Trevor loved tractors. And I mean, really loved tractors. Forget any obsessions or high-level interests you may have, chances are they pale in the face of Trevor’s love for tractors.
Every day Trevor would get up, in his tractor-themed bedroom in his tractor-themed house, with its tractor-themed wallpaper and tractor-themed carpets, and he would make his bed with its tractor-themed duvet and tractor-themed sheets. He would go downstairs in his tractor-themed pajamas into his tractor-themed kitchen, with its tractor-themed tiles and cupboards, and he would eat his breakfast while perusing the latest tractor-themed magazine or annual.
Trevors’s degree in Agricultural Engineering hung on his living room wall, along with a copy of his thesis, which centred around (you guessed it) tractors. The living room was decorated with all sorts of tractor-related trinkets, including die-cast models, paintings and drawings.
The hedges in Trevor’s front garden were trimmed in the shape of tractors. His lawn was vividly decorated with tractor-driving garden gnomes, and his garden furniture was constructed from various parts from vintage tractor designs.
Trevor just had one thing missing from his otherwise tractor-centric life; he had never actually owned, nor driven, a real tractor.
Not for his lack of trying, of course. Trevor had been to many tractor shows over the years, and visited many farms with friends of his, but none of the tractors he had seen had ever been quite right. Trevor was so knowledgeable about tractors that every single one he had come across had possessed some hidden trait that he wasn’t keen on. His first experience of driving a real tractor had to be perfect.
One day, Trevor was flicking through one of his favourite publications, Powertrain Quarterly, when there was a knock at the door. Trevor answered, and it was his friend and fellow tractor enthusiast, Jeff.
Trevor welcomed Jeff in, and over tea and crumpets served on tractor-themed crockery, they discussed the merits of aluminium drawbars and front-end loaders. Eventually Trevor pressed Jeff to explain the reason for his visit.
“Well” said Jeff, “As I’m sure you know the convention comes to town later”.
The convention. Trevor had been thinking of little else the past three weeks. The neighbouring town annually threw a convention for farmers, particularly farmyard machinery. There would be combine harvesters, lawnmowers, and of course, tractors.
“Yes of course” replied Trevor
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http://i.imgur.com/1XdScio.png
Some of them were pretty strange: only he could understand them and explaining the 'pun' to somebody else would take like half an hour. Anyway-
He said, "So I'll go first?"
I said sure.
I think he took "pun-a-thon" a bit too literally - he took out a marker and drew a point, and then he kept drawing this straight line (he's good at drawing straight lines) while taking how many ever steps back. I for one was concerned, because first off I didn't know how long I'd have to stick around for this, and second of all, I didn't know if I could clean the mess he'd inevitably leave behind.
He kept drawing this line! We stepped out of my living room, then my apartment which was on ground-level, and he kept drawing it. He drew his line all the way through the corridor, up until the entrance to the building, and when I kept asking him if he's done yet, he didn't say a word. I had to keep subtly reassuring security and everyone who was staring at my friend hunched over like that robot from Wall-E.
He stepped out of the building and kept on drawing his line. At this point I was trying to guess what the hell is the outcome. I kept screaming punchlines at him like "is this where you draw the line?", "are you going to punch me after this so this is a punchline?" and shit like that. There were people following us and two were taking videos and it was really fucking uncomfortable.
Right after he was outside the building and the premises, he started to draw this stunning drawing of the building right on the pavement. It was almost magical, as if he had been commissioned to make an ad for my place but for a million bucks. At this point the people who were following us didn't even get pissed off because they were so engrossed in his drawing. I was surprised the marker kept going on.
After about 20 minutes - he was a real quick draw (no pun intended) - he stood up and a crowd of two dozen clapped and cheered for him.
I told him, "Dude that looks fucking amazing, but I thought we were in a pun-a-thon. Why such a long set-up?"
He replied, "Yeah it was pretty drawn out."
(for more drawn-out jokes like this, visit r/feghoot!)
When I was a kid, my favourite thing ever was tractors. It was my first word, my first toy, I had posters of them on my bedroom walls and I loved to draw them too. Unfortunately with age I don’t quite have the same amount of passion nowadays. This all became relevant recently as there was this house fire on my street last week. My instincts told me to enter the house to save the family inside as the Fire Service hadn’t arrived yet. I was able to break down a door and actually clear all of the smoke from the house saving everyone inside. I escorted them out to be greeted by the Fireman who had just arrived. Puzzled, they asked how on earth I was able to clear all the smoke. I simply replied “I’m an extractor fan”.
I have written this book to sweep away all misunderstandings about the crafty art of punnery and to convince you that the pun is well worth celebrating.... After all, the pun is mightier than the sword, and these days you are much more likely to run into a pun than into a sword. [A pun is a witticism involving the playful use of a word in different senses, or of words which differ in meaning but sound alike.]
Scoffing at puns seems to be a conditioned reflex, and through the centuries a steady barrage of libel and slander has been aimed at the practice of punning. Nearly three hundred years ago John Dennis sneered, “A pun is the lowest form of wit,” a charge that has been butted and rebutted by a mighty line of pundits and punheads.
Henry Erskine, for example, has protested that if a pun is the lowest form of wit, “It is, therefore, the foundation of all wit.” Oscar Levant has added a tag line: “A pun is the lowest form of humor—when you don’t think of it first.” John Crosbie and Bob Davies have responded to Dennis with hot, cross puns: “...If someone complains that punning is the lowest form of humor you can tell them that poetry is verse.”
Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century self-appointed custodian of the English language, once thundered, “To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the national till without remorse... ”
Joseph Addison pronounced that the seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and tho’ they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius, that which is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art.
Far from being invertebrate, the inveterate punster is a brave entertainer. He or she loves to create a three-ring circus of words: words clowning, words teetering on tightropes, words swinging from tent tops, words thrusting their head into the mouths of lions. Punnery can be highly entertaining, but it is always a risky business. The humor can fall on its face, it can lose its balance and plunge into the sawdust, or it can be decapitated by the snapping shut of jaws. While circus performers often receive laughter or applause for their efforts, punsters often draw an obligatory groan for theirs. But the fact that most people groan at, rather than laugh at, puns doesn’t mean that the punnery isn’t fu
... keep reading on reddit ➡My professor had taught us about these doohickeys called multiplexers, which we sometimes also call "data selectors," in a previous lecture.
At the next lecture we had a review: he would draw a symbol and we would shout out what it represented, and he was hamming it up, acting like a game show host.
He drew a multiplexer on the board and asked the class, "what's this?" "A multiplexer!" some students called out. "Right! Now," says the prof, "what is another word for 'multiplexer'?" "A data selector!" someone answers correctly. But he looks like the student just blew the million-dollar question. "Hmm... 'a data selector'... no, I'm afraid not—that's three words!"
His two young kids have probably learned not to ask him about what he teaches.
