I may be telegraphing the punchline a bit with this one, but I am really proud of the fact that I incorporated the actual time-lag between Sol and a real star into a gag.  There were all kinds of variations on this joke I tinkered with, such as exploring the geeky side of radio astronomers faced with a chance to have interstellar phone sex with a real alien.  I originally was working on a gag involving a radio astronomer who had made contact with aliens and kept it a secret as he tried to convince them he was King of Earth.  That just didn’t pan out.