Gather Up Puns

"I've rounded them up"

I had never met herbivore

...and ends up on the Island of Trid. The people there are starving and explain to the pastor that it’s because whenever they try to harvest the fruit at the top of the mountain, the nasty giant comes out of his cave and boots them all back down the hill. This infuriates the pastor who then declares that tomorrow he will join them on their next attempt. The next day they all march up the mountain together, and sure enough, out comes the giant who proceeds to kick all of the locals back down the hill leaving only the new guy to gather fruit at his leisure. Finally, he stops and asks the giant, “Well, aren’t you going to knock me off the mountain?”. Shaking his head, the giant says, “Silly rabbi, kicks are for Trids”.

... when the ladder fell away. I wrapped my arms around the trunk and slid all the way to the ground. The skin on my inside upper arms was grated off. When I told my dad, he was very unsympathetic. He said: "You know what falls out of pawpaw trees, don't you?"

Did you hear about the Cockatiel that was trying to find a new home for his family? He zipped back and forth everywhere, but couldn't find a good spot anywhere. Then he came across a bear, sleeping flat of his back with his mouth wide open. Not recognizing what it was, he thought the bear's mouth would be the perfect spot for a nest. He gathered his family and they all got to work building a new home for themselves, but then the bear woke up. Realizing what was going on, he politely informed them that he couldn't let them nest in his mouth. He hated to do it, but it was quite the bird den to bear.

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

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

But Happiness is just not in the cards

Came up with this one myself. I learned today there is not a single card in Magic the Gathering named Happiness.

"Welcome everyone to Dads Anonymous. Again my name is Bill and you will notice that we have a new member, please welcome Gary -- Can you tell us what brought you to us today?"

"Well I have a very embarrassing confession. It's even hard to get the words out."

Bill reassures him, "We are all dads here and have been meeting for decades, we've been through all the highs and lows, births and deaths, tragedies, we've heard it all. Just tell us what's on your mind son, we are here to support each other."

"Well, a couple months ago, I broke both my legs in a motorcycle accident and couldn't walk, so I let my wife use the lawnmower." He says through the sobs...

Bob, one of the other dads, starts to get pale. "...and she didn't even cut it in a crisp geometric pattern, it was just random..." Bob starts to sweat and get dry heaves. "YOU BASTARD", he screams. "HOW COULD YOU LET THAT HAPPEN." The dads rise and get ready to beat the crap out of Gary, when Bill stands between them and breaks it up.

"Guys! Guys, we all get weak sometimes and things happen outside our control. Doug, you remember when you were in recovering from Chemo and you gave your wife a hammer, and she used it to hammer a roofing nail into the drywall to hang a picture!" Doug, looks down in shame, "Yes, that was a bad day, I was so weak. She missed the stud and left a dent in the wall, and she just hung the picture over it, crooked!" There was dead silence. "Thats ok Doug, it was twenty years ago, you were young and foolish, you can let it go". Then all the dads shook hands and sat back down.

Bill starts the meeting up again. Then Gary says, "..theres one more thing, Right after I got out of the hospital, she wanted to make a special dinner for us, so I let her grill the steaks..." "OH LORD THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!" screams Dave, another dad, his face turning red. Gary continues "...she burnt them one one side and they were dry and chewy." Now there is a bedlam, one dad immediately passes out cold, chairs are thrown, broken bottles, Gary is on the ground being kicked in the ribs. After a few tense minutes Bill managed to get the dads off of Gary. "Stop it, Dave you're killing him. Come on, you remember that time you let your wife go to the repair shop for an oil change?" Dave hung his head, and muttered yeah. "They convinced her to change the cabin filter, wiper blades and the radiator collant..." Bill kept prodding "and, aaand" ...Dave broke down, "and she bought a jug of blinker fluid!" T

The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave.

Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.

When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment and said, "Ah, yes, that's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards."

He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling."

So the magistrate kept listening, "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..."

Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate.

He stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Beethoven decomposing."

Once upon a time, there was a dad and he was very well known at gatherings with his witty humor and painful puns.

Then his son came along, and very quickly picked up on dad's gifts but he used them on the internet instead.

Dad mused for a minute, and said it must be heredditary...

My great uncle just passed on Sunday. The family had known for a few days it was near the end. His family gathered around him on his death bed, with some flying in from other states to say their goodbyes.

"Dad," says his daughter, "[Grandson] flew in from San Francisco just to see you."

My great uncle woke up for moment and said, "Boy, his arms must be tired."

Those were his last words.

The dad splits up from the boys in the morning, leaving them the task of getting food for the day.

The boys chance upon a patch full of peas - they have enough for all three meals and to pelt each other with.

Reuniting at the end of the day, the dad asks how it went.

“We played with each other’s peas!” The little one chimes in.

Just a little displeased, dad asks him sternly to clarify.

“We gathered peas, he meant.” Added the middle boy.

“Okay, and what did you have for breakfast?”

“Pea soup.”

