There's an old story my Grandpa used to tell about a farmer's wife cooling pies on the window sill closest to the farm's pigsty. Czechs, for the record, cannot stand dirt and filth where it doesn't belong, so part of the humor was centered around flies who would come in from the pig sty and land on the pies. I can't even remember how this joke went. He'd enjoy retelling it, over and over again, sprinkling in descriptions about the richness of rural life, complete with flies and generous heaps of pig poop. It's not a funny joke, but Grandpa would always get us laughing out loud because it was the one time he'd say "Shit." And he'd say it loudly. So we'd all laugh.
I'm getting my old job back. It's a bittersweet story. I guess that's generally the case for the poor mug losing the job, good news for the person getting it back. And this replacement writer just wasn't funny. So today, I was told they wanted more funny. They needed more funny. Can you imagine your boss saying, "We need the copy to be funnier, can you do that?" Hell, you can make a joke out of just about anything.
