Attention To Detail Puns

Some stories have hooks.

This story has a bloody good one.

It's about love—

Or at least marriage.

My marriage.

At heart, it's your typical fish out of water story, but like I said there's a hook.

The hook's in the beginning.

Although it's really the tail end that's most moving—at least now, when our love's drying up.

Understand:

I'm a fisherman, and I caught my wife with another man.

Well, I caught the man first.

I used Craigslist.

But I suppose the details don't really matter. It's enough to know that by the time he was naked in the shed it was too late for him to change his mind.

He broke down easily. He wasn't particularly thick skinned.

That's where the hook came in—

pushed through a fold of flesh on his back.

He wasn't much in the size department, but I didn't intend for him to get hung up on it. Unfortunately, he kept trying to escape, so what choice did I have? Then he seemed quite insecure, so I pierced him with another steel hook just in case.

Like I said:

Bloody good hook.

After he stopped struggling, I took him down and dragged him to my boat. Then we went fishing.

Hold on, though.

I may need to backtrack a little, because you may be wondering how I even knew she was out there.

The answer is: I'd already seen her swimming a few times.

It was love at first sight.

Like many couples nowadays we met on the net.

So back to when I was fishing:

I was in my boat with the Craigslist man with the steel hooks in his back. I had tied a thick rope to one of the hooks, placed the man onto a net, and pushed them both overboard. He splashed and choked, attracting a lot of attention.

I waited for her call.

It came.

She sounded so near to me.

When she swam just close enough to the Craigslist man in the water, I pulled in the net—and there she was: shining, mine to the gills and writhing so enticingly!

I took her ashore.

I placed her in a water tank and told her she would be my wife.

I screwed her—

shut.

For days I watched her bang—

on the glass.

Until one day it happened: the glass cracked, the tank broke open, and with the water she spilled onto the floor.

Now here I am, watching my marriage fall apart.

Her gills are barely stirring.

Her face: dry and still.

It's only her scaly tail that's still gently moving.

I caught my wife with another man. I met her on the net. I thought our love would last forever, but now, listening to her shriek, I realize I was catfished! I wanted to marry a siren—but this thing is nothing

After a few hours of debate, no one was willing to concede, and it was decided that a vote must be held. Unfortunately, with so few friends present, it was clear that they would need to bring the vote to the greater public. The group decided that each friend would make a plea to the subreddit of their choice, and whoever received the most karma for it would win.

Adam, already undecided himself, decided to go to /r/AskReddit. He laid out the agreement, and asked that everyone vote one their favorite movie, and the one with the most votes he would use for the his friends. Unfortunately, as the votes were split in that sub, his highest post amounted to a mere 38 points.

Paul, a big proponent for the Toy Story franchise, posted to /r/nostalgia in the hopes that everyone who grew up with Toy Story would agree. Unfortunately, as there had been two sequels (with a third on the way) it wasn't exactly considered "nostalgia" and he got downvoted into oblivion.

Bill, who loved Monsters Inc., made his case using some trickery. Going to /r/news, he found a seemingly unrelated post, and made a top-level comment describing, in great detail, why Monsters Inc. was the greatest film of all time. The fact that the post was so out of context made everyone flock to it, and drew enough attention to new him over a thousand fake internet points.

Mike, who loved the Incredibles movies, decided to stay in his wheelhouse. Over the course of several hours, he created each of the family members from the Incredibles in Soulcaliber VI. Finally, he photoshopped the family together, and posted it to /r/gaming. Under normal circumstances this would have skyrocketed to the top, but the format was stale, and thus only received 20k karma. Still, Mike was confident in his victory.

While the other four friends came up with plans on how to maximize their karma gains, Chris sat silently. For hours he sat, making no posts, coming up with no original content. Finally, an hour before the deadline, he broke into his neighbor's house, stealing his copy of the Pixar movie "Up". He took a picture of his theft and posted it directly to /r/dadjokes with the title "STOLEN".

When the group got together the next day to see who got the most votes, everyone was in awe. Chris's post had over 40,000 points. "How did you know that would win?" "Easy," Chris replied. "Everyone knows stolen content on /r/dadjokes gets all the Up votes."

I once had a job in a t-shirt factory. Every day, t-shirts would come down the line, and using this big rubber stamp, I’d apply a handful of dots to them, at random, to just given them a general design that wasn’t blank t-shirt. It was soul sucking, but it paid the bills.

However, I kept running into a problem. I wasn’t applying the dots fast enough. It was a mental thing - I’d get hung up on where should I apply the next dot so it doesn’t look bad, etc. But one of the guys who’d been there longer than I had gave me a piece of advice. He told me to cross to my eyes. That way, I could just kinda zone out and hit the t-shirt a few times randomly without paying much attention to where exactly I was applying the dots. It worked like magic.

Well eventually I was getting ready to leave the factory and they had me train my replacement. It only took one day. I left him with one piece of advice. I told him not to get too hung up on the specific details but just to make sure he dotted his tees and crossed his eyes.