Every One of Us Puns

[from NPR-- this sub doesn't allow link posts]

The annual turkey pardon is a silly tradition, and President Obama knows it. On Wednesday, before pardoning turkeys named Tater and Tot, Obama summed up his feelings about this particular duty.

"It is my great privilege — well, it's my privilege — actually, let's just say it's my job to grant them clemency this afternoon," Obama said.

Not in attendance for the president's final turkey pardoning ceremony were first daughters Sasha and Malia Obama, who gamely laughed alongside their father last year. So instead, the president's nephews Austin and Aaron Robinson stood by for what Obama called his "corny-copia of dad jokes about turkeys."

And thus began a pun-fest for the ages. Here's a list of President Obama's groaners from this year's pardoning ceremony:

"Actually [Sasha and Malia] just couldn't take my jokes anymore. They were fed up."

"What I haven't told them yet is we are going to do this every year from now on. No cameras, just us, every year. No way I'm cutting this habit cold turkey."

"Tater is here in a backup role just in case Tot can't fulfill his duties. So he's sort of like the vice turkey. We're working on getting him a pair of aviator glasses."

"I want to take a moment to recognize the brave turkeys who weren't so lucky. Who didn't get to ride the gravy train to freedom. Who met their fate with courage and sacrifice and proved that they weren't chicken."

[After touting positive economic indicators and the low uninsured rate] "That's worth gobbling about."

"We should also make sure everyone has something to eat on Thanksgiving. Of course, except the turkeys, because they're already stuffed."

"When somebody at your table tells you that you've been hogging all of the side dishes, you can't have any more, I hope that you respond with a creed that sums up the spirit of a hungry people: 'Yes, we cran.' "

"Look, I know there are some bad ones in here, but this is the last time I'm doing this, so we're not leaving any room for leftovers."

"And now from the Rose Garden, Tater and Tot will go to their new home at Virginia Tech, which is admittedly a bit hokey." (The Hokies are the Virginia Tech mascot.)

"And so let's get on with the pardoning. Because it's Wednesday afternoon and everyone knows that Thanksgiving traffic can put people in a foul mood."

[from NPR -- http://www.npr.org/2016/11/23/503178220/president-obamas-2016-turkey-pardon-dad-jokes-the-definitive-list?utm_source=facebook.com

Once upon a time there were three little pigs, Pork Chop, Hambone, and Bacon.

The boys lived at home with their mother. One day their mother said, “I no longer have enough food to feed you boys, you need to go out on your own and find your fortunes.”

Not wanting to upset their mother they left the house together to seek their fortunes.

Several miles into their journey Bacon, the little pig everyone liked best, said, “Let’s build our houses here! This seems like a great place to start making our fortunes.”

Pork Chop and Hambone agreed. So they all began building their houses.

Pork Chop, the laziest of the bunch, decided to build his house out of straw, which he apparently stole from a nearby field. It was not a very sturdy building material, but Pork Chop didn’t care. All he wanted to do was play all day, and he didn’t want to spend too much time building.

Hambone was willing to work a bit harder and he decided to build his house out of sticks which he procured by de-limbing every tree within a 300 meter radius of their homestead.

Hambone and Pork Chop were happy. Now all they had to do was to play and sleep the rest of the day.

Now Bacon was a hard worker. He knew that his brothers had used bad materials and shoddy construction methods and he wanted to build the best house he could. He found several tons of bricks stacked in neatly ordered pallets in the forest which he decided to use for his building material. It took him several days, but when he was done Bacon had the best house on the homestead.

The next day a wolf, Scott Howard, happened upon the pig brothers and their new homestead. He spied the straw house and smelled Pork Chop inside and began to think to himself that Pork Chop would make a mighty fine meal, so Scott went and knocked on the door.

Scott said, “Little Pig! Little Pig! Let me in!”

Pork Chop replied, “No way José! Not by the hairs on my chinny chin chin!”

