Curious Incidents of a Flailing Mermaid

Laughing at Everything or Nothing

30-Day Blogging Challenge – Day Two
Prompt: Funny Friday: What does "funny" mean to you?

I’m pretty tired today (more on that later), so I am sitting here struggling to work out what I find funny and, therefore, how I can possibly make you laugh.

The Oxford Dictionary   defines the word ‘funny’ as:

1. Causing laughter or amusement; humorous
1.1. [PREDICATIVE, WITH NEGATIVE] informal Used to emphasize that something is unpleasant or wrong and should be regarded seriously or avoided
2 Difficult to explain or understand; strange or curious
2.1 Unusual, especially in such a way as to arouse suspicion
2.2 informal (Of a person or part of the body) not in wholly good health or order; slightly ill:
2.3 British informal Slightly deranged or eccentric

Yep, that really didn’t help me to be honest.

As someone with a pretty good sense of humour, it is odd that I can find a way to explain what does and doesn’t make me laugh. Put simply, it could be everything or nothing. Strangely, comedies are less likely to make me laugh than something is not supposed to make me laugh.

I watched a lot of really crap TV over Christmas (all forced on my, may I add). When a “comedy” came on, more often than not, I wanted to block my ears off and poke myself in the eyes. Not funny!

For example, I detest Mrs Brown’s Boys  :



Also, lots of people love Miranda Hart  . Wow, if I could throw her out the window, I really would! There is only so many times someone can fall over and/or make an utter prat of themselves and still believe its funny: It’s just not. However, you may disagree:



Having said that, now that I think about it, there are a couple of comedies I do like. They don’t always make me laugh out loud, but they might raise a few small chuckles.

Friends   is a comedy that can always raise a smile. The writing is clever and slightly subtler; I think that is why I can appreciate the humour. Unless you live in cave (which means you cant be reading this) everyone must have seen at least a little bit of Friends, at some point in their life. Therefore, I won’t bother finding you a clip.

Another comedy that I can cope with is Father Ted  . It is relatively old now I guess, but I still like it. Since most of my readers are American or other (AKA not British), I thought I might share a few clips of this un-politically correct, Irish, religion (ish) based comedy… just to educate you all.






I’m not entirely sure why I’ve taken this prompt down the TV route. Given that I don’t really like TV, it doesn’t make that much sense!

So, why am I tired? Because I stayed up eating crap food, drinking Fanta, chatting and watching bad TV (there it is again) with my friend until 1:30am. Our blokes went to bed at about 9ish and we just turned into children. We are grown women, what is wrong with us?

She was telling me how she sometimes felt like her boyfriend didn’t like her. I was trying to be helpful by saying “well, to be fair, he doesn’t like anyone”. I quickly realised, when she started crying with laughter, that I was being far from helpful.

I then had my own laughing fit when she said, “when I get settled in my new house, I’m going to start baking cakes”. This, from the woman who has burnt every pre-prepared pizza she has ever chucked in the oven! I wished her luck.

Right, the point of Funny Friday in this challenge, is to make people laugh. Hopefully, even though I haven’t laughed, you have.