I went and hung out in Yesan today. I got a alarm clock, some slippers, some long underwear, some pens, and a capo for my guitar. Then I went to a Pc room there and played on the computer. Fun fun... anywhoo, I dont have much to say about Korea tonight, so I thought I would publish a compare and contrast essay on Physical and Verbal humor, that I wrote for a forum I am on, again here...

Verbal humor and physical humor are two different worlds, and they are thought of in different ways.

Verbal humor, is associated with intelligence positively. It can be done on purpose and be extremely funny. It sometimes takes a higher education level (self or formal) and greater cultural literacy to understand. On top of that, it is easy easy easy to repeat and spread. You can buy wit, any kind, as obscure or highbrow as you want for fifteen bucks, and wear it around all day long. You can repeat it to all your friends and they will laugh, at least the first fifty times. Moreover there is a strong verbal humor folklore entrenched in America, so much so that in a learn English show here in South Korea, they specifically said that 98% of English humor occurs in the last line or punch line, despite the fact we usually call it "juice," of the joke.

So that is when you are supposed to laugh. That's verbal humor.

Physical humor, though has a negative association with intelligence. If it is done on purpose, it better look like it is not. It takes no education at all to understand, monkeys will laugh at it. It is generally considered in America, at least to be the stuff of small children who have not vaulted to the heights of verbal wit. Practitioners of pure physical comedy have titles synonymous with stupidity: clown, fool. Also, physical comedy is difficult to transmit. You can't put it on a t-shirt, you have a hard time explaining it, and really you can't even repeat it, only try and recreate it, if you dare. There is no punch line... no lines at all... the comedian is the joke. We don't laugh at a physical comedian because we know he is secretly laughing with us, we laugh because that person endures where we don't think we would.

You laugh when they fall because you know they will get up. That's physical humor.