Promises (group) Puns

For my highschool, Prom is this weekend. A group of friends asked the guy behind me in class wether or not he was going. He said no. He then said...

"I promise to go next year"

Then I turned around and said...

"Oh. You... PROM-ise to go next year?"

He said yeah then went back to work. 5 seconds later he slowly looked up at me with the "really?" Expression.

Worth it.

I'm here today to tell you all a horrible story, so that none of you have to go through the same experience as my friend.

My friend, Hugh, is a very religious man, who is also involved in our community. 2 weeks ago, our local church burned down and Hugh believed it was his Christian duty to help them get back on their feet. Hugh allowed the friars of the church to set up a cart in his mall to sell their flowers. Every day, the friars came in at 7:00 in the morning with a bushel of beautiful flowers and began to work diligently to arrange them into bouquets. All was going well, the mall was generating more revenue and the church was making more money than they were by selling the flowers in front of the church on Sunday. Everyone was happy; until that first weekend.

Our town is kinda tourist-y, so we get some out-of-towners on the weekends. A gay couple came to the mall the first weekend that the friars had taken up shop (Typically, our town is pretty progressive, but the friars tended to be uber-conservative). The couple came over to the cart and admired the flowers; they tried to purchase a bouquet, but the friars refused to sell to them. The couple was outraged and went to see Hugh directly. They complained to him that the friars were being discriminatory, so Hugh promised to have a talk with the friars. When Hugh confronted the friars, they refused to sell to the couple on the grounds that “they were committing an atrocity in the eyes of the lord.” The couple stormed off and promised to boycott the cart.

This past weekend, the couple came back with a large group and a letter from the mayor, saying that the friars had to sell to them, regardless of sexual preference. The friars stood firm and refused to sell to them, so the group started a protest. They brought in signs and started chanting around the cart. The friars continued to sell their flowers and Hugh allowed them to remain, so eventually the protest began to boycott the mall, rather than just the cart.

By today, the mall had lost 50% of its normal weekend revenue. The group sent a letter to Hugh saying that they could forgive him if he shut down the flower cart within the week. Hugh was pretty broken up, but he had no choice. To maintain his livelihood, he would have to kick the friars out of his store. He talked with the friars this morning and revoked their previous agreement. The friars had their cart packed and left by 7:30, to huge cheers from the community. The mall has been pretty norm

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