fandomhigh | Logically Speaking, Period 6, 12 May '09

Mohinder had pulled the classroom chairs into a broad semi-circle and was sitting on his desk, reading through his class list when the students showed up.

When everyone had taken a seat, Mohinder started off with introductions. "Good afternoon. This is the workshop for Logically Speaking - if you signed up then you should be here, and if you are here then hopefully the converse is true. My name is Mohinder Suresh, when I'm not here I'm a doctor of genetics from New York. Now, you know who I am I'd like to know your name, your point of origin and what would be the first thing you'd rescue if your home was burning."

After that was completed, Mohinder started passing round a handout. "We'll start with humour. What it is that makes us laugh - and that can be a product of our history environment and so on. But much of it follows a logical pattern. From the juxtasposition of unrelated ideas, puns or plays on sounds, practical jokes undercutting someone's dignity to the more contrived arts of coincidence and mistaken identity in comedy."

"Now, I want to try and make each other laugh. Verbally, please. Then try and figure out why that joke worked," said Mohinder, adding, "Oh, and Claire Butler? ~~assuming she's here~~ I'd like to speak to you after class."

[OCD is up. Have at!]

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The only jokes Valentine could think of were ones only she, Peter, or Ender would get, and none of them were funny in the slightest, or were just way too stupid. So she frowned a little, feeling pretty useless at this activity.

This was probably going to be the only topic all session that would be right down Yakko's alley. And so, logically, he decided not to tell any jokes.

Instead he was dressed all in black and had a notebook full of emo poetry. "You need a partner," he told Valentine before immediately launching into a poem.

"My soul is like milk
Milk that expired Monday
My soul smells funny"

Emo haiku, in fact. Yes, this is how he was greeting people today.

Valentine, telling herself that whatever this thing is, at least it didn't involve talking furniture, looked at the....thing for a moment before commenting.

"A haiku." She nodded. Poetry again. It wasn't her forte, but it seemed to be drawing people to her all the same. She took in a breath and tried her own:

"My soul is a sole
Fleshy with ten little toes
My soul should wear socks."

The girl could write words to inspire an entire world to war. Poetry, not so much.

Yakko looked morose as he pondered his next poem.

"Sadness encloudens
Dark skies in my appendix
I had grapes for lunch."

So the class had developed into a haiku contest with a kitty...puppy...thing.

"This must be madness
Descending insanity
Grape juice stains clothes."

Edited 2009-05-13 01:11 (UTC)

"Is madness funny?
Or is comedy madness?"

Yakko reached into his pocket and pulled out a whoopie cushion.

Yakko pushed on the whoopie cushion five times to make the whoopie cushion noise. It may have been the first whoopie cushion-based haiku ever.

Despite herself, Valentine laughed. She hadn't expected a whoopee cushion.

"I don't really think
that extracting a cushion
of whoopee can count."

Yakko continued to look so very depressed despite managing to score a laugh.

"No, it cannot count
But that is only because
No one taught it math."

Yakko flipped the cushion over and showed that "2+2=5?" was written on it.

"Ooh," Valentine winced, giving the whoopee cushion a very sympathetic look.

"To suck at math, sad.
No harm so long as no one
Divides by zero."

"Cushions can subtract
One minus one is zero,"

Yakko threw the whoopee cushion backwards. When it hit the wall, it made the noise.

"It's not happy about it."

Trying not to chuckle again, Valentine realized that what it was was the prop.

"One cushion's loss is
Another's gain of humor
Joy is in the thing."

"It is logical
This lesson is successful
Logic plus laughs, yay!"

Clearly, Yakko learned something today. It's possible that the thing he learned was that he could get away with using whoopee cushions in class.

Once a hiaku ended in a yay, Valentine had reached her limit, chuckling a little and shaking her head. "I can't top that one," she assented.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaand I made you laugh a couple times. What do I win?" Yakko asked.

Valentine considered it for a moment. Then she got up from her chair, walked around the kitty....puppy...thing, picked up the whoopee cushion, and then brought it back, setting it in front of him before sitting back down herself.

"This great whoopee cushion! Congratulations!"

"Heeeey, this looks just like the whoopee cushion I was using earlier," Yakko pointed out.

"You shouldn't look a gift whoopee cushion in the bad math equation on its back, you know."

Yakko didn't hear that. He was too busy looking into the mouth of the whoopee cushion with a magnifying glass. "Sorry, what was that?"

Valentine shook her head, trying not to give him...it?... another laugh. "Nothing. Never mind."

Logically Speaking, Period 6, 12 May '09

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