The ways of memes. Memes are "viruses of the mind"—symbols, ideas, or practices that are transmitted through speech, gestures, and rituals. Understanding how symbols like the peace sign or ad slogans like "Where's the beef?" or viral videos become part of our common culture has become a primary focus of sales and marketing companies across the globe. The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Memes explains how memes work, how they spread, and what memes tell us about how we make sense of our world. • First book to cover all types of memes, including viral memes in the digital age • Features the Most Influential Memes in History and the Ten Biggest Internet Memes

You've always known writing comedy was about more than just being funny. But how do you create a joke and work it into a script or a stand-up routine? Comedian, writer, and teacher Jim Mendrinos has the answers. In The Complete Idiot s Guide to Comedy Writing, Mendrinos gives readers the principles he teaches in his popular courses, from understanding what funny is and how to find it, to how to actually construct comedy. Working through the basic constructions and forms including premises, points of view, and twists, he shows the variations of written, verbal, and physical comedy. With useful exercises, Mendrinos helps writers refine their writing, appeal to their audience, and even break writer's block by learning techniques for brainstorming, free association, lists, and finding infinite points of view.

Provides over one thousand five hundred jokes from various comedians, broken down by category and covering such topics as sex, dating, vices, work, and the holidays.

A guide to playing the fiddle offers advice on choosing an instrument and accessories, offers step-by-step instructions on the techniques of fiddling, and includes fingerboard charts and practice tunes.

In alphabetical entries from "A1" to "zydeco," relates the origins of many common words and colorful expressions in the English language.

Let's face it- most students don't take calculus because they find it intellectually stimulating. It's not . . . at least for those who come up on the wrong side of the bell curve! There they are, minding their own business, working toward some non-science related degree, when . . . BLAM! They get next semester's course schedule in the mail, and first on the list is the mother of all loathed college courses . . . CALCULUS! Not to fear-The Complete Idiot's Guide to Calculus, Second Edition, like its predecessor, is a curriculum-based companion book created with this audience in mind. This new edition continues the tradition of taking the sting out of calculus by adding more explanatory graphs and illustrations and doubling the number of practice problems! By the time readers are finished, they will have a solid understanding (maybe even a newfound appreciation) for this useful form of math. And with any luck, they may even be able to make sense of their textbooks and teachers.