HOW TO USE EHOW TO TURN YOURSELF INTO A COMEDIC

Great news! I’m funny now!

There isn’t. I learned HOW TO LOOK LIKE PAMELA ANDERSON. I learned HOW TO GREET AN ALIEN VISITOR. I even learned HOW TO PUT STICKERS ON MY GUITAR, and though I haven’t learned How to Buy a Guitar yet, or How to Convince Yourself to Buy a Guitar Even Though You Have No Musical Talent and Hated Piano Lessons When You Were a Kid, I’m sure eHow is just waiting for me to ask. I thought to myself, SELF, IS THERE ANYTHING YOU’VE REALLY WANTED TO DO THAT YOUR INNATE BORINGNESS WAS PREVENTING YOU FROM ACCOMPLISHING? SURELY EHOW CAN HELP! and that’s when the internet provided an answer in the form of a How-To Guide:  HOW TO WRITE A FUNNY FACEBOOK STATUS MESSAGE. AH-HA! I said to myself. YOU COULD BE FUNNY! It was quite the breakthrough, and I’ve spent the better part of the day learning how to do it. I’m pretty sure I don’t have to practice after this. Just reading these articles made me a Funny Person. I decided to start small…

If I’m talking to you and my voice starts getting raspier, it’s because I’m being funny. Even if you miss the punch line to the jokes I got from the internet, this should be enough to clue you in when it’s an appropriate time to laugh. I will also be drinking more whiskey and smoking cigars, then gargling razor blades to ensure that my raspiness is genuine. I practiced when my dad came home from work, and he asked me if I had a cold. I asked if he was being sarcastic. He was not.

Here’s what happened: I was Googling “How to write a thank you letter for a present that boggles the mind– seriously, what is this thing?”, and my fervent Google prayers were answered by EHOW.COM. If you’ve never heard of eHow, it’s a website where contributors write articles on how to do things. Often these are very helpful things like“HOW TO REDUCE A HEATING BILL”. Sometimes they’re surprising things like,“HOW TO FOIL A KIDNAPPING PLOT AND KEEP THE MONEY YOURSELF”. Sometimes they’re very odd things like, “HOW TO GET YOUR CAT A DIPLOMA” and “HOW TO KEEP RATS AND SNAKES OUT OF THE TOILET” (which opened up a world of toilet-vermin-related terror for me that I previously did not know existed). In an effort to distract myself from toilet-rats and -gerbils and such, I decided to find out if there’s anything eHow CAN’T teach you.