Monthly Archives: June 2020

Joke About Statehood for Washington DC

Posted on by

The joke:

Today the House voted to grant statehood to Washington DC. They also picked a Washington DC state bird. It has a blue left wing, a red right wing, and it just flies around in circles.

How I wrote it:

I gravitated to this news item because the handle “Washington DC” promised me the opportunity to make fun of politicians, which I and many others enjoy. Plus the other handle, “statehood,” has lots of associations that can be used to write punch lines.

For my first attempt I used my Punch Line Maker #3, asking the question, “What would be the state bird of Washington DC?”

To answer that question, I brainstormed names of birds that I could link to an association of Washington DC like “do-nothing politicians” or “crooked windbags.”

To help myself brainstorm, I did what I often do in these situations and consulted lists online, in this case lists of birds. But other than hacky jokes like “yellow-bellied booby,” I couldn’t come up with any names I could use to link birds and politicians.

So next I tried to think of names of state flowers that I could link to some mocking association of politicians, or the name of a state food. But I had no luck.

Finally I considered other characteristics of a bird that I could link to politicians. I had the elements of my punch line once I realized that birds and politicians could be linked via the associations “wings,” “red and blue,” and “go around in circles.”

My punch line has three elements because I employed my Joke Maximizer #10–Use the Rule of Three.

Joke About a Bear Attack

Posted on by

The joke:

A woman in California was attacked by a bear but fought it off with her laptop computer. She said the bear ran away terrified when she showed it President Trump’s Twitter feed.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because it’s easy to understand and has a couple of promising handles.

To write the joke, I used my Punch Line Maker #3, asking this question about the topic: “How did she use her laptop computer to fight off the bear?”

To answer that question, I brainstormed associations of the handle “laptop computer,” one of which is “things on a computer.” That has the sub-association “scary things on a computer,” one of which I thought my audience would agree is President Trump’s Twitter feed. That sub-association was surprising and funny enough that I made it my punch line.

To minimize the chance that I’d divide my audience, I left it vague why most people would think that President Trump’s tweets are scary.  I just assumed that most people would accept that there’s something terrifying about them.

I left out of the topic the fact that the woman actually hit the bear with her laptop. “Fought it off” allows my topic to be true while also being logically consistent with my punch line.

I included the word “terrified” in the angle, instead of just writing something like, “She said the bear ran away when she showed it President Trump’s Twitter feed.” My Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear,” and that joke wouldn’t clearly state why the tweets made the bear run away.

Joke About Coronavirus TV Shows

Posted on by

The joke:

The governor of California said TV production can start up again with proper safety measures. So along with “The Masked Singer” you’ll see “The Masked Bachelor,” “The Walking and Hand-Washing Dead,” and “Last Man Standing Six Feet Away.”

How I wrote it:

This news item drew my attention because it has two handles with lots of associations, “TV” and “safety measures” (with the coronavirus part understood).

“TV” in particular has so many associations that I thought I could use my Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic–to write a joke with multiple laugh triggers.

The most promising associations of “TV” would be the names of TV shows, so I went online and consulted a list of currently popular TV shows. I wanted to use popular shows so it would be immediately clear to the audience what shows I was referring to.

The other topic handle, “(coronavirus) safety measures,” has associations like “face mask,” “wash hands,” and “keep six feet away.”

To get my three laugh triggers, I just grafted the safety measures onto the names of TV shows with which they seemed to smoothly fit: “The Bachelor,” “The Walking Dead,” and “Last Man Standing.”

I used “The Masked Bachelor” as the first laugh trigger because it’s the least surprising, so putting it first lets the joke build in surprise, and funniness, to the end.

With illustrations, and a half-dozen or so additional fake TV shows, “Coronavirus TV Shows” could have been an art card desk piece on a late-night TV show. For example, a fake print ad for “The Walking and Hand-Washing Dead” might depict a zombie lathering up her hands at a sink, her disemboweled victim at her feet.

Joke About a Ring in Green Beans

Posted on by

The joke:

An Australian woman found a gold ring in a package of green beans. “I thought he’d never ask,” said the woman, the future Mrs. Jolly Green Giant.

How I wrote it:

This is the first line of the story I saw on the UPI website: “A gold ring found in a package of beans was returned to its grocery store worker owner after taking a journey of nearly 125 miles.”

I thought I could turn this “Odd News” story into a joke because it has some obvious handles, maybe too many. To keep the joke short and clear, I edited the topic down to what you see.

One handle seemed to be “gold ring.” But what got my attention even more was the idea of finding a gold ring in an unexpected place. And I associated that idea with stories I had read of men proposing to women with rings hidden in food items, glasses of champagne, and so on.

But who would propose by hiding a ring in a package of green beans? The answer I chose is an association of “package of green beans,” namely the mascot of the Green Giant vegetable company. So the Jolly Green Giant became the basis of my punch line.

But adding something like this to the topic would have resulted in a joke that was too on-the-nose: “Apparently she had just been proposed to by the Jolly Green Giant.”

To make the joke less direct and more surprising, I conveyed the information that somebody had asked her an important question using the subtler line “I thought he’d never ask.”

And I supplied the remaining key information–what the question had been and who had asked it‑‑with the economical phrase “the future Mrs. Jolly Green Giant.”

Joke About That Ozarks Pool Party

Posted on by

The joke:

Missouri health officials told the people at that crowded Ozarks pool party to self-quarantine for 14 days. Partiers responded by socially isolating the middle finger of one hand from their other fingers.

How I wrote it:

This news story was covered widely so I thought it would be a good topic for a joke.

Often people don’t like to be told what to do, so I thought I’d try to write a joke using my Punch Line Maker #3, asking this question about the topic: “How did those partiers respond to those health officials?

I answered that question using associations of the topic. One handle of the topic is the partiers, who I associated with concepts like “defiant ” and “contemptuous.”

Another topic handle, “self-quarantine,” has associations like “social distancing” and “isolation.”

To create a punch line, one often finds a verbal link between two topic associations and bases a punch line on that verbal link. But in this case I found a link between the associations that’s a combination of verbal and visual: I formed a mental image of a defiant, contemptuous person giving someone the finger and realized that the finger, stuck up there all by itself, was isolated from its neighboring fingers.

So I described that mental image using language that called to mind the self-quarantine mentioned in the topic, thereby creating the surprising link expressed by my punch line.

The news story usually referred to the “Lake of the Ozarks” pool party but I changed that to just “Ozarks” because it was shorter while also being clear and still technically true.