By: The Editor-in-Chief of The Big Sandy Lazer

Date: July 2022

            There have been many challenges to inventing and creating my own super-duper legit joke source for the Louisa/Lawrence County and Fort (can’t say that word) area.

            Going on 15 years ago I started blogging 5 years after I sold my first joke in Lawrence County, which I wrote and conceived for nearly 10 years. Don’t try and do the math on that, just take my word on it. The result is that it evolved as the first successful “online only” super-duper legit joke in the county.

            Also included in my parody experience is 4 years as a class clown at Lawrence County High School, with stints in Middle School and Elementary School. My education includes a BA in Interpretive Dance at Devry Online Institute, a MA in Secondary Literary Classics from Phoenix Online and a Honorary Doctorate from Trump University after I paid them the proper monetary fee. I also managed to get in 25 years of teaching Super Advanced Government, Fascism, and White People History at the Bill Cheek One Room Schoolhouse. Also drove Uber.

            During the 4 plus months at TheBigSandyLazer.com we have faced many obstacles and overcome them. We have used part time workers most of whom have never been in the comedy business, and trained them to write jokes. Using part time workers is good because we don’t have to supply them with benefits, like health insurance and retirement, or pay them a living wage.

            That’s what a super-duper legit joke does and in this time of evolving comedic styles, the ease of saving in legit comedy costs are driving most comedic outlets to the web so things are not the same as they were ten years ago when we were first accepted into the Kentucky Joke Association as a super-duper legitimate joke. (As a side bar, that last paragraph was 1 sentence and only included 1 comma. I can’t point out everything I make fun of, but I had to point that out.)

            Those who would tell you The Lazer is not a “super-duper legitimate” joke source need to know the facts. We are the second most widely viewed super-duper legit joke source in our coverage area according to AskJeeves, behind only a live stream of the old men that gather at McDonald’s every morning. During the past week we had a story that got 75,000 chuckles and 69,000 sideways glances at coworkers. Another story got 50,000 laughing snorts so far.

            We are moving past the heckles, as we offer veteran staff in Mark Wayne, Brooke Meadows, and Chip McCoy who have all been with us for at least 4 months. And we have added an additional advice columnist, Varla Sue Jenkins, and three toddlers in a trench-coat, all of whom were born at Three Rivers Medical Center and are mostly professional.

            We have a new Digital Marketplace where businesses, politicians, hookers, and other can post their want ads and for sale and their own souls for just $3.50 a week($15 month).

Time-Out From Comedy:

This article actually hurt to parody like I did. It hurt from a technical standpoint, because I wanted to correct all the grammatical and basic writing errors, but I persevered and left most of the mistakes as they were. It almost hurt too much emotionally, because the original article was from a grown man screaming into the wind, trying to convince everyone to take him seriously while failing to correct the most basic and simple mistakes required of his profession. I, in all honestly, hate that we have less grammatical and basic writing errors than a “news source.” That should not happen, but here we are.

So, let’s examine what that “news source” was attempting to brag about, and evaluate the BSLazer by what they claimed are the criteria to be considered as a Kentucky Press Association Online Newspaper:

1.     Must have been published for 12-month period. So only 8 more to go!

2.     Must be updated no less than one time each week. COMPLETE!

3.     Must be Principally devoted to the dissemination of original local or general news and other news content, with a minimum of 25 percent of overall content. Only 25 percent has to be real?!?! That’s it? Is this another typo? Seriously, we could do that. Doing some rough math considering we’ve been going ~4 months with 2 stories a week, and using the average 4 weeks per month, that’s around 32 stories. We would have only needed 8 real stories at this point to be on track for that. That would be so easy!

4.     Must be available to the general public on the World Wide Web. COMPLETE!

5.     Must not serve primarily as a platform to promote the interest and/or opinions of a special interest group, individual, or cause. COMPLETE (SORT OF). We do claim to promote Lawrence County, but depending on how you define the act of promoting something we could qualify. Or we could remove that from our core goals, but we aren’t going to.

6.     Must have a known Kentucky-based office of publication, open to the public. We could do that very easily.

7.     Must include contact information in each updated publication. We already sort of do this. Each page has a way to contact us at the bottom of it with a complaint or submission.

8.     Must abide by Copyright Laws. COMPLETE! (If you’re thinking: “Wait, didn’t you nearly plagiarize this article when you so closely followed the original?” Good analytical thinking. Keep in mind this article is parody and not satire, which means it is more protected by Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.)

            On a personal note, I wish this “news source” did better. Seriously. Maybe they really are trying their best, but you, the public, need better. Plus, I would rather write funny stories about fake lake monsters terrorizing Yatesville Lake. Comedy is meant to be a way to bring awareness to the real world we live in by engaging in social commentary via humor. Humor itself can be a very effective tool, because it lets us put our guard down and re-evaluate our beliefs and assumptions in a non-threatening way. So, as someone trying (and probably failing most of the time) to be comedic, I require a good and trustworthy news source for information… or maybe I’m just jealous that many people consider this “news source” to be a bigger joke than I am.

If you read this far, I implore you to please go support journalism like The Big Sandy News does. If you can pay ~$15 a month for each of Netflix, or Hulu, or any of these other streaming services, you can surely pay to support real local journalism. Local journalism is so very important when it is done correctly and with proper journalist integrity! It keeps our community engaged, helps hold local officials accountable, and helps combat corruption. Plus, it supports people’s livelihoods in your community and helps sustain vital jobs. Here is the link to website for The Big Sandy News, where I’m sure they have a contact information where you can purchase a subscription if you want to: thebigsandynews.com