1. Zillions of people are not going to think that what you think is funny, is funny. Life is funny that way. Ignore them; they have no sense of humor.

2. It's no crime to laugh at your own humor. If you don't laugh at your own stuff, why bother?

3. There are very, very, few things that can't be laughed about (or at, for that matter). Political Correctness has sapped today's society of much of its sense of humor. Ignore that, too. If somebody (group or individual) can't take a joke, maybe they should set up house in a cemetery, they're halfway there already.

4. Virtually every society throughout history, has had a rich tradition of humor, from the sublime to the burlesque. But when those same folks come to the States, somehow they lose it. They get serious. We have our humorists, but we don't much care about them, not realizing that being funny is damn hard work. And even when it works, Rule #1 still applies. Be prepared for someone to say, "You really think that's funny?" When they do, be kind and shoot them.

5. Humor is not necessarily making light of someone or something in order to illuminate an otherwise painful Truth. You can be silly, too, you know. Life is too hard as it is. Silly is good. Reality, such as it is, is a pain in the neck.

6. Do not, under any circumstances, study, examine, and/or dissect humor to see what makes it tick. Someone comes to you and says, "Darling, why do you love me?", and you're dumb enough to answer, you'll be in trouble for the rest of your life. Because why you love someone isn't always why they think you love them. The best thing to do is fake a coma, or swoon, or feed the cats. Defining an emotion kills it. Defining humor takes all the fun out of it, and if humor isn't fun, it isn't humor, it's a course in a university.

7. Not everybody is funny in print (pause now for the cracks, the knowing nods, and the other obvious responses to such a leading comment). Telling jokes seldom works in print; telling stories, on the other hand, is what writing humor's all about. Situations are funny, dialogue can be funny, and even a properly placed lousy pun (my favorite) can be funny in a truly sick sort of way, but doing it right, in print, requires more set-up than you usually have time for when you're telling a joke. The only way to find out if you can do this is to try it. Obviously.

8. But whatever you do, don't give your "humorous" work to someone else to read. There's nothing worse than hanging around in the hall, trying to be nonchalant, checking out the ceiling, picking lint off the floor, checking your bald spot in the hall mirror and, at the same time, listening to ... nothing. Eventually you're going to charge in, demand to know where in the manuscript they are, and when they tell you they finished ten minutes ago, the only thing you can do is shoot yourself. You'll miss, too.

9. The most successful humorists sooner or later discover they have a particular strength, a unique characteristic, that sets them apart from the others. Your job is to discover yours. I've been told that mine, for example and aside from the awful puns, has turned out to be, through no fault of my own because this is the 90s when no one takes responsibility for anything except maybe breathing, extraordinarily long sentences that most folks can't read aloud without having to take a breath, not because they're so long, but because they tend to get lost somewhere around the third or fourth semicolon and have to backtrack to figure out what's being said; assuming, of course, they haven't given up and skipped on to the next sentence which, because of the importance of the first sentence, doesn't make any sense. And if you think the reader gets lost, think about me having to keep the whole thing in my head. Sometimes I get lost, too. When that happens, I just stop, what the hell, and start all over.

10. There is no #10. This is here in case the Editor needs more room to fill out the column. Maybe I could plug my newsletter, HAGGIS, but that's probably too crass. Very tacky. Same with mentioning my new book, 668, THE NEIGHBOR OF THE BEAST. Never mind. Can I go now?