THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS

Human weakness and folly are rich sources for humor. The Seven Deadly Sins are illustrative of this. Here they are in descending order of funniness:

SLOTH — What is funnier than a fat, unshaven, messy-haired slob with patches on his pants, reclining in a La-Z-Boy while drinking beer and watching TV? (Don't forget the white socks with red heels and toes!) Sloth combines well with Gluttony; litter the scene with empty beer bottles, dirty clothes and half-eaten food. Add the body functions techniques discussed above and you have a laugh riot on your hands.

GLUTTONY — Fatsos stuffing their faces with huge fistfuls of food are funny. Eating is a body function and therefore, inherently funny (see page 2). The size of the food being eaten should always exceed the size of the mouth. A whole cake is funnier than a slice. Complex foods are funnier than simple ones. A burrito is funnier than any fruit — except perhaps a watermelon, for its size, or a banana, for other reasons. Complex foods are also messier and allow you to impart the idea of Sloth from above.

LUST — Swirling eyes, bright pink faces, hanging tongues, smoke coming out of ears and/or nose, little hearts floating about, drool, and an implied body function. Need we say more?

ANGER — Swirling eyes, red faces, spittle, gritted teeth, cursing (indicated as #@*&%!!!), and smoke coming out of ears. Anger means violence. Violence means slapstick. Slapstick means funny. We suggest watching the Three Stooges to learn everything you need to know about violence as humor.

PRIDE — Proud people are usually fastidious and neat, the opposite of sloth and therefore, not as funny. (Ask yourself, who is funnier: Homer Simpson or Ned Flanders?) However, thrusting sloth onto a fastidiously neat person is funny (a pie in the face, for instance, something else we learned from the Three Stooges). If you know a fastidiously neat person, try this at home. We do advise against using this technique on a fastidiously neat, large person with rippling muscles however (see Anger above).

ENVY — Envy is not too funny to draw except to make people's faces green. Very envious people can have smoke coming out of their ears, which is slightly funnier, but not much.

GREED — A fat cat with a cigar, the least funny of all the sins.