“Lunch?”

“Pea soup.”

The boys started sniggering.

“What’s so funny? And what about dinner?”

“Nothing dad. We had pea soup too.”

“Well, that doesn’t seem like much. What did you do all evening?”

Bursting out laughing, they all said:

“Pee soup.”

So this is a bit long, sorry about that.

Zorro and his best bud the Lone Ranger were riding through the desert one day, I forget where they were heading to or where they had come from, but we can safely assume shenanigans of some kind were the driving force.

They have been travelling for most of the day and are starting to get tired. There has been a discussion about making camp for the night, but as things are they have agreed to continue riding for a while longer, till the sun starts to set. Away and off to the west the Lone Ranger spies a plant that seems to have large pink flowers that hang in strips with white stripes running the length of them.

"Zorro, what's that over there?" he asks.

Zorro turns in his saddle and raises his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. "Ah, it looks like a bacon tree, quite common in these parts. Let's ride on, there is a good place an hour from now to set up camp."

The two friends ride on and as the sun is beginning to descend the have stopped and are making camp. As Zorro begins to make a fire he says to the Lone Ranger, "You know, I quite fancy some pork. You ride back to that bacon tree and get some for supper, and I'll finish setting up camp here."

"No problem Zorro, I won't be long" replies the Ranger, jumping back into the saddle and returning the way they came.

Time passes, and the sun begins to get low in the sky. 'Odd', thinks Zorro 'he should be back by now.' Another hour passes and the shadows are growing longer. 'I might have to go investigate, it's not like him to take his time.' More time passes, and, just as Zorro has decided that he must go search for his friend in the dwindling light, he hears the sound of Silver's hooves. Looking into the gathering gloom he sees his friend riding towards him. As the Lone Ranger nears Zorro can see the Lone Ranger is injured, there are cuts and bruises and he has an arrow through his hat.

"What on earth happened, Lone Ranger? Did you make it to the Bacon tree?"

The Lone Ranger dismounts and sighs heavily.

"That weren't no Bacon tree, Zorro. That was an Hambush."

Listen now to the story of the two brothers Hing and Ming. Each was devoted to the search for ultimate wisdom, but they differed greatly on how it was to be found. One day their pet chicken fell ill, began to molt, and soon lost all of its feathers! The brothers decided that this would be an ideal test case and agreed to each spend two months trying to cure the chicken. Hing immediately went back to the university. Having boned up on ornithology and traditional Chinese medicine, he decided that the answer was a prescription of gum-tree leaf tea. He gathered bushels of the tea leaves, brewed gallons of the tea, and poured it into the chicken for the two months.

Meanwhile, Ming traveled all around China, praying at the shrines of his ancestors. One night he had a dream. His ancestors appeared and told him to feed the chicken tea made from gum-tree leaves!!!

Ming, aware of his brother’s lack of success, decided that the problem was quantity. He gathered whole CARTLOADS of leaves, and brewed BARRELS of the tea, and poured them into the chicken for the two months. At the end of the time, the poor chicken was still as naked as a bowling ball.

Moral: All of Hing’s courses, and all of Ming’s kin; couldn’t make gum tea re-feather a hen!

OK... so did you ever notice how every time you spend 4 days alone in the woods and you make it out without a scratch or even a mosquito bite, and you're feeling all peaceful and relaxed and at one with the universe, you're not home 20 minutes and unloading the back of your truck when you slam your right shin into the trailer hitch... and amid the flashing white stars around you, your fists clench, your teeth grit, your body tenses and every "mean, nasty and ugly" word you ever read, heard, uttered or even imagined ("Wait... is #*&%#@!!! even a word??? Oh what the heck? It works!") goes tearing through your brain.... and eventually it passes and you keep working, surprised you're not even limping and it doesn't hurt more than it does... and almost an hour later, when you're finished and getting undressed to take your first hot shower in days, you see a lump on your shin the size of Rhode Island... and the first image that pops into your head is John Merrick yelling "I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!!!... in fact, it literally looks like a second knee on your right leg... so you spend the rest of the evening keeping it elevated and icing it on and off, alternating between a blue gel pack and a bag of frozen peas.... and when you go to bed, you keep the gel pack on while you read and then take it off before you go to sleep... and then you wake up around 3AM and decide to check your shin and the swelling has gone down quite a bit... but since you still have several hours before you get up, you decide to ice it again... but the gel pack on the floor is no longer cold so you get up, walk to the kitchen and open the fridge... and after taking a bite of leftover pizza from last night (because... well, you're here and what the heck?), you go into the freezer, grab the bag of frozen peas and take them back to bed with you... but they're all frozen into one big solid ball and well, that won't do... so you lay the bag on the bed to pound it once or twice to break them up, but instead the bag bursts open and suddenly there are frozen peas sprayed all over the bed and rolling onto the floor... and all those words from yesterday come rushing back into your head as you kneel to gather them all up... but suddenly your anger completely vanishes and you can't help laughing to yourself as you think, "gee, I can't remember the last time I pea'd the bed in the middle of the night"???