Scott, undeterred by the reply says, “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your crappy straw house to the ground!”

Scott began to huff and puff. He was evidently having some sort of asthma attack, but after a few tugs from his handy dandy rescue inhaler, he was able to muster enough wind to blow Pork Chops straw house to the ground.

Pork Chop narrowly escaped Scott’s massive jaws. Scared, and now homeless, Pork Chop ran for the nearest shelter he could see. Hambone’s house.

Scott, undeterred, chased Pork Chop to his new hiding place. Scott was very pleas

So once upon a time, there was a planet shaped like a cheerio. A small moon made of milk or tied the planet, going through the center of the donut shaped world. On this planet, lived an interesting species. They acted and lived similarly to us humans? But looked just like large Cheerios (with footings hands and feet like miis) Within this society there were levels of Cheerios: original, honey nut, and finally frosted. The originals were the backbone of the economy, doing the herd labor while the honey nuts ran the businesses and the frosted Cheerios (the top of the top) led the world. Our story today focuses on a single Cheerio. Born into an original Cheerio family, this lad learned the hard way how to work. From a young age, he was forced to get a job in the local milk refinery, where his dad worked. He grew up, and soon had a family of his own. His wife, son, and daughter all worked hard, but were happy. One day walking home from school, the kids found a runaway honey nut Cheerio pup, and decided to keep him. It wasn’t much, but it inspired our little Cheerio friend here. One day, he got fed up with taking orders, and demanded a raise. His entire family has worked in this one factory for three generations, and he wanted to move up in the world, not just for him but also his kids. His old boss however, did not have the power to promote this Cheerio, and he was forced to make a life changing decision: he would go to the refinery company and use every penny in the family savings account (under the bed) to try and get a higher position. After waiting on line for over a week, his appoint was finally here. After bickering and bargaining for hours, the refinery company boss saw a spark in this lad’s eye. He agreed to give this Cheerio a promotion to the honored honey nut glaze in exchange for everything this man owned, including the family’s prized honey nut dog. Was it worth it? Well pretty soon he owned his own milk refinery and was able to breed his own honey nut dogs, so yes, yes it was. Owning and operating the refinery went smoothly. Milk was transported from the moon to the planet using space busses, and the milk itself was funneled down to the refineries using large straws. After the milk was ready to drink, it was shipped off to be sold. He was happy working here, but eventually he realized it wasn’t enough. This Cheerio, once a simple original Cheerio wanted to follow the “American dream” and do the best he could. He wanted to become a frosted Ch

My grandfather or Pa, as I called him gave my an absolute gem.

He was actually my step mother's dad and we already called my other grandfather Papa, so we called him 'Pa Ulb' - Ulb being his surname.

He was an incredible artist and would paint awesome things for us or on our bedroom walls. I remember he painted me a massive Star Wars piece on one of my walls when Episode 1 came out. I was only about about 6 at the time and remember being scared of Darth Maul. From this we used to joke around that Darth Maul would come and get me if I did anything wrong. Sort of like a police officer watching my every move, to ensure I behaved.

This carried on as a joke until he died 2 years ago, when I had done something wrong he said he'd call the police and get Maul to take me away. When he did die he had just finished an incredible painting of Darth Maul as a police officer. It was amazing! My parents could make sense of it and weren't sure if it was him that had painted it, so they flipped it over because he used to always write Pa Ulb Art and the title of the painting.

Surely enough on the back it said Pa ulb Art - Maul Cop.

I hadn't put my own picture up on my dating profile, just a picture of my pickup. But that's okay, because she'd just put a picture of her dog. I sent her a message, something almost-clever like "your dog can ride in my pickup any time," and she responded.

We clicked pretty quickly, and started chatting regularly. Every day, sometimes throughout the day. Slowly we learned more about each other. Her dog's name was Daisy. My truck's name was Dodge Ram (I apologized for my lack of creativity). She was a CPA. I was a beekeeper.

