Jokes

A man is talking to god.

Man: God, how long is a million years? 

God: To me, it's about a minute.

Man: God, how much is a million dollars?

God: To me, it's a penny.

Man: God, may I have a penny.

God: Wait a minute.


My reading: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1639841-aria

"Youth is the only thing that matters"

Oscar Wilde tried to show us that this sentence is false and only avaricious people can be against that. A perfect example of that is Dorian Gray, he thought that with a beautiful face could live better than the others, but finally he was the only without soul, he was empty.

The life is a process that you can't change. There are many stages in our bodies, thaey are natural and have their function in the society. Without these changes we can't take place in the world we live, so we don't fit in the society and we can't be happy.

Self evaluation (gallows humor)

Introduction (Arià)

Hello, TGIF everybody, we are Eloi and Arià as you probably know and we are going to explain you what kinds of humor we can find and then we will focus on the black humor also called gallows humor. We will tell you some about its history, this humor in our daily life, in the television and finally we will show you some examples of it. I hope you enjoy very much with our presentation.

Types of humour (Arià)

There are different types of jokes destinate to different people because everybody has their own taste. One important factor to consider is the geographical situation, for example if you are in Africa it’s not recommended to make a racist joke against colored people. Other factors to consider are the culture, the maturity, intelligence... For example this joke is for people with a bit of maths knowledge. If you show it to a intelligent person then he or she will make at least a little smile trying to say “Yes, I understood it” instead of being the worst joke ever.

Black humor consists on making jokes about  serious topics like death or disease. it is exactly the opposite to intelligent jokes, they usually are stupid and if they are bad the other person instead of laughing will probably watch you very bad in the best case. But on the other hand  black humor is funny.

History (Eloi) 

As its name indicates, the expression “Gallows humor” has its origin before the middle age in England, it refers to the practice of execute criminals in front of the crowd, on a stage in a gallows. People went there as an entertaining event, more or less like the actual 3D cinema with the difference that it was quite more realistic. They made comments and jokes about the murder, the thief or other type of criminals. These cruel jokes that consisted on laughing at the condemned face was called gallows humor. In usual circumstances these type of jokes weren’t funny and they were not respectuous, but people made an exception with these people because they decided that condemned people didn’t deserve their respect. We have kept the word but his meaning has changed because nowadays there are not executions like in the middle age but we laugh at modern serious problems like obesity, wars, diseases... In the past, people made the jokes at the condemned face. Now, it’s true that some people, writers, periodists, humorists make black jokes in public but the truth is that we usually hear and we use this humor in close situations at the back of the affected people, not in their faces. The main topic in the history of gallows humor was in the middle age, the serious Black plague that killed many people in Europe. That’s why we also call black humor to the gallows humor.

Black humor in our daily life. (Eloi)

In public, everybody, when we hear a black joke we put indignation face and say: “oh that’s terrible!” But admit this. All of you have laught out loud at a black joke. Even more, the funniest moments in your life when you have laughed most are with black humor. 

The truth is that black humor or gallows humor doesn’t usually appear in our daily life. It tends to appear only in small groups of friends who you have big confidence with. These type of jokes are very dangerous and can cause to you a lot of problems if you are not careful with who is listening to you; because you usually make these jokes with the objective to have a good time with your friends or people who are very close to you but it can become an offense to some people. So there are some things that you must not do: 

In general, what you mustn’t do is make jokes about some topics that can affect someone who is listening. For example, you can’t tell a joke about death if there is a person listening to you who has lost a familiar recently. Or you can’t make a joke about jews in the nazi germany if there is someone very sensitized with this conflict or someone who has a jew in the family. Or you can’t tell a joke about losers if there is a Real Madrid supporter in front of you.. that would be too cruel.

Black humor in television (aria) 

A lot of important writers have used gallows humour in literature. These writers have been  very brave because this kind of humour is accompanied by controversy. In our country, the most famous writer who has used is Quim Monzó. Oscar Wilde, who wrote “The picture of Dorian Grey” has used black humour too. Another famous writer who uses the black humor is Woody Allen. 

