The joke:
Tesla announced that its headquarters is moving from California to Texas. Which means that if the headquarters is on Autopilot, it’ll probably crash into Colorado.
How I wrote it:
The original news item was something like, “Tesla has announced it will move its company headquarters to Texas from California.” The two topic handles that jumped out at me were “Tesla” and “move.” They suggested that I use my Punch Line Maker #3 and ask this question about the topic: “What will happen when Tesla moves?”
I answered that question by using an association of Tesla cars that move, which is that they sometimes crash into things. So if a Tesla were moving to Texas, it might crash into a different state along the way. And that idea became the basis of my punch line.
To better prepare the audience for that punch line, I reworded the topic so as to make “headquarters” the subject of “is moving.” That rewording made it easier for the audience to accept the Tesla headquarters as a moving Tesla car.
To prepare the audience even more to accept the headquarters as a car, I included in my angle the phrase “the headquarters is on Autopilot.” Mentioning the troublesome Autopilot system also clarified the logic of the joke by explaining why the headquarters might crash.
To pick a specific state for the headquarters to crash into, I looked up a map of the U.S. and traced a route from California to Texas. Out of the possible crash states I picked Colorado because I liked the stop consonants and alliteration in “crash into Colorado.” That is, I employed my Joke Maximizer #7: Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance.