Humor, wit, and laughter surround each person. From everyday quips to the carefully contrived comedy of literature, newspapers, and television we experience humor in many forms, yet the impetus for our laughter is far from innocuous. Misfortune, stupidity, and moral or cultural defects, however faintly revealed in others and ourselves, seem to make us laugh. Although discomforting, such negative terms as superiority, aggression, hostility, ridicule, or degradation can be applied to instances of humor. According to scholars, Thomas Hobbes's "superiority theory"?that humor arises from mischances, infirmities, and indecencies, where there is no wit at all?applies to most humor. With the exception of good-natured play, Charles R. Gruner claims that humor is rarely as innocent as it first appears.Gruner's proposed superiority theory of humor is all-encompassing. In The Game of Humor, he expands the scope of Hobbes's theory to include and explore the contest aspect of "good-natured" play. As such, the author believes all instances of humor can be examined as games, in terms of competition and keeping score?winners and losers. Gruner draws on a broad spectrum of thought-provoking examples. Holocaust jokes, sexual humor, the racialist dialogue of such comic characters as Stepin Fetchit and Archie Bunker, simple puns, and many of the author's own encounters with everyday humor. Gruner challenges the reader to offer a single example of humor that cannot be "de-humorized" by its agonistic nature.The Game of Humor makes intriguing and enjoyable reading for people interested in humor and the aspects of human motivation. This book will also be valuable to professionals in communication and information studies, sociologists, literary critics and linguists, and psychologists concerned with the conflicts and tensions of everyday life.

A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire and family trees, The Seed Collectors is the most important novel yet from one of the world's most daring and brilliant writers. Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment. Not that anyone has much time for enlightenment. Fleur, left behind at the crumbling Namaste House, must step into Oleander's role as guru to lost and lonely celebrities. Bryony wants to lose the weight she put on after her botanist parents disappeared, but can't stop drinking. And Charlie struggles to make sense of his life after losing the one woman he could truly love. As Henry James said of George Eliot's Middlemarch, The Seed Collectors is a "treasurehouse of detail" revealing all that it means to be connected, to be part of a society, to be part of the universe and to be human.

Purple Ronnie is the creation of the writer Giles Andreae. With over 35 million cards and 2 million books sold in the UK, Purple Ronnie is now one of the most successful licensed characters in the country. This is a collection of poems and illustrations celebrating naughty bits and bottoms and all their quirky ways, shapes, and sizes. It includes tips for both men and women.

IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM... After living with penis size anxiety for most of his 50 years author, Ant Smith, decided we needed an honest self-help book on the subject. Something to turn up in search results other than the endless (and expensive) so called 'enlargement guides'. After organising London's first ever Big Small Penis Party and giving countless interviews on what it's like living with a little willy, Ant has plenty to say on the matter! You will read the only methods for penis enlargement in this book. But more importantly you will read how to overcome the anxiety itself - because without managing that, no size is ever going to lead to peace. THIS IS A REALLY TOUGH SUBJECT so there is plenty of humour, candour and real-life stories in these pages. If you are suffering yourself, or if you are body-positive, or if you are just curious THIS is a must read.