ARE WE HAVING PUN YET?

Well, some people love puns and some people hate them. I sort of fall in between--there are some that just make me groan, and others that make me appreciate the wit and the cleverness behind them. As a sometimes gagwriter for several magazine cartoonists, I have even resorted to the comic form. I think I mentioned in an earlier post one of my biggest successes in this area of expression. It was when I worked at the all-news radio station, KYW in Philadelphia. We newsmen had to write our own headlines and then they had to be approved by the editor. We tried to get all sorts of silly headlines past the editor, and one that did receive approval to go on the air was the one I wrote on the occasion of the death of Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam. I wrote:

"There is sadness in the Ho house tonight."

Though approved by the editor, I did not actually use it on my broadcast. I remember the colleague who laughed the loudest was Andrea Mitchell, who went on to fame and fortune and marriage to Alan Greenspan.

Another pun I wrote was for a stand-up act I tried out at the world's first comedy club, The Improvisation in New York. It was: "There's a new book out that's sure to become a classic--it is composed of charts showing sexual assaults throughout the U.S., and is titled, The Graphs Of Rape."

So I got this group of puns this morning from Rupa Cousins, and if you haven't seen them, you might get a chuckle or two:

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering

7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blown-a-part.

8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

15. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

16. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

17. A backward poet

writes inverse.

(Just tried for the umpteenth time to line the above pun up, but it just wants to have its own way with its own margins, so I give up. Maybe the ghost of a dead poet is having fun with me.)

18. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris , you'd be in Seine .

I think my favorite is "non-prophet organization."

And what are you doing to bring more fun into your life this new year

and new decade?

Jerry

On a more serious note, check out my prosperity blog at www.MoneyloveBlog.com