it's hard top there's somthing about mary's spooge in the hair scene! lol

And how many taxpayer dollars did it cost to do THIS study?

None sir. We as a society are saving the money to get you a sense of humor. And it looks as though it's going to be expensive!!

I don't care for these types of movies, nor do I approve of taxpayers' money going to fund this crap. Although I will say, as someone who works at a research lab, that millions of dollars ARE being well spent on medical research projects...despite msnbc.com's insistence on 'reporting' on this nonsense news.

So basically, anything can be funny as long as you don't take it seriously.

WOW! Who knew??

Next time they'll spend thousands of dollars on a study showing that humor is subjective.

Another swing-and-a-miss from eggheads trying to explain comedy.

Not all comedy stems from either Harm or Social Taboos. If you want your paper to have some validity the next time around, then remember this: the key to comedy is the unexpected. That's part of what makes comedy both subjective and culture-driven. Harm can be funny because it's generally unexpected in most contexts, and the same holds true of sex. Sex with animals doesn't generally need a context because it's just about always unexpected (unless you're a sheep in Scotland, in which case sex with a human is always just around the corner and completely expected).

"Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine." The reason that it's funny is not because nine came to a gruesome, well-deserved end. The reason it's funny is that all children have heard "seven, eight, nine," but not in the context of "seven ate nine." It's unexpected. And, while we're at it, compare these two sentences:

"Nine died."

"Nine came to a gruesome, well-deserved end."

Nine comes to the same fate in either sentence. (Poor Nine.) But the second is funnier, because of the notion that Nine's end could be both gruesome and well-deserved. The concept that someone would have a grudge against Nine and consider Nine coming to harm a positive outcome is unexpected, and therefore, funnier. Note that this example is also cross-culturally funny, as Nine is highly regarded in most modern civilizations.

I didn't know where you were going with that for a minute...nice delivery on the joke! Two pats on the back for you.

any number of sketches/movie scenes by the pythons. especially the scene from 'the holy grail', in which a knight continues to act belligerently while and after having all four of his limbs severed. or the sketch in which a victorian garden party becomes a bloodbath, with one character having both of his hands traumatically amputated by a piano keyboard lid, and another impaled with a tennis racket, etc., etc. or the idea of dinsdale piranha nailing someone's head to a coffee table.