In cinema there also have been always gallows humor. Since black and white cinema by Charles Chaplin in his film “The great dictator” which is a parody about the Nazi conflict to actual directors like Tim Burton or Quentin Tarantino. In TV, two drawers have had the protagonism of black humor in their cartoons. Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, and Seth MacFarlane, the creator of American Dad, Family Guy and The Cleveland Show. Both of them uses gallows humor but Seth MacFarlane use it harder and their cartoons are a better example of black humor.

Examples of black humour videos and images (Arià)

Here we have put some examples of gallows humor, first of all we have to say that we are only showing you images and examples and our intention is not to offend anybody. Probably you will find funny some of the images or you will think that they have nothing funny. But what we don’t want is that you think that we are cruel or that we have bad intentions. Everybody has understood it? 

Conclusion (Eloi)

We made the presentation about this topic because we thought that is the funniest type of humor even though most of the people don’t recognise it. But we think that we don’t have to be afraid of using this humor (of course, only in the correct circumstances and with the correct people). Please, don’t go now in front of the President of Spain and tell him a joke of retarded people. we hope that you have enjoyed during the presentation and we are sure that, if you have paid attention, tonight you will go to sleep knowing something new. 

Arià Canadell: Gallows humor
Presentation (10%)	Do you use any resources? Are the resources relevant and attractive and focused on the topic? Do they support your presentation? Is the timing 5-7 minutes? We used a Prezi that is always useful, we put in it all the titles and some images to make our presentation understandable. We also put some examples of black humor that made the crowd laugh a bit, that made funnier our presentation. I don't know  how much time we were speaking but we calculated to speak more or less five minutes each one.		10
Body language and eye contact (10%)	Are you looking at your audience most of the time? Are you reading occasionally from your notes? Are you doing any gestures / movement to hold the attention of the audience? I hope so, I said almost the first part without looking any note, but in my final sentences I had to read because I didn't remeber what I had to say.		7.5
Structure (10%)	Do you organize your ideas in order of importance? Do you use discourse markers to make your ideas more clear? We tried to organize the text in three parts: the introduction, the main explanation and the conclusion.  In the introduction we said which parts we were going to explain: history, black humor in our daily life, in the television and finally some examples of it. In the main explanation we tell these parts and in the conclusion we made a little resume and we made a joke.		10
Content (35%)	Do you introduce interesting, NEW information to your audience? Is your information detailed and clear? Do you give / show examples? Is your information copied from a source or is it original? Did you look up information/facts/ideas in the Internet/books…? I think so, because before the presentation I spoke with some classmates and only one person knew perfectly what gallows humor was (this person was Christian as usual jaja) but when we finished almost all the class understood it. We showed some examples and they were funny to the audience. The information was taken from Internet but we wrote our text to be easier to remember.		30
Language (25%)	Is your grammar correct, complex? Is your vocabulary rich and varied? Do you use sentence linkers? Do you use pause fillers? As I said before we wrote the text to make it easier to remember but we tried to search some synonyms because we wouldn't repeat black humor all time. We used likers like instead, finally, like, for example....		20
Pronunciation  (10%)	Do you know how to pronounce all your words? Did you check the pronunciation with a dictionary, a classmate or the teacher? Do you change your tone of voice or use a monotone tone all the time? Did you speed in a fluid continuum or with breaks and interruptions? Before the presentation I knew how to pronounce it all but when you're in front of the class you all changes, you try to pronounce it good but your mouth is thinking on which is the next word has to say. Total: 82.5%		5

Gladiator's music

*I recommend to play the video below before reading this essay*

I have found the song of the year! That's it: "elysium", "honor him" and "now we are free". What do you feel when you hear them? freedom indeed. When we hear these songs automatically the first thought in our brain is the moving movie "Gladiator"; Russell Crowe played the leading role in an outstanding plot. Where a brave soldier, called Hispano, got the opportunity to be Cesar but he refused it because he was missing his family. Cesar's son wasn't able to be the main representative in the glorious empire of the moment, so he tried to kill the soldier but he couldn't so then he murdered Hispano's family. The poor man's life lost all his purpose, he had fought all this time just to meet another time his wife and his son, but he couldn't. He was taken by slave's traffickers and he survived, nothing else, only be alive. Since he recovered the desire to live: to murder his dear's murder. He fought as a slave and he won like a champion, he kept fighting to meet his challenge, instead of being hard, instead of being difficult, instead of his body injuries. Finally he could kill the son's Cesar, he didn't get a wood's sword with his freedom, he got a better prize, the freedom of his own soul. After all this time he could return with his family in his beautiful home place. 

