Second First Impression Puns

The day after, the first two meet up, and the first, with his mouth covered in blood, points to a sheep and goes: "See that sheep?" "Yeah." "I sucked all the blood out of it"

The second, with his head covered in blood, says: "Impressive. You see that cow over there?" "Yeah" "I sucked all the blood out of it"

The third comes flying in, covered completely in blood, saying "Guys, I'm really sorry I'm late. It's just... you see that lamp post over there?" "Uh, yeah?" "Well I didn't."

Back in the before times, when sit-down restaurants existed, I used to order boneless cheese sticks and would just throw the word "boneless" in front of any appetizer with 100% corniness. The purpose of this isn't to make a good joke. It's not a good joke. The purpose is to make my dining companions catch some cringe splash damage and want to crawl into a hole and die out of embarrassment for my being horribly corny.

But there is a real, deeper purpose that I've discovered entirely by accident. People, especially young people, are so self-conscious and worried about saying or doing something embarrassing that it taints a lot of social gatherings. They go to a restaurant and are afraid to speak up even when their order is blatantly wrong. They'll tip well even when the food took an hour to arrive and the server has disappeared into the corn stalks behind a baseball field. It takes 2 hours of hanging out together before some friends finally stop nitpicking themselves, uncomfortable in their own bodies and brains, feeling perpetually judged, and begin to relax. These are the kinds of people who go to sleep every night replaying cringey moments from high school. Their last thought of the day is when the Burger King girl said, "Enjoy your meal!" and they said, "Thanks, you too."

It takes 2 hours and/or a lot of booze before they're comfortable enough to take conversational risks and truly reveal themselves. But if I come right out of the gate with a really dumb joke, then we can cut to the chase. There's less danger because someone in the group already shot themselves in the foot, right off the bat. They pulled a pin on the cringe grenade and then jumped on it.

You cringe at my dumb joke and then we're over the hump. Someone has already done something pretty stupid, so go ahead and order the hubcap of nachos and a massive chocolate shake because nobody is going to judge you poorly while they're all judging me.

In terms of price negotiations (haggling), there is a psychological concept called "anchoring". You throw out the first number and all subsequent numbers are compared to that number. This is the same idea. We've already set the humor standard pretty low at "boneless cheese sticks", so you can say the dumbest shit you want and, as long as it's not worse than my cheesy joke, it won't matter.

This is why, when you were a teenager and your dad took you and some friends out, your dad made corny jokes. He knew they were corny jokes. You and your friends un

A meat-loving king has a contest to find the next royal chef. He invites 3 renowned chefs from all over the kingdom to serve him and the favorite will become the new royal chef!

The first chef serves the king an enormous rack of ribs. "Very impressive," said the king.

The second chef serves a huge steak, cooked to perfection. "So satisfying," said the king.

The third chef gives the king a plate with small rocks on a bed of shredded cabbage. "What the hell is this," the king asks.

The third chef says, "These rocks fell from the sky into my back yard. Indeed, ribs and steak are very meaty, but asteroids are meteor!"

Dracula wanted to know which of his bats was the best. So he organized a little competition. The bat which would drink more blood in less time than others would be the winner. The first bat went and came back after 10 minutes. Its mouth was full of blood. Dracula was impressed. He asked, "Nice, how did you do it?" The bat said, "Do you see that tower? Behind it there is a house. I went inside and drank the blood of all the family." Dracula said, "Very good". The second bat went and came back after 5 minutes. He too had blood on all his face. Dracula was shocked, "How did you do that?" The bat said, "Do you see that tower? Behind it there is a hotel. I went inside and drank the blood of all the guests." Dracula said, "Fantastic". Now the third bat went and came back just after 1 minute. There was blood on all his body. Dracula couldn’tbelieve his eyes, "How did you do that?" The bat said, "Do you see that tower?" Dracula said, "Yes". And the bat said, "I didn’t see it".

Me: "He's a second degree black belt"

Dad: "That's impressive, what's his first degree in?"