Heard any good jokes lately? I sometimes ask people this, and do you know how they often answer? "Oh, I can never remember jokes!"

That used to be me. I used to never remember a joke. In fact, you could tell me the same joke over and over and I'd never remember the punch line until you got there. At least I got more than one laugh out of it.

But I felt a little left out. I wanted to tell jokes, too. Jokes are a way of making a person smile. It's a way of sharing with each other. If you tell a joke well, they'll remember you with a smile.

I assure you, you can remember jokes. If you can remember a story, you can remember a joke. And you do remember some stories, don't you? Do you remember Hansel and Gretel, or Pinocchio, or The Three Musketeers, or Star Wars? If you remember any stories you can remember a joke, for a joke is just a short story with a funny end.

And just like with a story, you don't need to remember the joke exactly in order to retell it. Here is a secret: usually good joke-tellers are changing small details of the joke -- either to make it better -- or because they don't remember it exactly how it was told to them.

So here is what you can do to learn how to tell jokes. Begin with short jokes:

Patient: "Doctor, I have a terrible problem! I can't seem to remember things I have just said."

Doctor: "When did you first notice the problem?"

Patient: "What problem?

Now immediately look away or close your eyes and retell the joke out loud to no one. Then, all you have to do is call a friend and tell the joke. Try to do it soon. Tell the same joke this afternoon or tomorrow to someone else. Keep telling it. You remember it better with each retelling. You might even change it a little and make it better.

Want to add a few humorous jokes to your next written piece? No problem. As a professional stand-up comedienne and writer who stays afloat by selling volumes of jokes each month (Clinton's antics paid my mortgage and Bush isn't doing too badly either), I'll pass on some joke writing tips that'll send you in the right direction. Since there are no formal "rules" to joke writing, I've made up my own. . .

Humorous Jokes involve a set-up with the subject and facts, and a punch line that highlights the irony, twists the joke in another direction, or gives an outrageous result.

RULE 1: Use familiarity, word associations and common assumptions. We know Strom Thurmond is old (okay, dead, but I like these examples, so play along), Liz Taylor is chubby, etc. So take your subject and list phrases, synonyms, stereotypes, sayings, people, places and things connected with it. If you do this when writing an age joke for example, and you want to describe how old someone is, then just list words you associate with old... and you may get - "I won't say he's old, but he babysat Strom Thurmond." Or when trying to describe how chubby someone is, list out chubby people or things and you might get "I won't say she's chubby, but she gives her hand-me-downs to Liz Taylor." You get the picture. Using an analogy is funnier than just saying someone is chubby or old. Also use familiar set-ups like "he's so cheap...," "this town is so expensive..."and brainstorm what things are cheap, expensive, etc. to get some comparisons.

RULE 2: Exaggerate things to the extreme. Saying Liz Tyalor is 400 pounds is funny, but it may be too close to the truth. Saying she weighs 1200 pounds is funnier because the picture of a 1200-pound woman is, just, well, funny. (Besides, noooobody weighs 1200 pounds, so you're pretty safe... even 400 pound people will laugh at that one.)

RULE 3: Be brief. Bill Cosby can go on for hours with a single joke. The rest of us should only include facts in the set-up that NEED to be there for the punch to work. Delete unneeded adjectives and prepositional phrases, so that all words pertain to the punch line. I try to keep my jokes to 3 typed lines (not 3 sentences, but 3 lines). When you make a crack about Britney Spears fighting with Kevin Federline, her ex-husband, you don't really need to say "her ex-husband." Pretty much everyone knows his status. Really, less is better... unless you're Bill Cosby.

RULE 4: Show the irony. That's what you're really trying to do is pull out the irony in a situation. Look at it as a good news/bad news... find the irony by listing out all the good and bad in a situation, either real or made-up, and then match them up to see the inconsistencies. "The good news is we're giving out free tickets to the buffet. The bad news is, you'll be in line behind Liz Taylor."

RULE 5: Twist the joke. Give out a real fact in the set up, and make up a crazy (exaggerated) fact in the punch line. A lot of times punch lines are grouped in threes with the crazy fact at the end. Three things just seems to have a good cadence.

RULE 6: Speaking of punch lines, make sure the last word, or pretty darn close to the last word, is the zinger punch line. No prepositional phrases or other words after that word. Really, I'm not kidding. See these examples of jokes I sold:

"A new study has found that the anti-anxiety drug fluvoxamine is effective in relieving anxiety in school-age children. Of course, it's not quite as effective as getting their braces off."

