A library I worked at in the 1990's got an automatic "renew your books" phone robot. Those things were kind of unique at the time and the voice was a very poorly done cross between Darth Vader and Arnold S. The robot would greet you by name when you keyed in your card number. We realized we could create fake library accounts, then call robot guy, put him on speaker phone and he would announce whatever name we gave the fake account. I recall us using some of satan's choicer insults from The Exorcist.

Likely a "you had to be there with 2 other guys locked in a room answering phones eight hours a day" deal. That was probably the hardest I laughed without drugs.

"I can't build you a CANDY HOUSE!"

I have an unseemly love for Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music. Several years back, I started Skyping for the first time with some friends. Because I was usually watching TV while doing so, we would typically bounce back and forth between IMing and Skyping.

Coincidentally, this was about the time that poor Julie lost her singing voice.

Apparently my then-partner had clued them in to how sensitive I was about her predicament, because one day we were IMing and my computer suddenly burst out with "My Favorite Things" in a mechanical larynx voice.

I laughed, I cried, I made them a macrame owl for Christmas and got THEM flustered.

This routine of Margaret Cho's about being hospitalized and getting her vagina washed always makes me laugh that hard. (starts about about 50 seconds in)

Most of these moments have occurred with friends in 'you-had-to-be-there' contexts where the laughter was about some incongruity or funny moment with the people around. One of them was an emotional conversation with a close friend in which we kept discussing what "issues" we had with one another. It was starting to sound like "I have an issue with this, I have an issue with that" and my friend said "You have ten issues," which sounded like "You have tennis shoes," which for some reason collapsed us in hysterics and made the problem go away.

A couple were really cringey ones where I was caught with friends in one of those situations where you just can't laugh (poetry reading, sermon), and the urge overcomes us and made us hastily exit from the room to avoid an outburst.

Long, long ago. Nine people in an inflatable raft on the Chattahoochee River. Raft springs a leak and starts to deflate just about the time everybody comes down with a mad case of acid giggles. (Somehow, everybody made it to shore.)

JanetLand, that clip sealed the friendship between one of my closest mates and I - and the others in the room who thought it was awful? We don't talk anymore. :)

One day last fall, I wore my low-rise jeans to work and went to fill my giant 28oz. cup at the water cooler. I placed the cup on the catchbasin, but neglected to steady it, and it fell off and splashed its contents all over the floor. I collected a large wad of paper towels and scooched down to wipe it up, one hand ineffectually swiping the floor, the other hooked into my beltloop to keep my pants from entering the danger zone.

At some point, my vigorous hopping to different sections of the floor caused me to lose my grasp of the beltloop -- just as my coworker entered the kitchen and got an eyeful of my, er, hindquarters. 20 minutes later, after all laughter had abated, she helped me finish cleaning up the spill. My ribs were sore for the rest of the day.

Let's see, a month or two ago, watching an episode of "Family Outing,", where the Family were in waders because it was another one of those fishing eps, and Yoon Jong-shin was trying to get back up on the float/boat thing they were on, only to end up head over heels, and water that had been trapped in his waders escaped through a small ill-placed hole right where his butt was making him look like he was peeing from his butt. And they replayed the scene with dramatic music. I was so glad I had DVR'ed that ep because I kept rewinding to watch it and howl at the TV because I'm mentally 10.

And most recently, while not full on belly laugh, does make me go "BWAHAAAAAAAA~!" out loud, is the "Hey, Kitty!" sketch on the comedy show Ut Chat Sa, where the comedic "dumb guy" character says the cat on his shoulder isn't just any cat, but belonged to fashion designer Andre Kim, and as the straight man in the comedy says, "Oh, how cute. Hi, kitty." The dumb guy corrects him and says, "You can't call him like that. You have to do it like this." And does an Andre Kim impression and says, "Oooouuuuhhhhhh...KET-teu! (cat)". They do it every time, but it still makes me laugh out loud. (you see...because Andre Kim has this way of talking with a weird drawn out almost languid and overtly enunciated speech pattern with a lot of "uuuhs" and "uuummms" and does this thing where he randomly includes English words whenever he does interviews and...just trust me, it's funny.)

During the marathon poker stint over the weekend, someone made me and my female friend laugh (I honestly can't remember what it was) and then we started laughing harder because the guy who made us laugh pointed out that our faces were getting more and more red, and looking at each other while laughing made us laugh more...

Exponential laughter is the best.

I was trying to tell somebody else about how the dog I grew up with would hump this old nightgown of my Mom's. We called it "Owen's girlfriend".

A friend and I went to see a double at the local cinema - A Fish Called Wanda and The Naked Gun. There was a candy-store promotion on so we each bought about a kilo of sugar and immediately started munching.

By the time we walked out of the cinema, we'd been laughing so much that our ribs literally ACHED. Sporadic bursts of giggles broke out on the train-ride home, as I recall.

Dumb movies + sugar rush + teenage sense of humour = hysterical laughter.

When I was shopping with an American friend in Guildford and, in a fairly posh dress shop, she announced that she didn't know what size trousers she took in UK sizes because she has "the most enormous fanny".

The saleslady and I ended up in total hysterics, tears pouring down our faces, unable to speak or breathe, both of us doubled over the counter trying not to have a Tena Lady moment. Eventually the saleslady recovered her composure enough to tell my friend what a fanny is in the UK. Luckily my friend saw the joke.

By the second half of Tommy Boy, I thought I was laughed out. But the scene where Chris Farley uses the airplane bathroom made me laugh so hard I fell off the couch and laid on the floor with the dry heaves.

I remember watching Planes, Trains & Automobiles with my family at my grandparents' house (they had a VCR, so we'd visit with VHS tapes). That movie was fantastic for exponential laughter - towards the end, I remember some trucker calling John Candy "Slim," and my mother was gasping for air. I've watched the movie since then, but it was never the same.

More recently, I made some terrible joke about the timing of some other computer-related joke being so slow that it was like it was being received on a modem. I don't know why I thought of it, but I said it and realized it was a terrible joke, and Istarted laughing. I laughed even more when my friends just shook their heads at how bad the joke was. It felt fantastic to laugh that much.

My husband does a perfect impression of Yoda that sends me into hysterics. I'm a silent laugher, so I turn red and cry, which causes him to laugh AT me, which starts the cycle all over again.

Years ago, I was dating a Québécois guy. My classmate asks me, "So, how's your dehydrated Frenchman?" Huh? "You know, PEE AIR."

This summer I was at my best friends house and while walking thru the basement, was startled by a 12" pose-abled plastic elf (I may have had a few drinks in me). We posed it and laughed and posed it and laughed. I peed a little.
This same friend I remember doing acid with around the time "Close Encounters" came out and posing an extra-terrestrial toy, making the et act out stuff, posing and laughing and posing and lughing, so we have a history.

Last week, on my birthday, she left the elf on the porch to greet me in the morning with a "Happy Birthday!" sign.
I think we are turning into the American nerd version of Absolutely Fabulous.