The Old Man and the Key Puns

He goes to the monastery, knocks on the door, and says, "My car broke down. Do you think I could stay the night?" The monks graciously accept him, feed him dinner, and even fix his car. As the man tries to fall asleep, he hears a strange sound. A sound unlike anything he's ever heard before.

The Sirens that nearly seduced Odysseus into crashing his ship comes to his mind. He doesn't sleep that night; he tosses and turns trying to figure out what could possibly be making such a seductive sound. The next morning, he asks the monks what the sound was, but they say, "We can't tell you. You're not a monk." Distraught, the man is forced to leave. Years later, after never being able to forget that sound, the man goes back to the monastery and pleads for the answer again. The monks reply, "We can't tell you. You're not a monk.” The man says, "If the only way I can find out what is making that beautiful sound is to become a monk, then please, make me a monk." The monks reply, "You must travel the earth and tell us how many blades of grass there are and the exact number of grains of sand. When you find these answers, you will have become a monk."

The man sets about his task. After years of searching he returns as a gray-haired old man and knocks on the door of the monastery. A monk answers. He is taken before a gathering of all the monks." In my quest to find what makes that beautiful sound, I traveled the earth and have found what you asked for: By design, the world is in a state of perpetual change. Only God knows what you ask. All a man can know is himself, and only then if he is honest and reflective and willing to strip away self deception."

The monks reply, "Congratulations. You have become a monk. We shall now show you the way to the mystery of the sacred sound." The monks lead the man to a wooden door, where the head monk says, "The sound is beyond that door." The monks give him the key, and he opens the door. Behind the wooden door is another door made of stone. The man is given the key to the stone door and he opens it, only to find a door made of ruby. And so it went that he needed keys to doors of emerald, pearl and diamond. Finally, they come to a door made of solid gold. The sound has become very clear and definite. The monks say, "This is the last key to the last door." The man is apprehensive; his life's wish is behind that door! With trembling hands, he unlocks the door, turns the knob, and slowly pushes the door open. Falling to his knees, he is

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.

So in my calculus class last year in math, there were these two Chinese twins. Ving, and Ling. Ving was always super cool with me. In exchange for answers (he was super smart) I would hang out with him and be his friend and stuff. After I cheated off of him and studied with him though, I did get to be his friend and we got very close.

His sister, Ling, was always uptight about school and she made sure to study, she got stressed about a B, etc. One day I was hanging out with Ving, and we started talking about names. He went off on this huge rant about how he hated his, and how he wanted to change it to something more Asian-American, like Lee. I told him that the Courthouse downtown had a form that you could fill to legally change it. He told me: "I always give you answers. If you could just drive me down to the courthouse this one time, I will never forget you. I just hate this god-forsaken Chinese name and I want to get rid of it forever."

He seemed pretty adamant about it, so I decided the best decision would be to take him. We walked out to my car, and right as I put the keys in the ignition Ling came running and tapped on the car door like a madman. I rolled it down and she started freaking out about how Ving's name had been passed down through generations and generations, but Ving didn't care. He just wanted to go down to the Courthouse and get it over with.

Ling figured that coming with would be the best idea, so if anything else came up that she would be needed for, she would be there for Ving. Honestly, I felt stuck in the middle of a family feud, so I just took her along. When we got to the Courthouse, Ving confidently walked up to the front desk and asked the receptionist if he could change his name. She gave him a little packet of paper and told him to sit down. Ling and I waited patiently while Ving filled out his info. I was watching him fill it out and I noticed he really did want to change his name to Lee.

Before he finished, though, he started tearing up. He told me he couldn't change his name. He asked the lady at the front that he couldn't do it, and she told him he would need twenty dollars to cancel the request. Ling was so relieved and happy that he changed his mind, she dug through her purse, found the money, and started to hand it to the receptionist.

It was at this moment that the most stereotypical Asian man burst through the doors. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a visor, American flag shorts, flip flops, everything. This

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

A man is driving down the road and his car breaks down near a monastery. He goes to the monastery, knocks on the door, and says, "My car broke down. Do you think I could stay the night?"The monks graciously accept him, feed him dinner, even fix his car. As the man tries to fall asleep, he hears a strange sound. A sound unlike anything he's ever heard before. The Sirens that nearly seduced Odysseus into crashing his ship comes to his mind. He doesn't sleep that night. He tosses and turns trying to figure out what could possibly be making such a seductive sound.The next morning, he asks the monks what the sound was, but they say, "We can't tell you. You're not a monk." Distraught, the man is forced to leave.Years later, after never being able to forget that sound, the man goes back to the monastery and pleads for the answer again.The monks reply, "We can't tell you. You're not a monk."The man sa,ys, "If the only way I can find out what is making that beautiful sound is to become a monk, then please, make me a monk."The monks reply, "You must travel the earth and tell us how many blades of grass there are and the exact number of grains of sand. When you find these answers, you will have become a monk."The man sets about his task. After years of searching he returns as a gray-haired old man and knocks on the door of the monastery. A monk answers. He is taken before a gathering of all the monks."In my quest to find what makes that beautiful sound, I traveled the earth and have found what you asked for: By design, the world is in a state of perpetual change. Only God knows what you ask. All a man can know is himself, and only then if he is honest and reflective and willing to strip away self deception."The monks reply, "Congratulations. You have become a monk. We shall now show you the way to the mystery of the sacred sound."The monks lead the man to a wooden door, where the head monk says, "The sound is beyond that door."The monks give him the key, and he opens the door. Behind the wooden door is another door made of stone. The man is given the key to the stone door and he opens it, only to find a door made of ruby. And so it went that he needed keys to doors of emerald, pearl and diamond.Finally, they come to a door made of solid gold. The sound has become very clear and definite. The monks say, "This is the last key to the last door."The man is apprehensive to no end. His life's wish is behind that door!With trembling hands, he unlocks the door, turns the kno