I recently published a little article in a local paper that syndicated it to three other related newspapers. Entitled “Worst summer vacations in history,” it offered several faux diary entries purporting to be from summer vacations gone bad, including one from Noah’s son, Shem; an Egyptian complaining that the Sun God Rah never appeared while his brother-in-law, Atentophot-Who-Can’t-Hold-a-Job was around”; and a few others. (I’ll get to them in a moment, after I take a moment and wonder if Noah named his son Shem with the hopes he might someday join the 3 Stooges.)

The idea for the article came when a high-powered editor I was working with complained about not being able to get back to me because Internet access at his vacation home was spotty. I’ve encountered the same thing while on vacation — the frustration of not being able to access email, websites, and documents stored in the clouds, even when you should be at the beach or the lake or the mountains or wherever you are. I thought that would make a fun article — to balance complaints from a biblical flood on the one hand and the lack of WiFi for more recent vacations.

Anyway, the article didn’t generate any comments on the website of the newspapers that published it but I did see a mention of it on a fan fiction site. The person who posted the article had very nice things to say about the article, and then, instead of linking to it (as I did, above), she copied some of the diary entries onto the forum. Now I totally appreciate her kind words, and am glad the article amused her. (My wife did not like it so much at first because I assume she was concerned she’d recognize one of our vacations in the list; thankfully she realized we’ve never been to Nottingham where we were victimized by Robin Hood so that made a difference.) But the poster did not include a link back to the newspapers’ sites; I’m not suggesting that entry on the fan fiction site is generating tons of clicks — but none of those readers are clicking on the page, which might further encourage the newspaper editor to continue to run my pieces. (Just so you know, the fan fiction site is not devoted to my work; the article was cited as opportunity for fans of that particular ’60s TV show to write their own faux diary entries of bad summer vacations experienced the show’s characters.)

I’m sure the posting goes beyond fair use because it quotes more than half the article but it’s not like I’m selling copies of it elsewhere. I try to be careful about fair use whenever I cite someone else’s work in one of my blogs, and I always provide a link to the original. I want to encourage people to follow my work — not scold anyone — so, in the future, how about tweeting about it to drive traffic to the source?

Sometimes the way to improve a piece isn't by adding jokes to it but by deleting them. Even jokes I really like sometimes don't belong. I wrote an article last week that had more than two dozen jokes in it but it wasn't that good. Two people who read it didn't think the piece was funny enough. So I went back in, cut out a lot, and brought it to about 15 jokes. I submitted it, and the editor of the outlet cut a couple more, and now it's a much better piece.

I  mention this because I read an article in the New York Times that profiled David Javerbaum, a former "Daily Show" writer and the author of "An Act of God," a Broadway show based on a series of tweets.

You can hate him all you want because of that but he said something that makes sense to me:

“I have no problem whatsoever with cutting jokes of mine,” he said. “Being at ‘The Daily Show’ for 11 years, having my jokes killed by the thousands, and killing other people’s jokes by the thousands, after a while you realize it’s fine, there’s another one out there.”


I read that at a time (last week) when I had trouble with another piece I was working on. After reading those lines about needing to kill jokes, I killed a bunch of jokes that I liked but weren't working for me. After the cuts, the piece read much better. I haven't heard back if the editor of a different publication will run the piece but subtracting jokes improved the piece.

I'm writing about it to remember to keep that lesson in mind. 

Successful writing actually involves a lot of rewriting. That's particularly true when it comes to writing jokes or humorous articles. 

Sometimes it feels stupid to spend (waste) so much time over fart jokes or the equivalent. But as the late Joan Rivers said, it's important to laugh because life, otherwise, can be so difficult.

I've been thinking about the amount of time it takes to write a 600-word humorous article because I've written three different related articles, with varying degrees of success -- by which I mean whether I like them or not.

But while I took a break from rewriting the three articles, I came across a video profile of Jerry Seinfeld produced by the New York Times entitled, "How to Write a Joke." As experienced, funny and observant as he is, Seinfeld took two years to craft some thoughts about pop tarts into a bit he was proud of -- two years! 

I actually found that encouraging. And I'm impressed that someone -- who doesn't have to work -- takes so much pride in the craft.

Here's the New York Times clip followed by an edited version of his thought process in developing that joke. Finally at 2:11 there's final version that Seinfeld delivered on the Tonight Show. Also, here's a link to a lengthy New York Times Magazine profile of Seinfeld, "Seinfeld Intends to Die Standing Up" that's worth reading.

After reading an article about slow Internet access afflicting his high school that a friend's son wrote for his school paper, I realized that the ancients knew nothing about pain and suffering.

Sartre, who was not ancient, merely dead, thought Hell was other people. 

He was wrong.

