This position paper starts from the examination of the “Universal Handbook for Political Speeches,” a satirical manual created during communist Poland as a modular tool to parody propaganda’s rigid linguistic patterns and its absence of meaning, humorously revealing the absurdity of totalitarian “newspeak.” Presented here in English for the first time, the “Handbook” is explored as an analog precursor to computational humor systems. More importantly, this artifact shows that humor, rather than being the product of computing, can also arise from a computationalized, combinatorial structure and process. This shifts the focus on computational algorithms and processes as a mode of humor generation, rather than a tool. That is, computing itself—with its processes, structure, iteration, and combinatorial logic—can be a source of humor, rather than an instrument to fabricate it. The very workings of the machine are what can make us laugh, regardless of what the machine carries or produces. The “Handbook” functions here as a spark for reflection, and hopefully a broader discussion, on how this alternative view may impact the evolution of computational humor and its applications at the dawn of the era of artificial general intelligence.