We all live for a time. We all die eventually. It’s the stuff that happens in-between that’s interesting.
Tombstones often skip over that in-between stuff entirely, reducing a life to a name and two dates. Every so often, however, a tombstone will offer some more interesting – and sometimes darkly funny – insight into who that person was and how they impacted the lives of those around them.
At Anyhigh.life we’re all about happiness and we encourage laughter at the dark jokes on these tombstones we discovered because, research shows that if you laugh at dark jokes then you’re probably a genius.
Question: What has four legs and one arm? Answer: A happy pit bull.
156 people, with an average age of 33, participated in a research test to determine the correlation between sense of humor and intellect. The participants read 12 bleak cartoons from The Black Book by German cartoonist Uli Stein.
The results were remarkably consistent: participants who both comprehended and enjoyed the dark humor jokes showed higher IQs, reported less aggressive tendencies, and were more emotionally stable and laid back than those who did not.
The participants who least liked the humor showed the highest levels of aggression and the worst moods of the bunch. The latter point makes sense when you consider the widely studied health benefits of laughter and smiling; if you can’t greet negativity with playful optimism, then you’re just gonna feel worse.
Question: Why don’t cannibals eat clowns? Answer: Because they taste funny.
That emotional maneuvering is what sets dark humor jokes apart from puns for example. Puns literally pit your brain’s right and left hemispheres against each other while you process a single word’s multiple meanings. But puns usually don’t force you out of your emotional comfort zone.
Tina Fey sums up the difference pretty well: “If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.”
A wise person once said, “We’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time”. With that in mind, here’s a few tombstones we thought might bring a smile to the faces of some of our blog readers today……
“Cats have nine lives. Makes them ideal for experimentation.” —Jimmy Carr
“If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.” —Steven Wright.
#laughter #humor #darkhumor #tombstones #cemetary #graves #jokes #ulistein #stevecarell #tinafey #jimmycarr #stevenwright #anyhigh
I always knew I was a genius. Dark humor is one of my favorites. "A wise man once said..."We're not here for a long time, we're here for a good time." I always attribute that to you, CZ. Had to look it up since it was unattributed. Mike Ness of the band, "Social Distortion," and/or Huey Lewis and the News. You might be the wisest of the bunch, so I will continue to think of you every time I hear the phrase. Loved this!
What about those of us who will be turned to ash? How do we share our dark humor? Maybe we are spread in various homes as an exorcism of evil spirits or sell little baggies of our remains to haunt those who have wronged us? I guess we can just be flushed down the toilet.