The joke:
Today is National Chili Dog Day. To celebrate, Robert Mueller ate a dozen chili dogs and then accused them of obstruction of rectum.
How I wrote it:
Sometimes if the big news stories of the day don’t inspire me I’ll go online and find out what the day is the National Day of. That’s how I came up with this topic. If you’re curious, that same day was also National Wine and Cheese Day, National Hire a Veteran Day, National Intern Day, and National Hot Fudge Sundae Day.
Once I chose one of those National Days that seemed to have a lot of associations, I brainstormed on the topic handle “chili dog.” “Chili dog” suggested “eating a lot of chili dogs,” which suggested (to me) “constipation,” which led me to…
…Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. The Robert Mueller hearings were in the news, along with the associated concept of “obstruction of justice.” I realized that with the phrase “obstruction of rectum” I could link National Chili Dog Day to Robert Mueller and thus have the laugh trigger for a joke.
Then I added the angle beginning “To celebrate…”, which guides the audience smoothly and logically from the topic to the laugh trigger.
Why did I write “rectum” instead of “colon” or “bowel”? Because “rectum” has two stop consonants, which is one more than those other words have, and my Joke Maximizer #7 is “Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance.” “Rectum” is just a little bit funnier.