Tag Archives: CDC

Joke About Kissing Poultry

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The joke:

Because of salmonella outbreaks, the CDC is warning people not to “kiss or snuggle” backyard poultry like ducks and chickens. Apparently prices are getting so high that some people were doing anything to get free eggs.

How I wrote it:

This news item was so weird that it caught my attention. And if a news item catches your attention, it might make a good joke topic.

To me the news item raised the question, “Why would anyone want to ‘kiss or snuggle’ backyard poultry?” That is, I gravitated toward my Punch Line Maker #3: Ask a question about the topic.

I considered possible answers to that question. I couldn’t think of any usable answer that involved having a romantic relationship with the poultry. And an answer implying that some poultry owners are really lonely seemed too obvious.

But then it occurred to me that somebody might kiss or snuggle poultry to persuade them to do something. One of the associations of “poultry” is “lay eggs.” So I decided to write a punch line that says the poultry kissers want the poultry to give them free eggs.

In coming up with the final wording, I considered my Joke Maximizer #4, which is “Make everything clear.” And the logic of this punch line didn’t seem clear enough: “Apparently some people were doing anything to get free eggs.” Eggs are easily obtainable in stores. Why would anybody do something drastic like kissing or snuggling poultry to get them?

Then I remembered the pop culture phenomenon of inflation, and how it’s raising grocery prices. Inflation has made eggs much more expensive, which would justify more extreme measures to get them for free. So I added the idea of high prices to the angle of the joke. I thought that strengthening the logical connection between the topic and the punch line was worth the additional words.

Joke About the Holidays and Covid-19

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The joke:

The CDC is really being strict about the holidays because of the coronavirus. They even changed that Christmas carol about the reindeer. Now Vixen is Vaccine, Comet is Covid, Prancer is Pfizer, and no one can see Rudolph’s nose because it’s covered by a mask.

How I wrote it:

This joke started with the punch line instead of the more usual way–with the topic.

As I pondered how the pandemic might affect the holidays I noticed that “Covid” sounded sort of like “Comet,” one of the reindeer in the Christmas song “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” So I decided to write a joke using my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

My Joke Maximizer #2 is “End on the laugh trigger,” so my instinct was to end the joke on “Covid.” But an internet search of the real lyrics revealed that “Comet” doesn’t end a line, it starts one. That meant that I couldn’t structure the punch line as a list of actual reindeer names from the song followed by “Covid.”

But as I studied the actual reindeer names, two more wordplay links between associations of “coronavirus” and “reindeer” occurred to me. The resulting fake names seemed funny so I decided to include them too.

However, that meant that my punch line would be a list of three reindeer names, all funny. So I couldn’t apply my Joke Maximizer #10–Use the Rule of Three–which requires a list of two unfunny items followed by third, surprisingly funny, item.

To end the joke with the funny surprise that I couldn’t achieve with the Rule of Three, I added a fourth laugh trigger that doesn’t depend on wordplay. Instead it links two associations of “coronavirus” and “reindeer” in a surprisingly visual way.

Once I had my punch line I wrote a factually true topic that included the handles I needed–“holidays” and “coronavirus”–to set up the punch line.

And I wrote an angle that mentions “Christmas carol” and “reindeer.” That way the audience would immediately identify the names in the punch line as coming from the “Rudolph” song.