Near Dark Puns

A man was recruited for a space colony

He had been posted to a planet 14 light-years from Sol. As his ship landed on the planet's glowing surface, he saw a car waiting for him.

"Welcome to Anti-Earth," The driver said, "don't worry we are going to change the name soon. I am here to take you to your quarters and show you the colony on the way."

They had been driving for a couple of minutes when the recruit saw glowing buildings far away.

"Why are the buildings shining like that?", he asked.

"Didn't they brief you about the colony?", the driver asked "We don't call it Anti-Earth for no reason, it's literally the opposite of Earth. Any element rare on Earth is as common as carbon (C) here, and interestingly carbon (C) doesn't occur naturally here. So we had to make good of what we had, the buildings are made of rare metals like radium (Ra) which glow in the dark."

After half an hour they arrived at what seemed the main highway, the road had a faint bluish glow and the sides were lined with metallic posts shining faintly in the double moonlight. They stopped near a small dilapidated shack with the words "COMMUNICATION OFFICE" crudely etched on the walls.

"This is your office. You are supposed to handle communications for the colony," the driver said. "We can't use any wireless communication as the high amount of radioactive gases in the atmosphere interferes with the signal, so we have to use a type of telegraph instead. Come on, I'll show you our most important resource."

They walked a bit till they reached a plantation full of bizarre trees. Some were made of precious metals, some of common earth metals and some of them were glowing radioactively.

"This is the plantation for building the posts. We brought these seeds from Earth and planted them, apparently as they couldn't get the conventional elements they just used what the soil contained. We just sell the gold (Au), silver (Ag) and platinum (Pt) trees to Earth, the iron (Fe) and aluminium (Al) are used for constructing equipment and there are some pretty rare elements like uranium (U) and astatine (At) (which is the rarest element on Earth) which are used for scientific research. However, these aren't what we are here for."

The driver motioned him to follow him towards a small area of trees with a silvery sheen to them.

"These are made of rhenium (Re) one of the densest elements with one of the highest melting and boiling points. It is strong enough to withstand the toxic atmosphere and radioa

Three brothers are trick or treating near a shady house. Suddenly, a spider appears on the first brothers arm causing him to scream in shock. This causes the second brother to run away in fear only to get hit over the head by a dead tree branch. The third brother tries to escape but trips over a coffin. Filled with fright, the three brothers decide to go back home before they are stopped by a ghost that informs them, “The items you have encountered today will kill you in exactly 20 years.” and vanishes into thin air. Understandably, the three brothers were terrified out of their wits and ran back to their house.

20 years later on Halloween, the first brother has booby trapped and spider-proofed his entire house. Unfortunately, he accidently runs into a wall causing a black widow to fall on his arm and killing him.

The second brother has prepared for many years and made sure that he was nowhere near any trees. However, he somehow miscalculated by one day and was killed when a lightning bolt struck a tree causing it to fall and crush him.

The third brother completely forgot about the ghost’s warning and was having dinner with his wife. His allergies were really acting up that night, so he decided to go to a pharmacy to purchase some allergy medicine. Suddenly, without any warning, the entire store goes dark and a giant coffin appears in front of him, opens up, and starts moving towards him. Remembering his frightful Halloween over 20 years ago, the brother starts desperately throwing everything in sight towards the coffin but to no avail. Now there is nothing else left other than a lone bottle of NyQuil. In one last brave attempt, the brother throws the bottle of NyQuil at the coffin and it miraculously vanishes.

Because NyQuil keeps the coffin’ away.

Back a few decades, I was working in a program with a local college in the Middle East.

The name of the program for ExPats has the clever acronym of "IDEA" (hey, I said it was clever); which stands for "Inter-Departmental Educational Adjunct". It's interdepartmental because my particular specialty not only covers field geology but also paleontology and a bit of archeology thrown in for good measure. Everyone hopes to have a good IDEA...

ahem...

Well, we saddle up and head for the Dune Sea out in the west of the country, where the Precambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, Cretaceous, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene crop out and access is relatively easy and non-injurious.

