#5 — UCWA Files $1 Trillion Lawsuit Against People Ripping Off Their Techniques & How You Can Get a Piece of the Action
Written by Ed Toolis, union president
First of all, everybody needs to understand something about humor. At its heart, it’s the universal quest to turn our boring world into a more fascinating and fun place to live in. And to do that, our ancient, humor-creating ancestors came up with the human race’s most brilliant invention. No, I’m not talking about the wheel. I’m talking about comic worlds.
Let me explain. When ancient people accidentally discovered dinosaur bones, no one knew what to make of them. But some early humorist saw it as a great opportunity to create a Road Runner-type comedy routine. Him being chased by a fire-breathing dragon, who kept setting his loincloth on fire.
Not only did the kids love it but also, over the millennia, billions of people have loved all the various versions of it. And after all, like I said, that’s why we got into the business. To make people happy. Which is why it hurts so much when others use the things we’ve created to make people miserable.
To give you an example of what I’m talking about, in the twentieth century, some humor writer created a comic world where bad press was even better for celebrities than good press. But never in his wildest drug-induced state did it ever occur to him that his idea would lead to the creation of a whole industry, of gossip columnists and supermarket tabloids. An industry that constantly drives movie stars nuts by taking the body language in paparazzi photos and using it to spin yarns about alleged secret affairs and about what drove them to luxury resorts — supposedly for rehab.
But that was nothing compared to what would happen to all men soon afterwards. And okay, ladies, maybe we male comics shouldn’t have made so many jokes about PMS or told all those tall tales about our supposed sexual prowess on stage. But ladies, I swear, we were just kidding around, which is what we always do when we can’t come up with the beautiful, heartfelt things we would love to be able to say to the most incredible creatures on the planet. And if you ladies thought our jokes were falling flat, you should have just said so.
There was no need to create a whole new, female-dominated comic world, feminism, where hundreds of millions of us men now have to take Viagra every day, spend hours and hours and hours watching videos by lesbians so we can perfect our skills at oral sex, and are tormented with a constant stream of articles, like this one I just got: “57 Signs She’s About to Have an Affair & What You Need to Do to Make Her Feel Loved, so She Won’t Have to.”
I mean, when we male comics say that women aren’t funny, that’s what we’re really talking about.
But even that couldn’t prepare us for what was about to happen to everybody in the twenty-first century. Suddenly, everyone was getting into the business of using our creations to make people miserable. Sure, some screenwriter came up with the hilarious comic world where we actually had a black president. But after we actually got one, that paled in comparison to the creativity that went into the hundreds of scary doomsday scenarios, that were supposedly going to happen.
Now, that comic world got so bad that it became hard to tell the difference between the real world and the comic. While everyone of us in the humor business, saw Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and the Tea Party congressmen as the funniest comic-world builders on the scene today, tens of millions of people actually took them seriously and thought the end of civilization was at hand. Amazon put their conspiracy-theory books — clearly fiction — in the non-fiction section. And the confusion got so bad that when tens of millions heard who won the last election, they actually thought it was a gag from the Onion.
So, What Can You, a Humor Fan, Do to Help Us Take Back Control of the Creation of Comic Worlds?
Well, the first thing you can do to stop nonprofessionals from misusing the techniques we created is go to Facebook, search for “UCWA,” the Union of Comedy Writers and Actors’ page, like it and share it with all your friends.
Second, anytime you run into someone spouting conspiracy theories, online or off, send them a link to this. Tell them they’re infringing on our patent, and if they don’t cease and desist, immediately, you’ll name them in our lawsuit. And finally, remind them that there’s only one way they can use comic worlds legally, and that’s if they buy a license from me. And either case, I’ll cut you in for 15 percent.
And of course, all our members thank you in advance for your kind support.
Copyright © 2017 by Ed Toolis — All Rights Reserved
Ed Toolis is the author of There’s an App for That Books 1.1, Book 2.0 and Humor, Comedy & Sketch Writing. Available on Amazon.
