Canned laughter

By far the most magnificent achievement of the 20th century was the invention of canned laughter.

If you are not familiar with the term, it’s the laugh track on television situation comedies. You know, someone makes a wise crack on a TV show and immediately you hear laughter coming from nowhere.

This is powerful stuff!

The only reason it didn’t win a Nobel Prize is that no one took canned laughter the last 9 yards and actually canned it and brought it to market. Yeah, in a can. With a pull tab.

Imagine some hairy hot head is about to open up a big damn can of chainsaw strength whup ass and you beat him to the draw with your can of laughter.

Game over!

Earthlings, especially in developed countries, tend to take the world at its current market value and move through life satisfying a long series of material desires. Since we are so much bigger than anything we can physically possess, every purchase is followed, eventually, by a letdown. A small can of laughter should be included in every product package, like silica gel.

Funerals need canned laughter.

When the reverend gets up in the pulpit to eulogize the deceased with a pious tear-jerker, get ready with aerosol cans of laughter to waft a chuckle over the congregation.

When he starts to go for the heart-of-grief strings with a line like, "and God said to her, 'Helen you've loved your family without reservation for eighty years, will you now walk with me for a while?” open a few cans and let pockets of scattered laughter arise from the pews. As the minister builds his somber oratory of beautiful sadness, roll industrial-size kegs of laughter down the aisles. Laughter, being highly contagious, will catch hold of the congregation. Even the minister's tone will wobble. Eventually everyone is doubled over laughing into their tears. The deceased will be sent on his way not with a wave of collective anguish but with a gut-busting whoo ya!

Someone walking by the church would think it's an Irish funeral.