Love Strange Love Puns

A Christmas Poem
by Dad (1952–2009)

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the shack,
Not a creature was stirring, we was all in the sack;

Our mugs were placed on the mantle with cheer,
In hope that Saint Nick would bring us a beer;

And me I was tucked up all snug in my bed,
But strains of sweet music still danced through my head;

So I sprang from my bed with a crash and a clatter,
And off down the hall with bare feet did I patter;

There on the chair sat my musical pipe,
So I sat down to play without fanfare or hype;

Come Mozart, come Hayden, Stravinski and Strauss,
And write me some music to bring down the house;

When down from the chimney appeared with a crash,
A strange little man in the smoke and the ash;

He wiggled and jumped and got up like a shot,
Came over and said, "Man those cinders are hot!";

His stomach it shook like a bowl full of jelly,
For a moment I thought it was dear old aunt Nelly;

His nose like a cherry, his ears like two jugs,
I was worried that this guy just might be on drugs;

His language was foul, his jokes they were crass,
So I opened the door and threw him out on his ass;

But then as I turned, boy was I ever surprised;
I saw what he'd bought me, or so I surmised;

For there in the corner right under the tree,
Was some brand new sheet music and a case of O.V.;

I turned to say thank-you but found he had gone,
He was not in the garden and not on the lawn;

And just when I thought that he couldn't get far,
I realized the old goat had stolen the car;

Off in the distance he said with a wheeze,
"I hated to do it but you left me the keys!";

I smiled and laughed for this much I could savour,
For I'd just sold the car to my idiot neighbour;

And once more he called as he drove out of sight,
"Merry Christmas to all, and don't drive when you're tight!"

Thank you for everything, Dad. We love and miss you.

There once was a man who had a job driving a passenger train between two large towns. It could be a very dull job to some, but as the old saying goes, one man's trash is another's gold; he wanted to be a railroad man since he was a boy.

He was a wiz behind the controls of the train, and commanded the 15 car vehicle effortlessly as if he had been born to do the job. He prided himself on the fact that he could bend the rules and speed through curves and grades that made other motormen shiver and back off.

One day however, he wasn't so lucky and came round a bend too fast and derailed his train. He backed off the throttle and braked as much as he could, managing to only have one fatality out of 500 passengers on his train.

Months later there was a trial and he was found guilty of manslaughter in the highest degree, a capital offence in that land, and sentenced to die by electric chair. Punishment came swift, unlike most places, and 3 days after sentencing the former railroader was asked for his last meal.

"I'll have a banana," "Just a single banana?" said the perplexed guard. "The warden will grant you a feast and all you want is that?"

"Just a single banana." he said.

After he downed the fruit, he was strapped into the electric chair an hour later.... The warden hit the switch, lights flickered, and the crackle of electricity could be heard for over a minute...

...but our train jockey instead rose from the chair looking more like he got a stiff massage, rather than be put to death! Well in that nation, the law of the land states that if a man somehow survives being put to death, they must be set free...

...And so it came to pass that our engineer was let go...

And for whatever reason, he got his job back!

So he was back railroading again doing the job that he loved. You'd think he'd have been more cautious with this second chance he'd been given, but you'd also be wrong. Speedy Gonzales with a train license decided to gun his locomotive to hard and send it off the tracks again!

Of course, this time he was tried for the same crime, but at a different time (his was a fair commonwealth and double indemnity was simply unheard of!) So fair was their nation, that the jury came up with the same judgement and punishment. So three days later, when asked for his last meal, the engineer simply said "I'll have 2 bananas..."

Not less than 60 minutes after consuming the last morsel was he strapped into the chair and the switch thrown... And....

NOTHING.

A couple we're friendly with have a really cute 3-year-old girl who loves to play with the small animals in the backyard (mostly toads). Recently the girl found a bird a little later than their pet cat did, and didn't realize the bird was dead. Her mom, being a bit strange and not wanting to explain death to her daughter quite yet, puts on a pair of yard gloves and -- when the daughter wasn't looking -- sticks the dead bird up in a tree. Tells her daughter, "look, he's napping in the tree."

At this point in the story I chime in, "Weekend at Birdie's!"

There was a boy in high school named Bonnie. As you can imagine, he was bullied and picked on because of his strange name. This lead to social anxiety and a few other issues, but there was one girl who helped him through all of his pain. He had a huge crush on this girl, and after weeks of psyching himself up, he asked her to the school dance coming up.

Much to his delight, he said yes, and off to the dance they went. They had a great time and shortly after, started dating. They spent a lot of time together, calling, texting and always hanging out. They were meant for each other. They continued dating after high school, into college. On their graduation day, he proposed to her on the stage. He was nervous about asking her in public like this, but as he got down on one knee, her face lit up, tears formed in her eyes. He asked her to marry him, she said yes and the crowd cheered.

Fast forward a few years, they've bought their own house, and she's now pregnant with their first child. In the delivery room, Bonnie is standing by her side, their newborn child in her arms.

"I love you so much, hon." Bonnie told his wife, holding one of her hands. "You can name our baby girl anything you wise." he told her.

"Love. I want to name her Love." she replied, looking into his eyes. Bonnie was surprised by the strange name, and at first hesitant to agree, but he told her she could name their daughter anything. He nods in agreement and they carry on with their lives.

Fourteen years later, as with what happened with Bonnie, Love was picked on in high school for her strange name. One day, Love came home crying.

"What's wrong, Love?" Bonnie asked her worriedly.

"I hate you! Why did you give me such a stupid name?!" she screamed at him. She was furious. She was tired of the teasing and the mockery in high school. In a fit of rage, she pulled out Bonnie's handgun she had found in his night stand. She pulled the trigger and a bullet passed into Bonnie's chest.

Love panicked and ran away, and Bonnie's wife came after hearing the gun shot. She ran to Bonnie's side, picking his head up in her hands. She asked him what had happened.

"Shot through the heart... And you're to blame..." He said, weakly. "You gave Love... A bad name."

After I let one rip with moderate force, my dad responded by bellowing out (in a crowded restaurant) "SPEAK ON SWEET LIPS THAT NEVER TOLD A LIE!". I turned a lovely shade of puce, and made every effort to show that I had never seen this strange man before.

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