It’s hard to be funny.

It’s even harder to be funny and brief.

Twitter makes you be brief, and sometimes people are funny unintentionally there, but it takes a craftperson to be funny and brief on Twitter (on purpose).

Especially if they are not a professional comedian.

The following tweet makes me laugh for several reasons.

There is a formula to funny, which is: One, two… duck. (Quack.)

In other words, set the pattern and then release a surprise.

Here is the part I like best about this:

• Not only is the person slacking off by not doing their work (and that’s funny because it’s such an irrational excuse)
• But THEN they jump with both feet into the slacking off, really owning it, by opening a bag of chips in front of the person telling them to get to work.

But while that is funny, here’s what makes me laugh:

It’s an emergency bag of chips.

So that’s funny because first of all, this person had the foresight to buy an emergency bag of chips.

What emergency requires that? No one knows. Doesn’t matter.

Second, although they themselves are not in an emergency, they are opening the emergency bag of chips, possibly out of some sort of solidarity for those who are bracing for the hurricane.

And there in a nutshell – actually, my verbosity is about as far from “in a nutshell” as it gets – you have the essence of the type of thing that makes me laugh.

It’s not even potato chips. It’s generic. Chips. Could be anything. Over here, that would be chips for chips and salsa (tortilla chips). At your house it might be potato chips.

I think for the author, it’s barbecued potato chips.

But it doesn’t matter.

Saying “chips” (and not specifying potato chips), makes it all the more universal – and therefore able to make more people smile.

It’s not easy to be funny, but it’s easy to appreciate it when somebody is.

Well done.