Europe Day Puns

I said "That's probably from flying. Geese get those all the time. It's a migrating headache."

A number of years ago I was in a rock band. We were hugely successful, playing some of the biggest venues and entertaining swarms of fans.

The last shoes we ever played were on our world tour. We played the Americas and then flew over to Europe. We played our way through Russia and even a couple of gigs in China, before selling out our final show in Japan.

It was a hell of a Journey, but it was time for me to hang up my guitar. I retired from the rock star life and got an office job in Tokyo.

I made a few friends at work, and grew close with one in particular, Narada-san. One day Narada had the day off for a funeral, but that wasn't enough; he needed more time. He was torn between his obligation to return to work and his desire to have more time at home. He asked me what he should do.

The answer was simple. I picked up my guitar and played a Japanese version of our biggest hit from 1981:

Don't Stop Bereaving

The other day I was wondering why there are so many stories about vampires in Europe but none in Africa. Then I remembered holy water kills vampires. They bless the rains down in Africa.

There was this guy with no arms who lived in the bell tower of some church in Europe. Since he had no arms, he rang the bells by slamming his head against them.

One day, he fell out of the tower and died. The police wanted to notify the next of kin. The coroner looked at the man and said "I don't know his name, but his face sure rings a bell."

A few weeks later, the man's twin brother came to take over the bellman job. On his first day, he too fell from the tower and died.

Again, the police wanted to notify the next of kin. The coroner looked at the man and said "I don't know his name, but he's a dead ringer for his brother."

Note: Quality Very Varying (I see what I did there) and sometimes subject to specialist knowledge. So I apologise in advance. Shame me with your better puns.

While I was languishing in the Language Centre, doing some semantics antics and considering how all the other linguistics students despised and derided me, I was accosted by a stout man with large glasses who made me a preposition. It was that I should collect terrible puns, to do with linguistics, in order to ingratiate myself yet further with the other linguistics students (including even the phonetics fanatics).

I'm struggling to think of a pun to do with grammaticality that both makes sense and "Is grandma tickly?" correct. I'm also stuck on 'morphologician'. (I'm not actually sure that's a particularly logical word for the subject, though I guess that's more for, er, more for a logician to worry about.)

The problem I have with writing about phonological variation is that one is constantly forced to choose between being fun or logical - very Asian!I always get in trouble with electricians, they think I'm calling them a 'dialectician' whereas in fact I'm just saying "Die, electrician."

I like pscycholinguistics – the only department of linguistics where it’s acceptable to wear a cycle helmet. My Australian accent is terrible but I like to think my Sath Efrican one is predicate. My favourite accent is Received Pronunciation, because it is the accent chiefly used by invisible Japanese people who are ordered online. When the first recipient of an invisible Japanese person got the parcel, they wrote a complaint saying "Received but can't see Asian" and the name stuck.

Why did the speakers whose native languages weren't English, but whose only shared language was English, but they weren't very good at it and kept on having to stop to think about it, stop talking to one another? They came to an agreement. (Get it? If not, write your answer on a pastecard and paste it to the below address.)

What did the 'a' say to the 'the'? "You definitely are ticklish, 'the'!"

Why was the small man eaten by the large bear, which was proportionately bigger than him? It had, er, relative claws.

I think the reason there are so many speakers of Russian is because they all partake in an activity called "copulae shun". (Ok, ok, I know, that was Pushkin it.)

I know a man called Hillary who can, might, should, did, must, shall and will ride an ox. We call him "Ox Hillary".

I always think the verb 'to be' in the senten

Paul has a shitty life, his wife constantly berates him, his job sucks, his boss is a bully, his car is a shitty 85 ford pinto with a cracked windshield and is in bad need of a new transmission and to top it all off he's chubby, balding, and he has a small penis.

The only thing good in Paul's life is his friend Artie. Artie isn't the brightest bulb in the world, but he's always been there for Paul in the tough times. On October 5, 1953 Artie stood up for Paul against his bully in 7th grade. Artie got his ass handed to him at that time, but so did Paul. That incident resulted in a life long friendship. Paul and Artie went to the same High School together. They traveled around Europe that one summer in college. Artie was Paul's best man at his wedding. Everyone thought speech Artie gave was terrible, But Paul loved it Artie was his best friend.

Artie's life wasn't much better either, he never had the smarts for that great Job. In fact he was stuck in a dead end job as a construction labourer. Artie's car was pretty shitty too. Artie never married, but he was happy in the knowledge that at least he didn't end up with Paul's shitty wife.

For Paul's 46th birthday Artie was pretty broke, so all he could get his friend was a single lottery ticket. Artie being the sentimental guy that he was picked the date of the start of their friendship, and their respective ages (46, 45). Paul loved the present, and thought that the two of them should go to the Legion that friday to split a round of beers and listen to them call out the numbers.

On Friday they are both sitting there at the Legion having a laugh over a couple of beers when the cute lottery girl comes on the t.v. to read out the numbers. Paul pulls out the ticket and spreads it out on the beer stained table in front of them. The lottery girl starts reading out the numbers, 45, 10, 05. Both of Paul and Artie's hearts start beating, thats 200$ already. 53, Holy crap thats like a 10, 000 ticket. They both start losing their shit. 46....... Paul feints. He just won the jackpot. 37million dollars.

Two minutes later Artie finally revives Paul. Paul and Artie celebrate the night away, buy round after round for the people at the Legion and get absolutely shittered. They close out the bar and as the ugly lights come on they stumble blitzed, singing, onto the street arm in arm with the winning lottery ticket in hand and start the long walk back to Paul's place.

Halfway home, Paul comes to two drunken

I am just getting back from dinner with my girlfriend and her dad. He was telling a story about how, back in the day, he and a friend of his were on a trip to Europe. I forget why, but they had an option to either go back home to the states or travel without their group for another two weeks. They decided to stay and travel and made a stop in Venice. While there, he and his friend had made it their goal to find and photograph a blind man.

Why?

"So I could show people a picture of a Venetian blind."

My girlfriend groaned audibly. I laughed uproariously.