I'd mentioned the story of Odysseus and the winnowing fan before; I was surprised recently to read Horkheimer and Adorno's take on it, so thought I would write about it here.
To recap briefly, a major driver of the Odyssey is the longstanding antagonism between Odysseus and Poseidon. During Odysseus' visit to the underworld, the blind prophet Tiresius explains how this feud will end: Odysseus should take an oar with him and walk inland until he meets a local who has never seen the sea and asks him "What is that winnowing fan on your shoulder?" At that point he should build a pyre and make a sacrifice to Poseidon, and all will be forgiven. One can imagine many readings of such a task...

But H&A explain that the reason for this ritual is that the powerful god Poseidon, upon hearing this ridiculous question, will laugh out loud and so forget his anger.

I wanted to post this because first of all, I found it charming and quite psychologically astute; but also because I wonder how common it is in major religious traditions to try to provoke the powers to laughter.