive actions
4 sensations of those physiological changes

His example that really helped me was his story about the eggplant at the market. He saw an eggplant that looked like Richard Nixon's nose. He laughed in his mind about that, but he didn't believe that it was really Richard Nixon's head. He wasn't triggered by fear or anger, and he had no "fight or flight" reactions. To be amused, you don't need to have any of the characteristics of emotions.

3. Laughing is healthy
A lot of people find a lot of laughter foolish or childish. Few people know of the positive physiological effects of laughter. Morreal points out that laughter can reduce stress, blood pressure, muscle tension, and even heart rate. Now that I know this, I can tell my dad he doesn't even need his Lipitor, he just has to laugh at my jokes.

These three things might not be the most profound points that Morreal makes in Comic Relief, but they are things that made me think of humor in a different light. Before this book, I never really thought about why people laugh. Now every time I laugh, I might enjoy that cognitive shift a little more.

First Meeting with Ricardo

This past weekend, I had my first meeting with Ricardo Marchi. It was a romantic man date at Market Square. Over mediocre lunch food, we got to know each other a little. Ricardo is a 23 year old from Brazil. His native language is Brazilian Portuguese, but his English speaking was pretty good. He had an impressive vocabulary, and it was always pretty easy to understand him. He still wants to improve his English, which is why he came to Texas after already earning a degree in Business Administration in Brazil.

Ricardo came to Texas in March to study English, and he actually first started out at the University of Texas at Arlington.  This wasn’t his first time in the United States, however. He vacationed in America at least once a year. Ricardo has visited more places in America than me, including New York, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco, and San Diego. At UTA, he didn’t have a great experience because of his roommate situation. According to Ricardo, he lived in an apartment with three other guys that despised him. They wouldn’t even acknowledge him when he walked in, but they still would eat his food and drink his beer. After being at UTA for a few months, he moved to Fort Worth and started studying at TCU. This time he decided to live in an apartment by himself. He takes English classes every week day from 9 am to 12 pm. The classes mostly consist of grammar, which he doesn’t enjoy too much. Like most people, he finds grammar for any language a little boring. He plans to study here until November, when he will go back to Brazil to pursue Business Interests.

Ricardo’s favorite hobby is calf roping. He began calf roping when he was 14 years old, but sold his horse because he didn’t have time once he started college. Now that he’s in Texas, he decided to start up his hobby again. He calf ropes a few times a week at his friends ranch, and he even competes a little.

After an hour long of getting to know the basic information about each other, Ricardo and I decided to part ways. We plan on meeting again this week. 

The Development of Humor

A response from chapter 3 of the reading 41-89 in Comic Relief

This chapter of Comic Relief  by John Morreal is about the evolution of humor. He starts with how humans and apes share many similarities regarding amusement and humor. Being a Biology major, I discuss and study every aspect of the Theory of Evolution, so I figured I would focus on a part of this chapter that was a little different than my norm. For me, the four stages of development of humor provided the most interest. These 4 stages were distinguished by Paul McGhee, and he basically splits up major changes in what children think are funny.

The first stage, called “Incongruous Actions toward Objects,” is when a child does inappropriate things with objects. Morreal references Jean Piaget’s story about his daughter pretended to eat non edible things when she was 18 months old. I was instantly relieved to read that I was not the only one who did this as a child. I don’t vividly remember it, but my mom always tells my friends that I used to jokingly take bites out of my vast collection of TY Beanie Baby stuffed animals. According to her, obnoxious exclamations of  “mmmmmm” and “yummy” always accompanied my furry meals.  

As I kept reading about each stage of development of humor in children, I continued to make connections between what Morreal explained and what I grew up around with younger siblings, cousins, and neighbors. The “Conceptual Incongruity” stage is probably the one I’m most familiar with. This is the third stage and is defined by when children have developed concepts for mom, dad, cat, pig, etc., and can “violate those concepts” for entertainment. I couldn’t count how many time a little 3 or 4 year old cousin came up to me at a family Christmas party and screamed “moooooooo” or “oink” and immediately fell into hysteria. These animal noises always seemed to make them laugh, but my hilarious jokes about sports or school didn’t really resonate with them, much to my dismay.

 Eventually, my young cousins started growing up, and there humor also matured greatly. Instead of laughing at their awkward attempts to scare me with animal noises, I began to enjoy their clever stories about elementary school romance. Because of these connections, this section of the chapter was really easy for me to relate to. I was constantly reading an example of a child’s humorous behavior and thinking, “I remember when Meg was 3 and did those same things.” This sort of brought a sense of nostalgia to me, and that’s why I felt inclined to blog about this reading in particular.