And at this, she stumbled. "If we ever meet in real-life, I want you to know that I could never date a beekeeper." But we were still far away from that point, so it was moot.

But time went on, and we gradually became closer to that point. More personal information. What firm she worked for. Where my farm was. Names of relatives. Names of high schools. All the things that just come up in conversation eventually if you talk to someone long enough.

But, oddly, after all this time, neither of us had thought to send any pictures. Until one day I got a message from her: "I never thought I'd say this, but I really do want to meet you in person. I think we have a rare connection, and I don't want to squander it. I want to send you my picture, and I want you to send me yours, but I'm telling you, I can never date a beekeeper."

I couldn't imagine a life without my bees. But I also couldn't imagine a life without her. Tentatively, reluctantly, I clicked on the image attached to her message.

Then I saw her face. Now I'm a bee leaver.

We're a fairly advanced society, we need jokes with content that makes us think. All these easy laughs are making us dumber by the second, and we just keep rewarding them with upvotes that convince the lazy among us to keep churning out lazy jokes. Comedy is one of the only common traits things in every society and culture on this planet and we may not always agree with what is funny, it's very subjective, but no society or culture has no comedy. It's one of the most effective unifiers in all human existence. Of course it's just my two cents, but we really need to avoid cheapening it. There are 6500 spoken languages in the world and this is the most widely spoken, the least spoken languages of course being sign language. Someone once said "a world without laughter would be like a world without warmth, a dark hole in the ground filled with cold water." I know they mean well, but I think it's worse than that. There are three unwritten rules for how comedy should function in the world. We have to learn to follow them or we're doomed as a people, forever, however just like there are two butts in the word "assassin", there are two caveats to this dire situation with lessons learned from the best there is. One is the lesson we can take from Switzerland, I'm not entirely sure what makes them so good at integrating comedy into their lives, but their flag is a huge plus. The other is the lesson we can learn from farmers who know how to put what's important first, how to put in the effort into growing something, and they are always outstanding in their field. We get too caught up in standard modalities of thinking and none of us are totally all right, in fact most of us are at least close to half left. In closing, the absence of comedy when you really think about it, is fear. Fear of the ups and downs of life, much like a fear of elevators. And just like a fear of elevators, we all must take steps to avoid it. Thank you for your time.

Disappointed

… u/ebkbk for this post: Today, my son asked "Can I have a book mark?" and I burst into tears. 11 years old and he still doesn't know my name is Brian. made on 24.11. with 38.9k upvotes

[also already made by u/Tface on 25.03. for 16.9k upvotes]

Let's move on to the top 3 of each month:

January:

1. Is this sub still active? by u/I_Fart_Liquids on 01.01. with 36.4k upvotes

2. Gonorrhea would have been a great name for diarrhea medicine by u/daugarten on 20.01. with 30.8k upvotes

3. An open letter to the mods of r/dadjokes: by u/Alfie_13 on 27.01. with 18.9k upvotes

February:

1. Was watching Star Wars with my daughter. She asked why Luke was climbing inside a Tauntaun, I said to keep warm. by u/jakeisbill on 05.02. for 20.3k upvotes

2. My daughter asked me what I'm posting on Reddit... by u/madazzahatter on 25.02. for 18.3k upvotes

3. When a woman is giving birth, she is literally kidding. by u/ownworldman on 23.02. for 17.7k upvotes

March:

1. I got an e-mail saying, "At Google Earth, we can read maps backwards!" and I thought... by u/madazzahatter on 21.03. for 22.2k upvotes

2. Today, my son asked "Can I have a book mark?" and I burst into tears. by u/Tface on 25.03. for 16.9k upvotes.

3. [When I reach home, my 1.5 y.o. son rushes out to the gate to sit in my lap while I park the car. Then he just grabs the steering and starts shaking it with brrrmmm brrrmmm sound. His cute antics always make me forget that he's suffering from a rare disease.](https://www.reddit.com/r/da

A man gets a new job at the zoo.