Let me return to the songs, I don't know what my classmates feel this year but when we finish this course we will be as the soldier, free, our ways will be different. That's a bit what happens with the slaves in the film.  The first song "Elysium" when we can see in the video is preparation for the battle where you have to train very hard to be able to win the battle. As the movie shows the way will be long and not easy at all but it's necessary. You will have a hundred temptations to give up but you must keep fighting. In our case this way is obviously studying and doing our homework every day. Then the second song represents the fight in our case selectivity, the first important test in our young lives, it will mark us in a positive or negative way... Finally the last song, "we are free", easy to see the similarity, we are free!

So, I definetly have found the songs of second, but I don't want to finish like the soldier, I want to get the freedom but then I want to approach it.  

The necessity of laughing.

Everyone is different and every person has his own needs. Moreover, most of us have never known someone who has not laughed ever, that is why is difficult to say what would happen to someone who has never laughed. However, most humans need laugh loudly occasionally because it is proved that it gives physical health, mental health and social benefits. 

The best known and the biggest benefits are probably the mental ones. Everyone knows that laughing deletes stress and anxiety and these are factors that makes you less happy. But, what about the physical benefits? Did you know that laughing prevents heart diseases? This is only one benefit; even though, there are a lot: it relaxes muscles, it boosts immunity… We can’t forget the social benefits too. It is helpful for strengthen relationships, for avoid conflicts, it improves teamwork...

What’s the purpose of our life? According to some philosophers, is the personal research to the happiness and the only way to achieve it, is laughter. We have a natural sense of humour, nobody taught us how we had to laugh when we were only days old, but we did. It’s the only natural way to express our feelings with the crying, obviously the first one express the happiness while the second one express bad feelings.

In our society we are educated to earn money and success in the future, so people think that their objectives in the world are to be as rich as possible the day of their death, it’s completely false! You won’t need any stuff in the place you will go after die... So we have to approach every second to be happy and delay the other as much as possible.

To sum up we would like to say “don’t worry, be happy because life lasts two days”. Worries bring problems while laugher eliminate them. Definitely laugh isn’t necessary to live but it’s required to live good, as a person. So, if you want to do a favor to yourself or to the people around you, laugh in every opportunity you have and give a smile to yourself and to everybody.

http://www.helpguide.org/life/humor_laughter_health.htm. 

Obama's speech 2010

Hi Sonia! That's an email to explain you about my goals in a short and a long term. Until now I have earned good grades (in my opinion) and I have played tennis almost every afternoon, so that's a little challenge that I have successfuly passed. Some days I was tired after school but I always went to my tennis class because "you become good at things through hard work". I have lost a lot of matches, of course, but I have never given up. I won't probably be a professional tennis player (because it's very difficult) but I have the second chance to get a scholarship to study abroad (USA). In the future I will meet challenges more difficult but I have to face them and keep fighting like now. 

Well, as I said in the introduction I have the chance to study in USA, clearly that's my short term goal. I have to put my best to earn good grades and achieve go there. Probably most of the people set their own goals but if I go there I will be too much focused trying to fit in and getting my university degree. I will meet challenges every day so it will be enought, my dream is to meet all this little goals.

Long term goals are difficult to say, our lives are changing every time. As Obama said "I have to discover what am good at" so my responsibility is to discover what it is and put my best to develop that. I want to pay my bills in the future so it's important to get a job but keep going with my own live if it's posible. Maybe that's my long term dream, to get a job but without forgetting my live, to approach every single free time I will have. 

Obama's speech was very moving in my opinion, it's like a movie of the poor guy that meet all their goals after having a lot of chances to get a turn for the worse, but he didn't give up and nowadays is the president of the USA. It's a good example of success like Michael Jordan and J.K.Rowling. I liked so much the idea that every one of us are special doing something. While I was watching the vidio I was asking myself (me too?), but mr.Obama said it very convinced so may be true. 

To sum up I must say that it's positive that we thing on dreams but is more important to approach our adolescence. There is a catalan expression that I love so much and says "what didn't kill you makes you stronger" similar to "You have to let your failatures teach you". I think that this sentences are my conclusion, I have to try and if I fail I have to learn of it and keep going, always keep going.