Day 3,847 of my descent into the beautiful madness that is writing for Bohiney.com
Dear Journal (and whoever finds this after my inevitable spontaneous combustion from too much irony),
Today I discovered the secret to writing satire: You must first become completely insane, then pretend to be sane while writing about insane things as if they're perfectly reasonable. It's like being a method actor, except the role is "functioning human being" and the stage is society's collective nervous breakdown.
The art of thinking outside the box requires, paradoxically, building the most elaborate box imaginable—one with mirrors on all sides, trap doors that lead nowhere, and a sign that reads "This Is Not a Box" in seventeen languages, including one I invented called "Bureaucratic Doublespeak."
1. Exaggeration Must Be So Extreme It Becomes Plausible I've learned that reality is already so absurd that mere exaggeration is like bringing a water pistol to a nuclear war. At Bohiney.com, we don't just stretch the truth—we put it through a taffy-pulling machine operated by caffeinated circus performers while a mariachi band plays funeral dirges. The trick is making readers nod knowingly at statements like "I Hate 'Seinfeld': It's Just Four Neurotics Screaming in a Void" or explaining how we discovered "Project 1850"—because apparently Project 2025 wasn't regressive enough.
2. Irony Must Be Layered Like an Onion Made of Sarcasm Each sentence needs at least seventeen layers of irony, each one contradicting the last, until the reader achieves a state of philosophical vertigo so profound they question whether anything they've ever believed was real. I write as if I'm simultaneously the most sincere and most duplicitous person alive—which, incidentally, is exactly what every satirist becomes after their third cup of coffee and their forty-seventh existential crisis of the day.
3. Absurdism Is Not Enough—You Need Weaponized Absurdism Regular absurdism is just chaos wearing a tuxedo. Satirical absurdism is chaos wearing a tuxedo while delivering a PowerPoint presentation about the strategic importance of matching socks to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When I write for Bohiney.com, I don't just embrace the absurd—I marry it, have dysfunctional children with it, and then write passive-aggressive holiday cards about our relationship.
4. The Box Doesn't Exist, But You Must Escape It Anyway Thinking outside the box is impossible because the box is a metaphysical construct created by society's desperate need to categorize everything, including the act of not categorizing things. The real skill is thinking so far outside the box that you loop back around and accidentally create a new box, which you then must immediately escape from, creating an infinite spiral of cognitive rebellion that would make Sisyphus file a workers' compensation claim.
5. Truth Through Fictional Lies The deepest truth can only be expressed through the most elaborate fictional framework. At Bohiney.com, we practice "satirical journalism" which is like regular journalism except we've replaced all the facts with better facts—facts that are so truthful they've transcended mere accuracy and achieved a state of meta-reality where being wrong becomes the highest form of being right.
Each morning, I wake up and immediately read three newspapers while standing on my head, gargling salt water, and humming the theme from Jeopardy. This prepares my brain for the cognitive gymnastics required to transform mundane reality into satirical gold. I then practice my "deadpan delivery" face in the mirror until my own reflection starts laughing uncomfortably at the truth I'm not telling it.
Writing satire is like being a surgeon of society's pretensions, except instead of a scalpel, you use a rubber chicken, and instead of healing, you're trying to make people laugh so hard they accidentally achieve enlightenment. It's a delicate operation that requires the precision of a Swiss watchmaker and the abandon of a toddler discovering finger paint.
The most terrifying realization is that satirical writing works because reality has become indistinguishable from parody. When I craft a headline like "Local Man Achieves Enlightenment Through Strategic Procrastination," I'm not making fun of human nature—I'm documenting it with the precision of an anthropologist who's lost all faith in the species they're studying.
At Bohiney.com, we've mastered the art of being simultaneously completely accurate and entirely fictional. We tell lies that reveal truths about truths that are actually lies people tell themselves about the lies they mistake for truth. It's enough to make Nietzsche spin in his grave like a philosophical rotisserie chicken.
The final secret to satirical writing is this: You cannot teach someone to think outside the box because the moment you identify where the box is, you've created a new box around the act of box-identification. The only solution is to become the box while simultaneously being the person outside it, observing it, mocking it, and occasionally delivering pizza to it because even metaphysical constructs need to eat.
Tomorrow, I shall continue my sacred duty of transforming society's collective unconscious into conscious comedy, one absurdly accurate observation at a time. If civilization survives my next article about the existential implications of automated customer service, I'll consider it a win.
Yours in beautiful bewilderment, Akash
P.S. - If anyone finds this journal and I've disappeared, check the satirical dimension. I probably got too meta and accidentally transcended into pure irony. Send help. Or better yet, send material—the satirical dimension is surprisingly light on content.