On his first day, he still doesn't really understand what exactly he's meant to do, just that it involves the Gorillas. He goes and checks in and the manager sits him down to explain.

"Now look," says the manager, "We've been having some troubles lately with our gorilla. He was acting up, getting really agitated with the environment, so we had to send him away. We told the people that enclosure's being repaired, but we're actually looking for a new gorilla - can you do it for us?"

The man is unsure, but he needs the money, so he agrees, puts on a gorilla suit and goes out there. At first he's a bit mopey, so he sits around a lot.

After a couple of days he begins to warp up and eats a couple of bananas and wanders around a little.

Over the course of the next few weeks he becomes progressively more outgoing, moving around, playing in the jungle gym, hollering around and beating his chest. He's a big hit and everything's going really well for him, until one day he's on his monkey bars and getting really into it, but he slips and flies through the air, over the pit, clears the fence and lands in a pile of bushes in the next enclosure.

He is just beginning to pick himself up, when out of the corner of his eye, he sees something in the foliage.

A pair of eyes lock with his.

It moves closer.

He knows this is it.

He begins to pray.

Suddenly the creature leaps and tackles him - the biggest, ugliest lion he's ever seen!

It leans in close.

He can see every gleaming tooth in it's mouth

He can smell the lion's breath

It opens it's mouth

And from inside the lion he hears a whisper.

"Make this good or we'll both lose our jobs."

I used to work at a starbucks with my best bud to earn some extra cash after school. Every day an hour or so before closing without fail this older indian man would come in and order two large coffees.

We started to talk with the guy since there weren't many other people in the shop and he told us is name was Haind Sahit and that he was a night worker which is why he drank the coffee. After a while, we would just have the coffee ready for him as soon as he came in the door.

One evening my friend went out back to pick some supplies for refill and had to get something from the top shelf, being a short guy he grabbed an old ladder and started climbing but one of the steps broke and he fell and hit his head pretty hard.

He was rushed to the hospital and woke up a couple days later with no major damages but with a light case of amnesia.

Once he got back on his legs he started working at the starbucks again and as soon as Haind heard, he came back to see how my friend was and stepped up to the desk to greet him. Sadly my friend couldn't remember him at all and just asked what he would like to order. Haind turned around with a tear in his eyes and said "You know, you should really have checked that ladder before you used it".

There was a glimmer in my friends eye and he immediatly started preparing two large coffees. As Haind saw he started smiling and crying and came around the desk to give my friend a hug. He asked my friend "What happened, how did you remember?" and my friend answered "Haind Sahit is always venti venti".

My teacher asked us if we knew about bodyless disease, where you're born with only a head and no body.

He said he knew a kid who had it and that every morning his mom would get him up and put him on the window sill to watch the kids playing outside. Then at the end of the day she would always carry him back into bed and he would wish that he had a body every night. One day he woke up and he had a body! He was so excited that he ran out of the house to play with the kids and immediately got hit by a car and killed.

My teacher then said "The moral of the story is: quit while you're ahead"

Groans were heard from miles away.

Back in the late 80's, my dad had a joke he loved to tell everyone he met. It went something like this:

I was driving down the road and ended up behind this ambulance with its rear door open. I tried honking and flashing my lights to get their attention about it, but they didn't seem to notice. As they turned the corner away from us, a small cooler fell out. I pulled over to rescue the cooler, and when I opened it, I found a human toe, on ice.

At this point, the victim of the joke is supposed to ask what he did with the toe. He responds with "I called the Tow Truck!" and hearty laughter.

Being the 1980's, e-mail wasn't prevalent, and calling long distance could get expensive, so he communicated with his out of state family primarily through mailed letters. He wrote this joke (sans punchline) in a letter to his mom. Not knowing it was a joke, she told the story to her friends and family. My aunt heard this story, and told it to her classes (she's a teacher) and one of her students actually got in a fight with his mom who said that could never happen.

