Pros:
1) We'd put it at the end, so it would get people to read till the end (or at least open it and scroll to the end  )
2) More people would open the e-mails to see the daily joke, and meanwhile might read other stuff - and get helped.
3) People would leave the e-mails with a smile.
4) Depression is poison for the addiction, and a joke a day will make people feel better.

Cons:
1) Might turn some people off, like Talmidai Chachamim or Askanim who check out our e-mails and think we are a band of leitzim perhaps?
2) There's some pasuk in mishlei I think that says something like "one leitzanus can destroy me'ah tochachos" (but this is not leitzanus, per-se, rather just a good laugh)
3) It's just weird, what does it have to do with recovery? (although we'll explain that it helps people smile and get out of depression)
4) After reading the e-mail and feeling all more contemplative and serious about getting into recovery, the joke may come and make them forget how inspired they were in the e-mail....

Please vote above, and post your thoughts on why you voted as you did, below!

Not sure about this one. Think a good compromise would be to LINK the joke.

Who would write the jokes? Wouldn't you need to find somebody funny?

Me3 wrote on 24 Jan 2010 16:38:


I would hire you, Me3  , but no need - we have the Depressed person's chill spot with like 40 pages of jokes. I'd choose the best ones, of course. And I'd keep it down to a short joke each day, nothing major...

guardureyes wrote on 24 Jan 2010 16:40:


That's what I was afraid of.

Joke?
The Quote of the day (when it is there) does the job.
If there is going to be a joke,
I think 7Up hit the shvil hazahav.

kutan shel hachabura wrote on 24 Jan 2010 17:01:


Sothats what that crash was :o :o :o
I was swerving to avoid a sheep which appeared out of the mist... :D

:D

Maybe use leitznus...if you can find jokes that make us look at this yetzer hora as ridiculous? After all, the power of leitzanus can be used for the good, as well (I think)!

silentbattle wrote on 24 Jan 2010 17:29:


That would be too hard... I was thinking just to find the best jokes on the Depressed Person's Chill spot... For example, today I was rolling from some of these:

Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. "What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," she told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.

I was in a car dealership a while ago when a large new motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the whole thing generally looked like an extra in "Twister." I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the cruise control, then went in back to make a sandwich.

I am a medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center. Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down, and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. I told her that she better bring her daughter in to the ER right away.

I live in a semi-rural area. We recently had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the Deer Crossing sign on our road. The reason: Many deer were being hit by cars and he no longer wanted them to cross there.

A carpet layer had just finished installing carpet for a lady. He stepped out for a smoke, only to realize he'd lost his cigarettes. In the middle of the room, under the carpet, was a bump. "No sense pulling up the entire floor for one pack of smokes," he said to himself. He proceeded to get out his hammer and flattened the hump. As he was cleaning up, the lady came in. "Here," she said, handing him his pack of cigarettes. "I found them in the hallway." "Now," she said, "if only I could find my parakeet."

My old roommate had a burned out turn indicator. After telling him about it, he asked, "Do you think it needs more blinker fluid?"

I live in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada and I'm 14 years old. The tourists here can get so stupid because they always ask me what time they turn off the falls. I usually reply back, trying to sound like an idiot too 'about the same time they roll up the side walks. And they look at ME weird!

Linking the jokes would be a little hard. it would mean that each day I'd have to post a joke on a page and link to it...

I may as well just link to the "depressed person's chill spot"

I got a very bad feeling about it. The 'fun' chevra seems to use the forum, And possibly, mybe, efsham, hmmmm, a link to the 'chill spot'. But I realy think that it's a good Idea to keep the emails "glatt", leave the fun for the forums, so that those who feel uneasy about this, won't include the emails within that same stigma.     

I got a realy bad feeling about it, so I'll say no.

When I first read the idea, I thought "Why not?, it can't hurt".
But then I realized that I'm looking at it from my 'already comfortable with the ruach of the site' - perspective, and that most of the people reading the emails have nothing to do with the site, and are reading them pretty seriously, and not for jokes. When I thought about it from the eyes of someone unaffiliated - it didn't sound like such a good idea to me.

The gain is simply not significant enough to risk people taking the main parts of the emails less seriously.

7Up wrote on 24 Jan 2010 17:12:


There you go, Guard.. you just got another good line!


A little about humor that I learned from a wise man:

There are two types of jokes. One is slapstick comedy, where the clown falls on his nose over a banana peel.
The other is a 'chap' (yiddish for a clever line).

The difference between them is if the joke is funny a second time. The first type is funny again and again. But a clever line is funny only once.

The clever line type of joke is helpful. But the slapstick humor is not spiritually helpful, in general.

k