Anyone know about any laugh clubs around here? No, I'm serious.

Laugh clubs are a big thing. More than 6,000 of them have sprung up around the world in the past dozen years, according to Laughter Yoga International, which should know.

They are in direct response to a feeling sweeping the globe that laughter should be on the endangered species list.

There just isn't enough of it to go around, mostly because global conditions suck.

Laughter is good. Anyone who has gone to a comedy club and come home with their face hurting knows what I'm talking about. Personally, I've always enjoyed making people laugh, if it was on purpose.

In junior high school school plays I always played the dimwit second fiddle, you know, the guy with the Jughead hat and the Ed Norton vest and T-shirt who was always going around in circles, because his right shoe was nailed to the stage.

, it was funny in seventh grade.

Even in the most recent revue by the gang at the Larson Senior Center, of which I am a perennial cast member, I'm always picked to be the funny guy.

Never Bud Abbott, always Lou Costello.

(Now, now, no snide remarks about how much alike we look.)

Anyway, an era that started with Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" has evolved into a world of laugh clubs.

Don't get the idea that at laugh clubs they just sit around and laugh. They don't. That would be humorous.

Actually, you act out little "things," like swaying back and forth like you were riding a trolley and laughing your head off.

Hey, and this isn't done just for fun. Laughter Yoga International says such laughing provides a diaphragm and abdominal workout, is beneficial to your lungs and immune system, and might actually reduce stress, blood pressure and depression.

Yes, laugh clubs are in (oh, the laughing exercise is known as Hasya Yoga, in case anyone gives you a hard time when you bring this up at the next cocktail party, which you know you will).

So, anyone know about any laugh clubs around here?

I'm not kidding.

Feedback

I expected some negative response on last week's column critical of the battlefield-and-ghost symbiosis in Gettysburg, but surprisingly I received none.

Someone did, however, drop off a page from our Celebrities TV book for last week with an item circled.

In the "What We Learned from TV Lately" feature, it noted that, from "Paranormal State," one of the authors learned that Gettysburg is "widely regarded to be the most haunted place in America."

And, guess what, I did receive this note of support from a reader:

"Thank you for saying what few are brave enough to say: 'It seems morbid to continue to pay homage' to battlefields where such 'horror' took place."

The reader added:

"You may receive some disparaging e-mails, but what you said is important to say and I think it takes courage to say out loud."

Further back, I wrote on June 7 about the value of hugging, and about how popular it has become among younger people.

A reader wrote that she thought it would be good to start a "Give A Hug Day" at work.

I'm all for hugs, of course, but as a boss I would surely urge you to be careful about hugging in the workplace.

It's OK outside of work, though.

What a world ...

See you next week.

ORESTE P. D'ARCONTE