A month or two later, we were getting together for a holiday and the toe story came up in conversation. My dad replied that he called the tow truck, and his laughter was met with horrified stares. By this time, nearly everyone in the small town was enthralled with this amazing story that my grandma had told about her son who lived in the city. She was imagining all of the people she had to contact to tell the real story to. Many took it in stride, but others were quite annoyed. Especially my aunt, who had to apologize to every one of her classes at school.

TLDR: A dad joke with no punch line doesn't belong in a letter.

I had been driving for a few years and had just moved off to college.

I was on my way back home to visit and it got dark during my drive. My headlights and radio worked but my dash lights were not coming on. When I got home I asked my dad about it and he said he'd go take a look. He went outside then comes back in the house just a few minutes later.

Me: "Did you find out what the problem is?"

Dad: "I think so."

Me: "Well, what was it?"

Dad: "I'll have to show you tomorrow, if I'm right then we're going to have fun working on your truck all morning."

We wait until morning, and dad wakes me up to go work on my truck. We go outside and he has me walk him through the entire problem again. Which lights were working and which were not, has me start the truck a few times and has me do the same troubleshooting I did the night before. I was getting frustrated and told him I tried absolutely everything.

Then he says "I think there's one thing you forgot." He points at a knob by the steering wheel. I looked at where he was pointing and it hit me. It's the damned the dash-light dimmer switch, and it was set to it's lowest (dimmest) position. When I looked back up at him he just had the biggest grin on his face. He then went into a full explanation on how this knob worked, knowing full well that I already knew what that knob did. Which, by the way, I'm sitting on the driver's seat and he's standing at the driver's side door. So I had no way to walk away from this embarrassing moment. All I could do was look down at the steering wheel and listen to him enjoying his joke.

Bonus story #1:

I'm in my 30s and one of my friends is a 74 year old guy that I play pool with. He always asks me what I've been up to, and one time I told him I met a girl.

He got excited and said "Do you have any pictures of her?" So I showed him a few pictures of us together.

Old man: "She's beautiful! She sounds like a keeper."

Then he leans in with a grin and says "Do you have any naked pictures of her?"

Me: "No way!"

Old man: "Do you want to see some?"

Bonus story #2:

That same old man was at our friend's wedding. He's sitting at the table with his wife and a bunch of other people. The conversation is about how they have been married for 50+ years. He says "I don't know how she's put up with me for this many years. But I've always told her that she can leave whenever she wants to, cause I'm comin' with her."

His wife explained that she has heard all of his jokes so

So I would imagine he would probably be pretty proud of me sharing his "jokes" on here. Even though they were a persistent annoyance for me growing up, I almost feel like sharing them with the Reddit world kind of takes away some of the specialness. I can't claim any of these are original, but outside of my father, I've never heard anyone else use them.

#1. Whenever he has to pay for anything ANYWHERE, he says, "my name is Crime". The usual reaction is a blank stare. Then he says, "Crime doesn't pay".

#2. Anytime we go out to a restaurant and the waiter comes to hand us our check he says, "No thanks we can't stay for the drawing, you can contact us by phone if we win anything".

#3. The mother of all his "dad jokes", this one elicits the most laughter. Anytime he tells someone how he met my mom he says, "In college I used to be her tutor. I tutored her in anatomy by braille".

He'll on occasion drop others, but those are the ones I grew up with and that he still continues to use to this day. The crime joke. Every. Single. Day. I'm surprised my mother hasn't murdered him after all these years...

When I was little, some of the first wind farms were going up in CA along 101. Dad would tell us that the "propeller farms" were where new propellers trained before they could be put onto an airplane.

Every once in a while, we saw workers on the hillside pulling one down and he's say, Oh, look! That one graduated!" Yeah, that sold it for us.

Being a good Dad, my own wee young'uns had all been instructed in the ways of propeller farming.

