Their first meeting will be yesterday.
Okay, here’s my attempt:
Joke Poo: The Exorcist’s Book Club
The Exorcist’s Book Club has finally launched.
Their first read will be The Necronomicon. Last Tuesday. From the future. Backwards.
Alright, let’s break down this time travel joke.
Elements:
- Premise: A time traveler’s club is established. (Normal setup)
- Punchline: Their first meeting will be yesterday. (Twist: plays on the paradox of time travel and the impossibility of a meeting before the club exists)
- Humor Type: Paradoxical, ironic, absurd. It relies on the logical impossibility of the statement.
- Underlying concept: Time travel and its inherent contradictions.
Now, let’s leverage some time travel-related tidbits to craft some additional humor:
Option 1: A Witty Observation
“You know, founding members of the Time Travelers’ Club are notoriously bad at filling out membership forms. Half the time, they list their join date as ‘Already Left’.”
Rationale: This builds upon the original joke’s absurdity. If they can travel to the past, they could theoretically leave the club before they even joined, causing further paradoxical issues.
Option 2: A “Did You Know” (Used Comically)
“Did you know that chronophobia, the fear of time, is extremely common amongst time travelers? Turns out experiencing the entire lifespan of the universe in a single afternoon can be quite a scheduling conflict. Also, it’s really messes with your sundial collection.”
Rationale: This starts with a real-ish fear and then amplifies it with the logical (and absurd) consequences of constant time travel. The sundial punchline is there to seal the humor, showing how even the most fundamental measurements of time are broken by it.
Option 3: New Joke
Why did the time traveler bring a notepad to the past?
Because he wanted to take notes of the future! He then traveled back to the future with those notes, which then became the present… which he then went back in time to take notes from. This continued until he had a paradox so large it began affecting the spacetime continuum. His pen ran out of ink and he gave up.
Rationale: It escalates the consequences of interacting with the past and future and results in a humorous yet absurd outcome.
In Summary: The original joke sets up a paradox. The additional humor I’ve created builds on that paradox through witty observations about the ramifications of time travel. The ‘Did You Know’ adds a layer of supposed (but ultimately absurd) realism, and the additional joke plays with the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in trying to influence the past.