Puns

“The other day when I was walking through the woods, I saw a rabbit standing in front of a candle making shadows of people on a tree.”-Stephen Wright

My latest commuting lecture series has been Power Over People: Classical and Modern Political Theory by Dennis Dalton of Columbia University. It was interesting with lots of contrasting viewpoints between pessimistic theorists like Machiavelli who think men are evil at heart and optimists like Plato who think men can be taught to live a perfect life. The final CD was about Gandhi (a truly great man) and I was reminded of a clever story pun...

Gandhi was a small, frail man often of ill health and bad breath. But he had an inner strength that allowed him to walk long distances in protest marches on his bare feet. He became known as the "Super Calloused, Fragile Mystic, hexed by halitosis".

My father is a punster; once when picking berries as a family I "gave him the raspberry". He responded with "respect your Elderberries." As a teen I loved collecting story puns such as this one...

A man wanted to kill his wife so he went to the town drunk named Arthur. "Artie", he says, "will you kill my wife for a dollar?"
"Sure", the drunk replies. He then follows the wife to a grocery store and strangles her in a shopping aisle. Another shopper is a witness so she too is strangled. Naturally this was all caught on a store security camera and Arthur is arrested. The headline in the newspaper is
"Artie chokes two for a dollar at Safeway".

Bottom Line

“A joke is a very serious thing”-Winston Churchill