VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1                          UP DATED  February 18, 2005                          Weather: Mostly all day

"Laugh Gene" Discovered in California

IRVINE, CA -- If you have trouble finding something to laugh about, you're not alone and now you can know why.

Dr. Jay Tollbridge of the University of California, Irvine, has isolated a vesicular monoamine transporter that controls the chemicals to the brain that stimulate laughter, grinning, and the propensity to find humor in just about everything.  ""I call it VMAT3," says Dr. Tollbridge.  "It controls our sense of humor, our ability to recognize irony, and when combined with a good dose of schodenfreude, it can turn you into a satirist right quick."

Just last week, the discovery of a "God Gene" was announced in a book by Dr. Dean Hamer, head of the Gene Structure Unit at the American Cancer Institute. According to Hamer, the gene VMAT2 explains the human need for the divine.  "Those with the gene have a greater urge for spirituality than those who don't possess it," Hamer writes.

"My gene is like that," Tollbridge explains.  "We need God, but we need to laugh, too, sometimes even at God.  Think about it -- we're all miserable, leading wretched little lives on a dying planet that could have been made better than it is.  I mean, why is all the oil under the land of people who hate us?  Somebody really screwed up there."

Tollbridge has done several surveys and has concluded that the humor gene is most conspicuous in those people who have taken to hanging pictures of George Carlin, Jon Stewart, and Dave Chappel from their rear view mirrors.

In a related story, disgraced Judge Donald Thompson of Oklahoma City has sued Sammy Davis, Jr., claiming he is being mocked every time the entertainer's "Here Come da Judge" routine is played on re-runs of "Laugh-In." In the routine, Davis, dressed in a jurist's robe parades across the stage repeating, "Here come da judge...Here come da judge."  People in the late sixties actually laughed at this.

Thompson was forced to resign after "whooshing" sounds heard during trials were traced to a pump the judge was using under his robes to pleasure himself. "The suit is not what you think," Thompson says.  "I just don't like being played by a black man."

Davis, who has been dead for 15 years, has not yet responded to the suit which his executor claims is frivolous..

In yet another related story, Michael Jackson, who has become a source of humor for even those without the laugh gene, has requested a change of venue to Oklahoma City.