Monthly Archives: March 2021

Joke About Free Doughnuts

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The joke:

Krispy Kreme will give you a free glazed doughnut every day this year if you’ve received a Covid-19 vaccination. It’s all part of their new Covid promotion: “Fattening the Curve.”

How I wrote it:

This news item drew my attention because it has two topic handles, “doughnut” and “Covid-19 vaccination,” with plenty of associations that I could feed into my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

Also, the news item gave me the opportunity to write a joke about a huge and ongoing news story–the pandemic–without highlighting any of its ugly details.

One of the associations of “doughnut” is “fattening.” One of the associations of “Covid-19 vaccination” is “flattening the curve.” To create the punch line, I linked those two associations by substituting “fattening” for “flattening,” taking advantage of the wordplay between the two words.

To make sure the audience immediately got the connection between “fattening the curve” and the doughnut promotion, I made sure to include details in the topic that emphasize how potentially fattening the promotion is, details like “glazed” and “every day this year.”

Some people don’t like puns and other wordplay. But wordplay can be funny as long as it’s part of a joke that’s well-constructed, like this one. I expand on that point in this article, “Why Do People Not Like Puns.”

I call the type of wordplay punch line in this joke a substitution punch line. If you’re teaching computers how to crack jokes, as I am, jokes with substitution punch lines are some of the low-hanging fruit.

For details on my computational humor invention, which centers on wordplay jokes, read my patent here.

Joke About a Sexual Consent App

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The joke:

Today an Australian police official suggested developing a phone app that would document sexual consent. He said it would be like the website “Go Fund Me” but with two different consonants.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because the two topic handles, “phone app” and “sexual consent,” promised to have enough associations for me to use my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

I thought I might link two associations using wordplay, so I brainstormed phone apps to see if a word or syllable in one of their names could be replaced with a word related to “sexual consent.”

I started with the word that’s probably most commonly associated with sex, namely the F-word. Then, for an association of “phone apps,” I thought of the website “Go Fund Me,” which includes a word that half-overlaps the F-word.

But my punch line couldn’t be something as on-the-nose as “He’s calling the app Go [F-word] Me.” That’s because I try to keep my jokes PG-13 rated, and that punch line wouldn’t qualify.

Another problem with that punch line is that I wasn’t sure the audience would connect it with “Go Fund Me.” So that punch line wouldn’t lead to that moment of sudden discovery that helps make a joke funny.

While I was thinking about how to solve those punch line problems, I remembered a (probably apocryphal) anecdote told about actor Jack Nicholson. Supposedly an attractive young woman walked up to Nicholson at a party and asked him if he wanted to dance. Nicholson replied, “Wrong verb.”

That anecdote gave me the idea to write a punch line in which the F-word isn’t stated but instead is just hinted at by a description of one of its features.

I also made sure that the audience would make the connection to “Go Fund Me” by mentioning that website in my angle.

Joke About the Bridgestone Tire Vaccine

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The joke:

Today the Bridgestone tire company said it will offer its employees $100 to get a Covid vaccine shot. Apparently some employees are worried that the puncture might give them a flat arm.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because both topic handles–“tire” and “vaccine”–seemed to have useful associations for joke writing.

But one of the first things I did was to reword the topic sentence to include the word “shot.” That’s because I was aiming to use my Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic. And I thought I could link “tire” more easily with “shot” than with “vaccine,” because a shot requires a needle that can puncture a tire.

My first attempt at writing a punch line based on the idea of a shot puncturing ones arm arose from the hypothetical question “What else did the tire company offer its employees?”

That led to a punch line something like “They’re also offering a free rubber patch in case the puncture makes your arm leak.” But that seemed too long and complicated.

To simplify it, I dropped the idea of a patch and asked myself the question, “Why would you have to patch a puncture in a tire?” The answer, “because otherwise you’d get a flat tire,” gave me a simpler way to link “tire” and “shot”: a punch line ending on “flat arm.”

Finally I added an angle that logically ties the topic to that punch line by leading the audience to expect an explanation of why the company has to pay its employees to get the vaccine; the punch line provides the (silly) explanation.

Joke About Gov. Cuomo’s Powers

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The joke:

Today New York legislators decided to take away the pandemic emergency powers of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The weird part is, Gov. Cuomo suggested that they do it during a game of strip poker.

How I wrote it:

The original news item had a headline something like “New York lawmakers strip Gov. Cuomo of emergency powers.” The topic handle “strip” jumped out at me because I realized that I could link it to a vivid association of “Gov. Cuomo,” namely the allegation that he proposed a game of strip poker to a staffer.

That is, I spotted an opportunity to use my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

The problem was that if I used “strip” in the topic of my joke, the audience might guess how the Gov. Cuomo joke was going to end. And my Joke Maximizer #5 is “Don’t telegraph the punch line.”

Plus basing a punch line on a word that a headline writer just conveniently happened to use felt to me like cheating.

So I substituted “take away” for “strip” in the topic of my joke. Luckily, visualizing the legislators taking something away from Cuomo also suggested a game of strip poker, with Cuomo handing over his powers instead of his undershirt. So I got to keep my strip poker punch line.

I wrote the angle to have Cuomo suggesting the game, instead of the legislators, because that’s what he allegedly did in real life. That way the internal logic of the joke would be clear.

And I added “The weird part is” to more smoothly and naturally bridge the topic and punch line.

Joke About Hillary Clinton’s Novel

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The joke:

Hillary Clinton is co-writing a mystery novel. She loves mysteries and this one sounds amazing. It’s called, “How the Hell Did Trump Beat Me?”

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because I hadn’t written a Hillary Clinton joke in a while. Plus the other topic handle, “mystery novel,” seemed to have a lot of associations that I might link her to. That is, I thought I could use my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

Most associations that Clinton used to have–her pantsuits, her emails, her philandering husband–are now too stale to hang a joke on. But one association is still fresh, years after the presidential election: how she can’t understand why she lost to Trump. So I created a punch line that links that association to an association of “mystery novel,” namely “mystery.”

But writing the joke this way wouldn’t quite work: “Hillary Clinton is co-writing a mystery novel. It’s called, ‘How the Hell Did Trump Beat Me?'” The problem is that the title “How the Hell Did Trump Beat Me” describes a mystery but not the plot of a mystery novel.

To smooth out that bump, I wrote an angle that includes the word “mysteries,” to focus the audience on just the mystery aspect before they arrived at the punch line. But I also added “this one sounds amazing,” to subtly mislead the audience into thinking that I was still describing her novel.

This joke is an example of how to write a political joke that’s unlikely to divide a mass audience. Whether you’re a Clinton fan or not, you’d probably agree that she’s still wondering what went wrong in 2016.