Tag Archives: Russia

Joke About the Sanctions on Russia

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The joke:

According to Reuters, sanctions are really hurting the Russian economy. Things are so bad that to save money commuting to work, some Russian oligarchs are yacht-pooling.

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write a joke that was related in some way to the war in Ukraine because it’s a huge news story. But I didn’t want to call the audience’s attention to the tragic aspects of the war. So I decided to write a joke about a secondary aspect–the sanctions on Russian oligarchs.

I had seen news stories about how the Russian oligarchs travel around in enormous superyachts. I thought that the idea of a superyacht being a mode of transportation was potentially funny. So I brainstormed ways to put a surprising twist on that idea.

To do that, I brainstormed associations of “transportation” and came up with “carpooling.” Then I linked that association to “yacht,” creating the punch line “yacht-pooling.”

Now I had a punch line. But I had to create the rest of the joke, the topic and the angle. Usually I start writing a joke from a topic, but not always, as in this case.

To create a topic I asked myself, who carpools? People often carpool to save money. So I needed a topic that said that Russian oligarchs are under financial pressure. An online search yielded the Reuters story that I pressed into service as my topic.

My Joke Maximizer #4 advises, “Make everything clear,” and the weird expression “yacht-pooling” could potentially confuse an audience. To minimize confusion, I included the phrase “to save money commuting to work” in the angle. That phrase makes it easier for the audience to make the mental connection to carpooling when they hear the punch line.

Joke About McDonald’s in Russia

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The joke:

Today McDonald’s said it’s closing all its restaurants in Russia because of Ukraine. Is that a good idea? If McDonald’s really wants to hurt the Russians it should open up more restaurants, hand out free artery-clogging fries and Big Macs, attack the Russians from the inside.

How I wrote it:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a huge news story, so I didn’t think I could ignore it. At the same time, it’s a difficult story to write jokes about because large numbers of innocent people are dying and getting displaced. If an audience is thinking about those tragic facts, they won’t laugh.

To write jokes about a high-profile but upsetting topic, a useful technique is to steer clear of the most disturbing aspects of the topic. So if the topic is Russia invading Ukraine, a joke writer wouldn’t remind the audience of all the death and destruction.

Instead, the writer would focus on a secondary, less-upsetting aspect of the topic. In this case, I noticed that McDonald’s is closing all its restaurants in Russia.

Now I had a topic somewhat related to Russia’s invasion that I thought the audience would let me joke about. So I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

One handle of the topic is “McDonald’s,” which I associate with “unhealthful food.” The other topic handle is “Russia,” which nowadays I associate with “needs to be attacked.” I linked those two associations in a punch line that suggests using McDonald’s food to attack the Russians.

In editing the joke I used my Joke Maximizer #9–Get specific. I did that by listing particular menu items instead of just writing “unhealthful food.”

And when I chose those menu items I employed my Joke Maximizer #7–Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance. “Hand out free artery-clogging fries and Big Macs” has nine stop consonants, a lot for only twelve syllables.

Joke About Vladimir Putin

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The joke:

Today Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing him to run for president two more times. The law also extended absentee voting: whoever votes against Putin goes mysteriously absent.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because I felt like, for a change, writing a joke about a politician who isn’t American. Plus this story made the national news in the U.S., so I thought my audience might have some interest in it.

First I distilled the news item into a topic sentence that contained only the elements I thought I’d need to write a joke. Some versions of the item had a headline like “Putin signs law that could keep him in Kremlin until 2036.” Other versions had a headline like “Putin signs law allowing him to run for two more terms as Russian President.” I adapted the latter headline into my topic sentence because it referred more directly to elections, and I sensed that I’d be writing a punch line about the election process.

Once I had a topic sentence, I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. One topic handle, “run for president,” has the association “voting,” which has the sub-association “absentee voter.”

The other topic handle, “Vladimir Putin,” is associated in most people’s minds with “does terrible things to political opponents.” So I realized I could link the two topic handles with a punch line featuring some wordplay on “absentee voter.”

But working out the exact wording was a little tricky. I wanted to use my Joke Maximizer #6: Make the punch line parallel. But making the angle and punch line both refer to “absentee voter” would result in a punch line something like “whoever votes against Putin mysteriously becomes an absentee voter,” which doesn’t clearly communicate the idea that Putin is making them disappear. The wording that I settled on trades parallelism for clarity.

Joke About Russia and N. Korea

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The joke:

For the first time ever, Vladimir Putin will be meeting Kim Jong Un. It’s pretty cool. They’re meeting at a fancy hotel so the reservation will read “Putin Un, the Ritz.”

How I wrote it:

I gravitated toward this news item because the handles “Vladimir Putin” and “Kim Jong Un” both have a good number of associations that might be used to devise a punch line. Plus both of the names seem to lend themselves to wordplay.

I remembered this hilarious wordplay joke that Conan O’Brien once delivered in a monologue: “It’s been reported that in high school, Kim Jong Un starred in a production of the musical ‘Grease.’ That’s also where Kim met his first wife, Olivia Newton Jong.” So I first considered writing my own Kim Jong Un wordplay joke.

But then I noticed that “Putin” sounds like “puttin’,” which I associated with the song title “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Then I got lucky, realizing that “on” sounds like “Un.”

Linking those two wordplays into a surprising new song title gave me my punch line, thanks to Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

My last task was to construct an angle that logically connects the topic to “Putin Un the Ritz.” The Ritz is a fancy hotel, and these summits often seem to take place at fancy hotels, so claiming that the punch line is a reservation for the summit seemed to do the job.