The words "their teeth" don't need to be included because we already get it and it would just slow down the joke.

"The first bloodless surgery was performed this week in which a kid who is a Jehovah's Witness got a new liver without a blood transfusion. The parents were so happy, they almost celebrated!"

The word "celebrated" is the punch... no need to say "celebrated his survival" because we already get it and it would just slow down the joke.

RULE 7: The "Cuh" sound. A general comedy rumor is that words with the "c" or "k" sound are funny. Who knows if this is true, but ya gotta admit, the names Chuck and Cletus are funnier than Steve and Stuart. (especially if Chuck and Cletus are dating Liz Taylor... no?)

There are many more joke tips, but these will get you started so that people will read your material and you'll achieve fame, fortune, and timely car payments!

An American avant garde composer, who takes his inspiration from the most upstart composers of recent times, had a piece performed last night at Carnegie Hall, titled "Making Popcorn."

The Boston Pops Orchestra, which commissioned the piece, left the stage to make way for the performance.

Stagehands then wheeled out a popcorn-making machine and prepared it for the performance by filling it with dry corn, butter, and salt.

When the machine was "tuned," the composer entered to conduct his own work. Taking the podium, he raised his baton and the machine was switched on. When the first kernel popped, he gave a firm downbeat and then continued to conduct as the kernels popped away. The piece concluded when all the popcorn had contributed its sound.

In an interview prior to the concert, the composer told us, "It's a new piece for percussion. As you know, there have been more additions to the percussion of the orchestra than to any other one. Take, for instance, the brake drum and the ratchet, which is really just a noisemaker. My hope is that the success of my new piece will make the popcorn machine a standard ingredient of the symphony orchestra."

"Would you consider it to be a tuned or an untuned percussion instrument," we asked, indulging the wayward simpleton.

"I'm not sure yet," he told us. "While the individual pops do have different pitches, they're impossible to control."

After savoring the performance, this observer began to long for the once-scandalous composition by John Cage, called 4'33", in which, as you probably know, a pianist enters, sits down at the piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds,, and does absolutely nothing. Then he gets up and exits.

Who would have though a concert would come when one reconsidered Cage's work an instance of generous reticence?


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What can you do with humor?

Sure you can have fun with it—or else why do people pay for the comedy shows and those comedy channels? You can also use it reduce tension, find a great bargain, keep your children in their seats…you name it. There are a thousand and one use of humor, but it leads to an ultimate goal—laughter.

Laughter is powerful, and much more powerful than most people think.

You can make women laugh and fall in love with you.

That sounds like a pretty bold claim doesn’t it? Let me explain.

Human beings have an obsessive desire to remain consistent. It is physically impossible to dislike the person who has already made you genuinely laugh, as you can’t resolve the conflicts and incongruity between laughter (liking someone) and disliking someone.

In other words, women tend to get closer to a guy who has consistently made them laugh! This not only occur at a logical level (“oh, being with him gives me so much joy and I want more”), but also at a subconscious level (maintaining consistency). Once you were made laugh by someone, it will be very inconsistent if you still maintain an antagonistic attitude towards that person.

Therefore, I use laughter to make women fall in love with me. The more women I could make laugh, the better get. You see, love is derived from the feeling of happiness and happiness is directly associated with laughter.

I’m sure in your entire life so far, you have made many, many, many women laugh, and sometimes you can get pretty good at it—sometimes with a particular woman or under some particular circumstances.

Sure, all of us can crack a joke or two. Sometimes we can be quite funny for a whole night... Can we all do it time after time, night after night? Do we all know the secrets that will make humor a natural part of you so that it's effortless to be humorous and charming?

Maybe not.

Some guys talk about the "art" of making women laugh.

Sure, they can call themselves "artists" as they like, but the problem is... once something becomes an art, you won't have rules to rely on and you can't measure the results. Making women laugh suddenly becomes an uncertain event.

But the fact is...Making women laugh is a science.

The fact is… human beings' reactions to different types of "humor stimuli" are predictable.

And there are tested-and-proven methods to match a humorous line and a subject's education, personality, and cultural to create laughter.

Any man, regardless of looks, intelligence, education, personality, can learn the mechanism of humor and laughter and develop his own style of humor.

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