If I wrote Comedy

Good evening! I've been looking forward to this performance since about...oh 30 minutes ago, when I randomly thought, "Why not write an impromptu comedic piece?"

A lot of thought actually needs to go into something like this. For instance, there are a number of topics you just aren't supposed to make fun of, like minorities, women, the unemployed, dead people, the handicapped and so on, leaving you with 'safe' topics like lawyer jokes and how long it takes to get through the DMV. Though it seems to me that these are really poorly thought out.

You don't want to be sitting in the court room when your lawyer leans over and says, "Are you the guy who tells all those lawyer jokes?" "Um...yeah" "Anyway, I just noticed a few things that will make your case a little harder..." Or get to the front of the line at the DMV, "Hey! You're the one who makes those cracks about DMV wait times! Well you've filled out the forms right, but today is Remembrance Day; you need to use the forms from 1999. You can pick them up in that line over there, the really long one."

What you need is a truly safe topic, like politics. That way no matter who you insult you can always count on extremists on the other end to protect you. For instance if I called Howard Dean a lunatic who's destroying the Democratic party by opening his mouth...ok bad example...If I called George W. Bush the coming of the anti-Christ, I'd have the left-wing extremists to protect me from the right-wing extremist. For whatever good that would do...it's the right-wingers who will have the grenade launchers and automatic weapons.

Speaking of President Bush, the recent discovery that 666 numbering the beast of the apocalypse being mistranslated and correctly being 616 must have been great news for the left-wing extremists, "G-E-O-R-G-E six letters, W one letter, now we just need to add two letters to his last name! Maybe if we count Bush Jr. all together..."

You have to wonder what that type of religious extremism does to people. You have the left religious zealots, "He's evil, spawn of the Devil!" vs. the right religious zealots, "Embrace the love of God, and let him into your heart." It gets really weird when you try comparing that to the pure political extremists. You have the right-wing, "Bomb those terrorist! Kill them all!" and the left, "They're just like misguided children. I'm sure if we offer them free Prozac and Ritalin we'll all get along fine."

And as long as we're on the subject of prescription drugs, what's with all the people trying to reduce the number of pills we take? I say we should take as many as possible. Just look at it logically: Now we go to the doctor and he hands out drugs that take care of the condition. Just look at the negatives: Misdiagnosis occurs, we have to deal with the side-effects, and we end up spending more since we have to pay for both the doctor's visit and the prescription.

No with my way, say you're experiencing a headache. You head to the doctor, he pulls out a list of all the medications you're on, reads down the list, "Headaches...Headaches....that's a side-effect for your Penicillin and Vicidin. Try dropping those two for a week." No prodding with cold, metal tools, No room for judgment calls, he just needs to cross reference your symptoms with the side-effects. Even better, you're saving money by not taking those drugs for the week!

Now, getting back to the topics you can't joke about, I don't really get the limit on the deceased. Let's face it, they're the least likely to retaliate against you. You do have to be a little careful and choose people who havent died recently or have left relatives or a legacy. You wouldn't want to insult Alfred Nobel and have the Nobel Peace Prize going to some mugger who robbed you.

Even if you avoid those, it's still not perfectly safe. After a witty jab at Leonardo de Vinci, you might have a few Italian Mafia thugs wanting to know what the deal is insulting their great-great-great-great-grandfather. So the real trick is to find people whose followers aren't a threat. Gandhi for instance, what are his followers going to do? Starve themselves in protest?

And how is a hunger strike an effective means of protest anyway? All those emancipated central-African families are on them and they don't seem to be getting noticed. I say we should limit hunger strikes to people who both need to lose the weight, and who we don't want to have talking. Michael Moore would be a great candidate, a little dieting wouldn't go amiss, and he would tick off a lot less people.

It could even be a television series! We'd have game shows: "For $1000, which of these protesters have been cheating on their hunger strike?" Reality shows, "We have 100 senators trapped in the Capitol Building with no food service until a vote has been made. Which one will stop filibustering and actually vote first?" and the Sci-Fi drama, "Brilliant doctor! With your new anti-food we can perform a week-long hunger strike in only two days!"

Naturally it would spin off into a quickly made anime imitation cartoon, "You cannot defeat me! I have lasted 30 days without food or water!" "The one to be defeated is you, my trust in my friends is sustenance enough." and table top gaming "Sucking on a pebble gives me +5 on my resist thirst roll" "Roll a d20 to see if you passed your conceal energy-bar check"

Well I'm just about at 1000 words, which is 1000 fewer I'll have for real projects. In any case though, I think I hit all the things you're supposed to make fun of: Reality TV, the U.S. President, Religion, and less intelligent people. To get the most out of this, make sure you use the correct voices for the quotations.