For years now, I have phoned in my last column of the year by stealing everybody else's jokes. But even I can't justify doing that anymore.
All jokes are Internet jokes nowadays.
It's gotten to the depressing point where you don't have to be a licensed professional humorist to steal jokes. Any freakin' amateur with a laptop can do it. I gave considerable thought to how I could still produce a column that required no thought whatsoever. I toyed with the idea of simply presenting punch lines from old favorites. God, that joke cracks me up.