Monthly Archives: August 2019

Joke About a Rock on Mars

Posted on by

The joke:

NASA named a rock on Mars for the legendary band the Rolling Stones. Scientists said they did it because the rock has the same age and density as Keith Richards’s liver.

How I wrote it:

At first I focused on this news item because it was interesting. And if a story interests me, it’s likely to interest many other people, which makes it a top candidate for being a joke topic. The news item also seemed promising because it has a couple of handles with many associations.

So I turned to Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. One topic handle, “rock,” has the association “hard.” The other topic handle, “the Rolling Stones,” has the association “Keith Richards,” who is associated with “alcohol abuse.”

I realized that I could link “rock-hard” to “Keith Richards’s alcohol abuse” with the idea of his rock-hard liver. Is Richards’s liver really as hard as a rock? No, but my Joke Maximizer #8 is “Wildly exaggerate.”

Finally I had to add an angle to the joke. “Scientists said they did it because the rock is as hard as Keith Richards’s liver” would have worked okay, but most rocks are hard, and my Joke Maximizer #9 is “Get specific.”

So I considered the more specific handle “a rock on Mars,” which in addition to being hard is also very old, an association it shares with Keith Richards and his liver.

I combined the ideas of “hard” and “old” in the angle “Scientists said they did it because the rock has the same age and density as…” Because that angle exploits two links between the topic handles instead of just one, it makes the joke a little more surprising and therefore funnier.

Joke About Placido Domingo

Posted on by

The joke:

Women are leveling charges of sexual harassment against opera superstar Placido Domingo. It looks bad, but to be fair, it ain’t over till the fat lady testifies.

How I wrote it:

This news item attracted my attention because it has a couple of handles with many associations–“sexual harassment” and “opera.”

Because the topic has two good handles, I then turned to Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

“Sexual harassment” has the association “trial,” which has the sub-association “testify.” And “opera” is associated with the opera-themed proverb “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” To link two associations of the topic, I just inserted “testifies” into the proverb.

Once I had my punch line, I reworded the topic using Joke Maximizer #3: Backload the topic. The original news item was “Placido Domingo, Opera Star, to Be Investigated for Sexual Harassment.” I moved Placido Domingo to the end of the topic because I thought it was the information in the topic that was most important to the punch line.

I also added to the topic a reference to women because I thought it would tighten the logical connection between the topic and punch line by hinting that the fat lady is among Domingo’s accusers.

Finally, I added an angle. I included the words “It looks bad, but” so that the joke would be evenhanded when it came to implying whether Domingo is guilty. I wanted to be evenhanded because I didn’t think my audience had made up their minds about the issue.

Joke About Vodka from Chernobyl

Posted on by

The joke:

Soon you’ll be able to buy vodka made with grain and water from Chernobyl.  Even better, you’ll be able to drink twice as much with your two heads.

How I wrote it:

The original news headline I saw was “Scientists make radioactivity-free vodka from Chernobyl.” That headline has three possible handles–radioactivity-free, vodka, and Chernobyl–so my first task was to pick which two handles to try to base a joke on.

I chose the handles “vodka” and “Chernobyl” because “radioactivity-free” didn’t seem as though it would have as many clear associations.

Then I turned to Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. One association of “vodka” is “drinking it.” One association of “Chernobyl” is “strong radiation,” which has the sub-association “grow extra body parts.” My punch line links two associations by stating that you could drink twice as much if you had an extra head.

Once I had a punch line that worked, I edited the original news headline to arrive at the final version of my joke topic. I trimmed away the distracting element “radioactivity-free” because Joke Maximizer #1 is “Shorten as much as possible.”

But I included the detail “with grain and water,” taken from the body of the news story, to add credibility to the topic, because a good joke topic must strike the audience as factually true.

Would drinking radioactive vodka really make you grow a second head? No, but that’s okay because Joke Maximizer #8 is “Wildly exaggerate.”

Joke About Osama bin Laden’s Son

Posted on by

The joke:

According to U.S. officials, Osama bin Laden’s son is believed to be dead. Bad timing for him: He had just gotten into USC as an elite rower.

How I wrote it:

Jokes about death can be tricky because the subject can bring out negative emotions in an audience that make it hard for them to laugh. But I figured a joke about the death of the future leader of Al Qaeda wouldn’t summon too many negative emotions.

To create this joke I gravitated toward Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. I focused on the topic handle “Osama bin Laden’s son” and its association in my mind with “privileged child of somebody infamous.”

Then I thought about other privileged children of infamous people and settled on actress Lori Loughlin’s daughter, who had been admitted to USC after she fraudulently claimed she was an elite rower.

That example of USC’s crooked admissions process seemed like a fun connection to make so it became the basis of my punch line. But I made USC the focus of the punch line instead of Lori Loughlin’s daughter because I felt the audience would feel more comfortable laughing at the former.

The angle for the joke came last. Natural angles to consider for a topic like this are “The good news is…” and “The bad news is…” but neither of those fit logically into the joke. So I avoided any logic problem by adding the angle “Bad timing for him.”