Catherine's Laughter Blog

Another class I must brag on this semester is my Writing for Publication class. I’m a writing minor so I had the chance to take this magazine writing class for my last minor class ever! It has also been such a great learning experience for me; from the beginning of the semester, we were able to read many different genres of magazine writing as well as different types – types such as longform, profile, commentary, and many, many articles on the Coronavirus. I’ve had the chance to write my own essays on each genre mentioned above which has taught me so much about how to conduct proper interviews, observation and research. Now I can add many more writing pieces to my portfolio! I’m proud of my writing this semester; for one, my longform feature may be my favorite piece I’ve ever written. I’ll share my intro below in case anyone is intrigued J The Angel Warriors Deena answered the landline with a huge sigh of relief. The 37-year-old stay-at-home mom glanced up at the living room fla...

Senior year has been quite the year of new experiences, but nonetheless I’ve still gotten to take some great classes! For fun, I decided to take a nursing class this semester for one of my electives called Health Disparities in African Americans. I’ve always been interested in health classes and the medical field – probably because all my family dinners growing up were on the topic of medicine as my entire family (immediate and extended) all consist of doctors or surgeons. So, this Health Disparities class really interested me because I never had the opportunity before to take an elective on any topic similar – this is what I love about TCU; we have incredible opportunities to take classes outside our major/minor that still interest us. This class taught me a lot about how environmental factors, stress, de facto segregation and many many more inequities contribute to health disparities in African Americans. There are multiple disease states which disproportionally affect African Ameri...

For my final hysterical laughter blog, I will tell you about my family group chat consisting of me, my twin brother, my mom and my dad. Now, I’ve already told you about my dad loving memes – mainly regarding Tiger King – but now he’s resorted to sending coronavirus memes. Some videos, some pictures. I love a good meme, but my dad has gone overboard; to the point where my mom, my brother and I got on a FaceTime call the other day and just started roasting my dad. Poor guy, he’s trying so hard to find obscure videos to send and give us all a good laugh. No doubt he has succeeded, but there is this one video that was honestly hilarious. He sent us this horse racing video with a dude’s voiceover giving coronavirus names to each horse – for example “Coronavirus is out of the gate, but wait Dr. Fauci is neck and neck coming around the corner….with your bank account falling behind….now it’s economic shutdown taking the lead at the halfway point alongside social distancing…it’s the race to wa...

Two words: Tiger King. Scratch that, add two more words: My dad.  Now, let’s just say my dad is not known for his love of television. In fact, he hates movies and most television shows…to give you some context, his idea of fun is connecting his laptop to our living room TV screen and pulling up x-rays and MRI scans and forcing the entire family to try and diagnose the patient.... Mind you, my dad is a radiologist for a living so of course he already knows what’s wrong with the patient. So, much to his amusement, he sits there with wine in one hand and teaches my brother and I how to read MRI’s and makes us battle each other to see who can correctly diagnose the patient first. He still can’t figure out why neither me or my brother chose the medical field as a career path. Imagine that?! Anyway back to Tiger King. This has become my dad’s new favorite show – of all time. I’m still unsure of how he found it, but regardless of how he did, I’ve never heard my dad laugh so hard ...

1. One interesting tip I found is to try answer yes/no questions with the opposite answer of what is expected. For instance, when people think they already know the answer you will give try responding with the opposite; then of course laugh and give your real answer. The magic in this tip is that you have surprised your audience with a reversal of expectation which is always quite funny. (this really only works when there is a strong expected answer), but nevertheless a clever tip. 2. Use real-life stories not jokes. Most people rely on observational humor to make people laugh, but I think a good tip is using personal experiences for humor instead. Much like our uncontrollable laughter blogs I think the personal stories are much more humorous than an expected joke.   3. I’ve always liked a good pun and most of the videos I watched play up that tactic as well. Using words the wrong way is funny – again, like the little green book we read each week; we never fail to laugh. S...

My favorite cartoon character is from the cartoon series Looney Tunes. The Tasmanian Devil has a special place in my heart; I grew up watching Looney Tunes and I have fond memories from watching the show with my twin brother and dad. Per my dad, the Tasmanian devil experiences many meltdowns throughout the series much like I did as a child. The Tasmanian devil has a short temper and notoriously little patience; he can be devious but also sweet; he has an enormous appetite and will eat anything in his path. My dad used to say he couldn’t tell the difference between Taz and myself. The Tasmanian Devil’s only weakness is that he can be calmed by almost any music. Again, something quite similar to myself when I was little. My dad still today reminds me that the only way anyone could calm me down was for him to play the piano; I would immediately stop crying or screaming or whatever it was I was throwing a fit about. Although my dad named me after a cartoon character with the name ‘devil’ ...