Hell is slow Internet access, over-sharing and TMI, reality TV, spammers, hypocrisy, and people who think they're cool because they're early adopters of technology.

Check out my article, Inferno Reboot to get a sense of what Hell is really like.

Taxes, like death, may be inevitable and not funny, but I decided to give it a try. "Clickbait for Accountants," which appears on the Higgs Weldon comedy/humor site, looks at articles that might appeal to accountants.

If you are my accountant or anyone from the IRS, i hope you enjoy the piece for what it is. Short, cute and not worth getting upset about. It was intended to lighten the mood during your busy season. No disrespect intended.

Really, it's more a poke at clickbait headlines than anything else.

Thanks for keeping your sense of humor.

It's been a tough time, truth-wise, for Brian Williams and Bill O'Reilly. After writing a piece about Brian Williams for Hot Hot Phone, I dashed off one about Bill O'Reilly for The Spoof

Because O'Reilly is seen as a pundit, he's being held to a lower standard of accuracy -- even though the questions being raised about where and when O'Reilly was during the Falklands war and during unrest in El Salvador were when he was a reporter.

Ah well.

If I had a favorite of the two, I prefer the Brian Williams piece ("Brian Wiliams’ Other Apologies") but there are parts of "Bill O'Reilly Fights Back" that I like a lot. Or to paraphrase Wayne and Garth at the end of "Wayne's Wolrd": 

WAYNE: "Well, that's all the time we have for this blog post. We hope you found the O'Reillygate piece entertaining, whimsical yet relevant, with a revisionist conceit that belied the article's emotional attachment to the subject matter."
GARTH: "I just hope you didn't think it sucked." 

I wasn't necessarily looking to pile onto Brian Williams. 

But as I was taking care of some errands and updating my wife on my progress, I wondered, "What other things might Brian have, um, embellished?"  (Which is not to say I was embellishing on my progress towards completing my errands.)

I didn't think Williams would lie about doing the laundry or cleaning up after dinner or changing the light bulbs or picking up some things from the supermarket or bringing in some fire wood. After all, with an annual salary in excess of $10 million, I assume Williams has someone else to take care of those things.  

So I came up with some other stories Williams might have to retract.

The result is an article that at least one publication deemed as not appropriate "because we have a two-month lead time so we don't publish topical humor." Luckily, HotHotPhone does.

My article is available here. Interestingly, because HotHotPhone publishes on Tumblr, my article has quickly re-appeared here, here, here, here, and possibly other places as well. All have my byline and link back to HotHotPhone. But I'm now wondering how do I aggregate Likes (which Tumblr allows) and reblogs (as Tumblr allows). 

My heart goes out to the wounded and to the families and friends of those who were killed today.

My latest article to hit the Internet is about an old topic: King Richard III. Called "Fit for a King," the article takes a look at newly released research findings about the king, and the fact that the historians seemed to have overlooked the sort of questions that interest the rest of us.

For example,  "the findings indicated that Richard III wasn't a hunchback, as Shakespeare depicted him, but suffered from scoliosis. That alone requires a reconsideration of Richard III (along with an updated, more PC-version of Victor Hugo's 'The Scoliosis Patient of Notre-Dame')."


Other questions include: 

• What was Richard III's favorite cuisine? Medieval Leicester probably did not offer a range of cuisines - it would help if researchers found a 15th century equivalent of Yelp - but it's hard to imagine a time when England did not have great Indian food.
• Where did Richard III eat? If he dined out in the homes of friends, did Richard III bring a hostess gift? If he ate at a tavern, did he pick up the tab? Or did he try get out of it by asking: "Can you pay this time - I must have left my wallet in my other pantaloons"?
  
• Richard III killed many friends and family members on his path to the throne, he made a lot of enemies - so did anyone want to be seated next to the king or were they forced to? Were certain subjects - topics, not people - known to be off-limits? Like, "Don't mention snow or he'll talk your ear off about that 'winter of his discontent'"?
  

This is the first of two articles I've written about historic figures who lived in the 14th and 15th centuries. I know that's hardly topical humor but I'm sure my history teachers would appreciate these. (Perhaps not.) I'm still developing the second one in my attempt to be one of the best medieval-times humorists working today.

My latest article, "Lessons From This Year in Tech and Fashion," appears on Glossy News: ow.ly/GubFR. It is the second of three fashion-and-tech articles I wrote because the concept of fashion and tech seems ripe for humor.

The first, entitled "Five Tips to Help Techies Embrace Fashion," appears on The Higgs Weldon.

The last of the fashion-and-tech articles is scheduled to appear in January on Barnes & Noble's "Grin & Tonic" page.

I should point out this is not a linked trilogy and that JJ Abrams is not (yet) producing the next installment.