“I like the architecture of Plum Pudding, but the interior of Apple Blossom.”

Before you think I have a Stawberry Shortcake fetish, I should probably explain; the sentence relates to dollhouses.

My girlfriend wants a dollhouse so bad she can taste it, so it’s probably appropriate that she is looking at dollhouses with cute food names. She pointed me to a website, and told me the Apple Blossom was her favorite. You can see where it went from there, I’m sure, and taken out of context, I think the result is a pretty funny statement.

Context — or lack thereof — is a big part of humor for me. Though I usually don’t have a hard time maintaining a thread of conversation, there’s always a separate thread in my brain processing the conversations, looking for little chinks in context that I can pry open with a pun. As a result, I do spend a lot of CPU time out of context; that’s probably why so many of my jokes fall flat. Recipients (or victims, if you prefer) of my puns are usually not as far out of context as I am, so my humor comes across as frustrating to them.

Does that mean I need to change my style of humor? Mmmm … no, I don’t think so. I much prefer out-of-context puns to humor that takes advantage of others’ misfortune, as most modern humor seems to do. I’m not perfect; I occasionally say things I think are funny and later realize that I’ve yielded to the temptation of humor at someone else’s expense, but I try to keep an eye on myself.

No, I don’t think I’ll change my humor style. I’ll just continue to fish for groans and avoid the sharp objects people throw at me.