This evening, well over decade later, my daughter starts laughing her ass off and shaking her head. "OMG, Dad. Those are not propeller farms!"

I work for an organisation which has a very institutionalised system whereby the newest hires are the shit kickers and the people who have been there longest have it easiest. I knew it when I signed up and now I've done my time and moved up the totem pole a bit. I was lucky enough to be one of 10 people hired at the same time in this hiring period and so the shit was spread out a bit.

We have a small fleet of cars that need to be washed every Sunday. This is the newest hire's responsibility. About 2-3 months into the job I was washing the cars with a few of my other new colleagues. Our supervisor pokes his head out of the building and barks at us "Make sure you do a good job; don't forget to do the wheels!"

"Don't worry boss," I replied, "I'll do a wheelie good job!"

Have you ever heard a chorus of groans? I have.

*Khakis: What you need to start the car in Boston.

*Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.

*Doctors tell us there are over seven million people who are overweight. These, of course, are only round figures.

*What do you call a cow who gives no milk? ...A milk dud (or an udder failure)

*There was a terrible fight reported in our local shopping center. It just so happened that a news reporter from one of our local stations was there to record the entire episode. It was an altercation between a prominent dentist and a manicurist. Their disagreement escalated to the point that they wound up fighting each other tooth and nail.

*The little old woman who lived in a shoe wasn't the sole owner - there were strings attached.

*I recently saw a theatrical performance on puns... turned out, it was just a play on words!

*Have you ever tried watching a magician with an anger management problem? Every time he gets mad, he pulls his hare out!

*If you lose your hearing, is it ear replaceable? -Just wondering

*Harvard has long been known for its championship Rowing team – until this year. They had their first ever indecisive rower... he couldn’t choose either oar.

*I found an excellent seamstress who is so enthusiastic about her work that she's happy to make a pair of pants for you …or at least sew its seams.

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

*I bought a new weed whacker yesterday & it is cutting-hedge technology!

*Did you see the movie about the hot dog? It was an Oscar Wiener.

*I read about a recent fire at the circus. The heat was in tents.

*I was saddened to hear that our local bakery was going out of business. They said they had decided to stop making donuts after they got tired of the hole thing.

*I decided that becoming a vegetarian was a missed steak.

*Why do seagulls fly over the sea? …Because if they flew over the bay, they’d be bagels!!

*I wonder if their manure spreader is the only equipment John Deere won't stand behind.

*I saw a very emotional wedding recently... even the cake was in tiers!

*I'm glad I'm not a cross-eyed teacher... otherwise I'd find it too difficult to control my pupils!

*What time is it when little white flakes fall past the classroom window? ...Snow and Tell

*I used to have a fear of hurdles, but I got over it.

*The other day I held the door open for a clown. I thought it was a nice jester.

*What kind of math do Snowy Owls like? …Owlgebra

*What

So my fiance and I were at a dinner with other people who were also engaged and the topic got around to forts in the living room. We talk about how often there should be a fort in the living room when one of the guys says that they should be put up every two weeks, the fortnight.

All of us future dads busted out laughing.

I'm at work today. In my job, I share an office with two other people, and my boss has another office down the hallway.

Currently, all three of us underlings are in the front office. We all are named Josh. For the last two hours, my boss has been calling the front office from her extension and saying, "Bring me the one they call Josh! Is Josh there?!" Then she laughs maniacally and hangs up. This repeats about every five to ten minutes.

I don't know how to make it stop. Please help.

So a long while back, my brother picked out a Father's Day card for my dad that sang various silly praises to the person receiving it. One of those was a deep voice going, "All HAIL the great and powerful DADDISH ONE!" Naturally, our dad loved it.

In fact, he loved it so much that any time there's a disagreement between any of us and he turns out to be the one who's right, there will be a reminder that he is the Great and Powerful Daddish One. Over eight years down the road. Every single time. My mom and I still think it's hilarious.

