The joke:
A lawsuit filed in California says that the tuna in Subway restaurants contains no detectable tuna DNA. The good news is, the DNA tests also prove that Subway’s Italian cold cuts can trace their ancestry back to Julius Caesar.
How I wrote it:
I thought I could write a good joke about this news story because it has two topic handles, “tuna” and “DNA,” with multiple associations. So I expected I could use my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.
The first association of “DNA” that occurred to me was “paternity test,” which has the sub-association “Maury Povich reveals the test results.”
But I had already written jokes over the years in which Maury revealed the paternity test results for some unusual entity. And I didn’t want to repeat myself by writing a joke about, say, the paternity of a Subway sandwich.
So instead I brainstormed other associations of “DNA.” “Ancestry tests” came to mind, which seemed promising.
Then I brainstormed associations of the other topic handle, “tuna,” like other Subway sandwich ingredients. I asked myself what other ingredient suggests “ancestry test.” “Italian cold cuts” does, because it contains the name of a country.
My next question was “What historical figure would an Italian be excited to be distantly related to?” “Julius Caesar” popped into my head, which seemed appropriately grandiose and silly in this context. And I had my punch line linking “tuna” and “DNA.”
Another reason I liked “Italian cold cuts” in the joke is because of my Joke Maximizer #7: Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance. “Italian cold cuts” has five stop consonants, plus the alliteration in “cold cuts.”
I often use “The good news is” as an angle when the topic conveys negative information about something.