FINAL POST DU DU DUN

(a) Looking over my blog posts, I cannot say how much any changes in my writing have been reflected in them. I do not, in fact, feel that I have successfully changed a great deal about how I write. I have, however, become more aware of the problems inherent in my style. I am working to minimize comma use and shorten my sentences. As far as my writing about humor goes, I feel I have become far more concious of the structure and components of humor. I am more intelectually aware of what goes into a joke and of how the things poeple find funny differ. I will admit, going into this, I was skeptical about being instructed to analyze humor and disect it in a scholarly manner. However, as I have learned from this class, doing so is not only possible, it is interesting and reveals a great deal about the humorist and the audience. About my own writing I learned, perhaps most surprisingly was that my humor tended to be more in line with the women in the class rather than the men. Though I don't relish sex in the city, or other such "female" shows, I found that in terms of the non 'gendered' instances of humor that we encountered, my humro was more in line with the womens' than the mens'.

(b) One of my favorite readings from this semester was the Mark Twain story about the frog leaping. Not so much because I found it terribly funny, but because it was really illuminating in terms of seeing how a) subtle humor could be and B) how much the perception of what was funny has changed. I will always remember, and can't help but call to mind whenever I watch a comedy now, the theories of comedy. I am refering to incongruity, superiority, and release.

(c) Creating the blog was a really cool and interesting exercise. Remembering to post was not something that I was always good at, but even the fact that I had to do it on a regular basis was good for my organization. While I realize this wasn't the point, It was a cool fringe benefit. Writing also helped me keep my mind active and working and thinking about things from a critical standpoint. I found myself examining more deeply the readings and discussions we had in class. Reading other people's blogs taught me a lot about how other people though about humor. I also was exposed to a number of different and interesting styles of writing and voices. It got me thinking and reacting in my own blog posts, which often derived inspiration, directly or indirectly, from stuff I had read or we had discussed in class.