... And Then There Was X Puns

After many years of wandering, he finally arrived in a small village in the middle of nowhere. The people there believed in the same religion as he did, but they had no church; they had to go to the nearest one which was in a small town 25 km's from there. The priest took the initiative, asked the Church for support, and with the help of the local men they built their own temple. From there on, he was celebrating the Sunday masses, joining together men and women in Holy Matrimony, and saying prayers at the funerals.

Many years passed by like that.

At the end of an ordinary mass, in early spring, on a chilly Sunday morning he was just guiding the people out of the church, was about to close the gates when an unknown man stepped into the churchyard.

With his dirty and torn clothes, he stood before the priest and said:

• Priest, please be good and give me half a lemon! - the priest was a good man, and even though he thought the request was a bit strange, he went back to the rectory, took out a lemon, cut it in half, took it back to the man and gave it to him, who looked back to the priest with gratitude. However, the priest was curious. He asked:

• Son, why do you need this half of a lemon? - with a fright on his face, and before the priest could have said a thing, he rushed out of the churchyard gate and took off.

A week later, around the same time, when the priest was leaving the church, he found himself in front of the same man in the churchyard. The man said:

• Priest, please be good and give me half a lemon! - the priest was surprised by the appearance of the man and his strange request. Of course he was good, went back to the rectory, and brought the half lemon. Placed it in the stranger’s hand and immediately he asked:

• Here it is, my dear son, but please tell me why do you need this half a lemon? - the man was obviously frightened and immediately ran away but the priest was not sluggish either and ran after him. He wasn’t in a very good condition, he has never run so much and so fast before so he was out of breath by the end of the village, almost fainted. He thought the strange man might appear again next week, and it would be nice if he could keep up with him, so he spent his week working on his cardio. It turned out to be a good idea, because as he thought, the stranger entered the churchyard on Sunday. The priest didn’t even wait for the request, he was good, and brought the half lemon. He received these words from the man:

• Thank you

In the not too distant future, web censorship is pervasive; speech and freedom are strangers to one another; while pirates sail the seas with impunity, digital pirates are incarcerated by the busload.

Anyone who speaks out against this ban on open-dialogue or the free-sharing-of-ideas is ground down and hidden away, and the resistance is loosing its will.

A small group of contributors to reddit, huddled together in a bunker beneath barely-waving flags of Snoo, worked tirelessly to repost new ideas from around the internet, to release ideas from their chains, and make speech free ... again!

But it was not to be - a gang of the governments anti-piracy enforcers descended on this, the last bastion of humankind's will to share-freely. Arriving in an armored bus, ten shock-troopers breached the bunker and it looked like the day was lost.

Fortunately for us all, one brave redditor led the collective out a back entrance and they circled to the driveway. This leader told the other redditors to wait in the bushes while he overpowered the one soldier left guarding the transport. There was a flash of movement, a crack from a fallen branch as it struck the guard, and then, stolen keys in hand, the hero revved the engine and told the redditors to pile in.

He had to will himself ignore the gas gauge as he floored the accelerator on the 25,000 pound ticket to freedom - there was only survival or defeat, and nothing in between. Sirens came alive behind him as he rushed for the border to the promised land, to the Free-North.

As the engine begins to cough, the titanic weight of the transport cleaves the barricades asunder and the pursuing vehichles have to hard-brake to avoid skidding beyond their corrupt jurisdiction. Both exhausted and elated, the redditors follow their hero to the freedom promised by their new surroundings ... but their peril is not yet passed.

Though most of the pirate-hunters glower from the south-side of the border, one special agent has crossed over and is speaking with the border guards. The tension is thick. A long-faced guard turns to the newcomers, clearly troubled by what he must do.

"Folks," he says, a pained look on his kindly face, "I'm sorry, to do this, don't cha' know, but I got no choice, eh!"

Confused, the redditors look to one another, and tremble as they notice the agent's smug expression, greedy eyes fixed on the leader of the exodus.

"Look here, now, you are all welcome here, of course, and since speech is free here, we are

My youngest daughter hates wearing shoes to the point where I hardly ever see them on her. As a result she often loses them. A few weekends ago my girlfriend dropped me and the kids off at the local outdoor pool so we could get some energy out before a long drive to see family. As expected my youngest barely made it out of the parking lot with her shoes on, and as soon as we hit the grass by the pool she kicked them off and we all ran into the water to play and stuff.

I looked up at that big incomprehensible clock they have at swimming pools and saw that we were running late for that long drive, so we fled the pool rushed around getting dressed, only to discover one ... one of her shoes was missing. I was like ... how the hell do you lose one shoe? So we looked all around, then we went to the lost and found. Strangely there were several other single shoes in the lost and found but not hers. We went back and I called her mom to see if we could swing by and grab a spare pair of shoes.

Some kid next to us overheard me on the phone and said, "Hey did you lose a shoe?" I said, " ... yeah ...?" He said, "Yeah I found it over here -- " pointing like 10 feet away -- " so I took it to the cashier's office." (not the lost and found). My oldest daughter, always helpful, ran to the cashier's office and got the shoe, and all was well! We were only about 20 minutes late. Afterwards I was pondering what I could have done to avoid all that and then it hit me. I just needed to make sure that after my kids take off their shoes they are all in one place.

In other words I had just failed to put shoe and shoe together.

(A bit of context first, but you can skip this paragraph if you want). An hour or so ago, I was playing a div 1 co-ed soccer game. Since our captain wasn't there, I was the one talking to the ref, signing the game sheet, providing the game ball, and all that. At some point during the game, one of our guys shot the ball and it rebounded off, giving us a corner. However, none of our guys were going to get the ball as if they thought it was the other team's ball. I yelled at my team "Guys, it's our corner!"

The ref turned to me and laughed, and said "They need to concentrate". I said "No kidding, huh?" He then turned to me with a pre-dadjoke smile and asked me "Why didn't the orange juice pass its exam? ... It couldn't concentrate."

It was in that moment that I knew this grey haired, bearded man was a father of at least one child. He didn't even look back for a reaction, he just turned with his dad smile, knowing full well that the joke has merit enough on its own regardless of a reaction.

My brother and friends are working on a truck when this happened:

Friend: what's that stuff you're putting on?

Brother: anti-seize

...

Me: we also have an uncle seize, but right now he's overseas.

There was a pause then some groans.