Well, we caravan out, some 30 Land Cruisers, Nissan patrol, and the odd Mitsubishi Galloper strong. We all get our maps, compasses and split up into 5 or 6 special interest groups ("SIG's"); where each IDEA has his own GPS and LIDAR laser ranging apparatus. Reason being, that there are very few benchmarks out in the desert, and even those are constantly at the mercy of the shifting and ever-blowing sands.

Since we're split into groups and at any one time, ranging up to and including some 50 km2, when a real find is located, a device called the "DIME" (Digital-Interface Monitor Encoder) is attached and programmed into the GPS for location later; it is a digital sort of low-frequency transponder, developed from technology used by offshore drillers and jacket setters where benchmarks are even more transitory.

The way it works is rather simple. When something is to be marked for later retrieval, a series of wooden posts are pounded in a triangular manner around the find and the DIME is set, programmed with the GPS and attached to one or more of the posts.

That's the theory, at least.

Everything works well, especially all the hardened electronics and computer gizmos, but attaching the DIME to the stakes is the real problem. It can't be nailed, screwed or fastened with any sort of metal contrivance as that farkles the magnetic field and causes all sorts of goofy spurious signals. Zip ties don't last long in the heat and duct tape is right out. Many sites have been lost to the shifting sands this way.

Velcro doesn't work too well, as the sand fills the hooks of the receiving piece of velcro and soon renders it useless. String or fishing line work, but that's temporary (they melt). Glue or mastic are out as these are supposed to be temporary. Even plastic sleeves don't work due to the heat out

Here's a joke my dad told me. Sorry if you've heard it, but I found it hilarious, and I think you might enjoy it.

In a small town in the suburbs, there was a small family of balloons. There was a mummy balloon, a daddy balloon, and a small child balloon. Every night the boy would sleep between his parents, but his father had had enough.

"son, I know you love sleeping between us, but you're getting a bit too old for it., " the father said. "You're nearly 8, you're a big boy, and your mother and I think you should sleep in your own bed from now on. You can stay tonight but starting tomorrow we want you in your own bed. Do you understand?"

"Yeah dad, I understand..." the boy said with a maudlin tinge to his voice.

"okay son, I love you."

"love you too dad"

The next night the boy tried sleeping in his own bed, but there was a storm outside. It was a dark, ominous storm - the kind of storm that sounds like a cataclysm for the end of the world.

The boy was scared, so he went to sleep in his parents room. However when he tried to squeeze between them, he found he didn't fit. He felt defeated. He felt scared. He felt alone.

But then an idea struck him. He decided he'd just let a little bit of air out of his father. He tried to squeeze in again, but had no such luck. So he let a little bit of air out of his mother. He tried again. Still no luck. Finally, he decided to let some air out of himself. Success! He squeezed in tightly and drifted off to sleep.

The next morning his parents were furious. His father was feeling particularly angry, and screamed at his son.

"son, I told you not to sleep in our room. I told you to sleep in your own bed! Didn't I say that Hun?"

"yes dear," the mother said, feeling slightly deflated.

"so son, what do you have to say for yourself?" the father asked in anger.

"it was dark and stormy and..." the boy tried to spit out.

"I don't care son!" the father interrupted. "you can't keep doing this! I'm very disappointed. You've let me down, you've let me down, but worst of all..."

My dad has been telling this goddamn joke for as long as I can remember -

It's night and completely dark, the only light that shines on the deserted street comes from a lightpost which stands over the sidewalk. A little mouse is frantically wandering around near the lightpost when he gets interrupted by a bear. The bear is curious and asks the mouse what he is doing. The mouse responds: I'm looking for my lense, it fell out and I can't find it. The bear asks if the mouse needs help and the mouse gladly accepts the offer. "Do you know where you were standing when you lost your lense?" asks the bear. The mouse casually points across the street into the black abyss and says "about there, I guess". The bear is surprised by this answer and asks why the mouse isn't looking over there. With a dumbfound look on his face the mouse looks at the bear and says: "Well yeah, but at least I have some light here."