It drives my brother up the wall.

When we were over his house and were skateboarding out front. Every time he saw one of us fall on our butts he would give us the ol' "careful you might put a crack in it" line. Classic Uncle

My school puts on a blood drive every few months and you must meet a weight limit depending on your height if you want to donate. During one of my classes I was talking to girl about it.

Her: "Are you giving blood?" Me: "No but I'm working it. You?" Her: "Nah I am too light" Me: "Tan a little then"

My teacher overheard us and started laughing while she rolled her eyes and groaned

We had elections earlier in our university and one of the panels comes up to us and gives us a whole speech about why we should vote for them. They even bring in a manifesto and everything expressing every single benefits we could get from voting them. They later tell us how they're not gender biased and have a female in their panel where-as the opposition doesn't. I stand up all serious and shit and tell them how their panel falls under gender discrimination. They ask me why.

This piece of paper says manifesto.

This was always one of my dad's favorites to tell us.

A long time ago, there was a beehive in the middle of a forest. Every day, as worker bees do, they would go out into their fields, gather pollen from the flowers, and bring it back to make honey.

The bees had a problem, though, because every so often an intruder would come around, such as a bear who wanted the honey, or kids who thought it'd be fun to throw rocks at the hive. Finally, the bees got tired of it.

Being the intelligent bees that they are, they built an alarm system for the hive. They built it such that one bee pulls a lever, which triggers the alarm that the bees will hear from the fields, and then the bees can come back to protect their home.

There was one bee who was exclusively assigned that job, and he was aptly named the "Lever Bee." His job was to watch for potential adversaries, and pull the lever to raise the alarm.

Now clearly, the safety of the hive depends on this one Lever Bee. So it stands to reason that he has to be constantly ready and on the alert so that he can do his job.

And that, friends, is why people say, "I'm as ready as a Lever Bee."

[from NPR-- this sub doesn't allow link posts]

The annual turkey pardon is a silly tradition, and President Obama knows it. On Wednesday, before pardoning turkeys named Tater and Tot, Obama summed up his feelings about this particular duty.

"It is my great privilege — well, it's my privilege — actually, let's just say it's my job to grant them clemency this afternoon," Obama said.

Not in attendance for the president's final turkey pardoning ceremony were first daughters Sasha and Malia Obama, who gamely laughed alongside their father last year. So instead, the president's nephews Austin and Aaron Robinson stood by for what Obama called his "corny-copia of dad jokes about turkeys."

And thus began a pun-fest for the ages. Here's a list of President Obama's groaners from this year's pardoning ceremony:

"Actually [Sasha and Malia] just couldn't take my jokes anymore. They were fed up."

"What I haven't told them yet is we are going to do this every year from now on. No cameras, just us, every year. No way I'm cutting this habit cold turkey."

"Tater is here in a backup role just in case Tot can't fulfill his duties. So he's sort of like the vice turkey. We're working on getting him a pair of aviator glasses."

"I want to take a moment to recognize the brave turkeys who weren't so lucky. Who didn't get to ride the gravy train to freedom. Who met their fate with courage and sacrifice and proved that they weren't chicken."

[After touting positive economic indicators and the low uninsured rate] "That's worth gobbling about."

"We should also make sure everyone has something to eat on Thanksgiving. Of course, except the turkeys, because they're already stuffed."

"When somebody at your table tells you that you've been hogging all of the side dishes, you can't have any more, I hope that you respond with a creed that sums up the spirit of a hungry people: 'Yes, we cran.' "

"Look, I know there are some bad ones in here, but this is the last time I'm doing this, so we're not leaving any room for leftovers."

"And now from the Rose Garden, Tater and Tot will go to their new home at Virginia Tech, which is admittedly a bit hokey." (The Hokies are the Virginia Tech mascot.)

"And so let's get on with the pardoning. Because it's Wednesday afternoon and everyone knows that Thanksgiving traffic can put people in a foul mood."