There was a bad hurricane coming and the farmer gathered all the cows to put in the barn. The young bull refused to go, and the farmer was forced to leave him in the field. The hurricane came and the bull just leaned into the wind and weaved around. The storm mercifully let up after some damage to the barn and other buildings. The cows were very concerned for the young bull and ran out to the field to check on him. One of the older cows asked the young bull why he stayed outside in the storm weaving etc? "We bulls wobble, but we don't fall down" was the reply.

The priest said he was unsure if he could hire him, but would give him a chance. The man went to the bell tower and started running into the bells head first to make the most beautiful sounds the priest had ever heard. Unfortunately, on his second attempt the man missed the bell and fell out of the tower and died. The priest ran outside to the body and asked the gathering crowd if anyone knew who he was and they all said no, but his face did ring a bell.

A few minutes later another man walked up and claimed that the armless man was a dead ringer for his brother.

I grew up in Vermont. Around my town were plenty of dairy farms, inviting the always wonderful manure aroma. An aroma that nearly forced my father to inhale deeply through his nose, saying, "Ah, fresh Vermont air!"

That's an excellent Dad one liner, as are most dad jokes, but he had another great one that I'm getting to.

You see, the hay bails we saw growing up in Vermont were mostly the cube variety. Hay bailing technology at the time created cubes of hay, so that's what dotted the fields they'd graze in.

As we grew older, we starting noticing the now more common round bails of hay. Dad was not pleased.

I asked him what the problem was or, at least, what his problem was with the round bails. The best jokes are set up when you ask for them.

So, he tells me. New farming technology allowed the round bails to be created more efficiently. They used less fuel in the bailers, took less passes on the field to gather the hay. They used less twine, and even though they didn't fill a truck as well as square bails, there was still a net monetary gain from the efficiency gained elsewhere.

However, studies were done on the bails. The cows approached them differently due to the different alignment of surface area. The way the rain hit the bails and rolled off as opposed to soaking in leached nutrients out of the hay. Some cows even mistook the shape of bail for another animal, and approached them so nervously that their heart rates were known to raise significantly; such a rate that a tinge of acidity could be tasted by those in the know in their milk.

What all of this amounted to... is that with the new round bails of hay, the cows just weren't getting a good square meal.

King Broderick was in trouble. He wasn't a very good king, and his brother Argyle was gathering forces to depose him and take the crown. In desperation, he captured Count Petrie, a very popular man who was one of his brother's cronies, and tortured him to learn his brother's location.

But the count wouldn't divulge the information, so the King scheduled a public execution. The crowds gathered, including the King's brother, who was there in disguise. The Count was forced to kneel, with his head on the chopping block. The headsman stood nearby, holding his axe at the ready. King Broderick loudly proclaimed "Count, you are here before me because you have aligned yourself with my brother. If you tell me where he is, I will allow you to live out your days in my dungeon. Remain silent, and you will die." The Count remained silent. King Broderick motioned to the headsman, who slowly raised his axe and swung it down...THUNK...into the wood next to the Count's head. The Count stared at the axe, visibly shaking. King Broderick loudly proclaimed "Count, that was a warning, and there will not be another. Tell me where my brother is and you will live. Remain silent, and you will die!" The Count stayed silent. King Broderick again motioned to the headsman, who raised the axe. As the headsman began the downswing, the Count cried out "Wait!!" but...THUNK...it was too late, and the Count's head fell to the ground.

At the Count's death, the King's brother leapt up and revealed himself to the crowd. Cheering Argyle, they crowded forward and overran the King's guards. Soon, it was Broderick's head on the chopping block. Argyle, the new King, waved back the headsman, knelt beside his brother and whispered into his ear "Silly brother, don't hatchet your Counts before they've chickened."

Long post is long:

Her: Remember dad's tomato bushes? Well they're attacking! At least one is leaning across the path trying to get at my window... We had the war of the roses, now its time for the attack of the tomatoes!

Me: I don't remember anything about tomato bushes. From one battle to the next.

Her: Yep! Lookout tomatoes here comes the chutney recipe!

Me: I can just imagine a cucumber campaign. Operation onion would be next, which will fail, causing everyone to cry. Dill Day follows, a great success for the allied gardeners. All too soon though, the kamikaze carrots set in, utterly ruining the radish raid. The mushroom maneuver is employed, saving the troops, allowing them to deal the final blow in the asparagus assault!

Her: Don't forget the pumpkins want to supply ground cover with heavy support...

Me: Ah yes, the pumpkin paratroopers.

Her: Thyme is running out...

Me: Prepare the beetroot bombs!!!

Her: Aim for Potato Garden!

Me: Fire the capsicum! Deploy the celery team!

Her: Bring in the egg plant division to support the capsicum!

Me: This is it boys, life or dirt! I want a passionfruit unit to find us a vantage point, and the strawberry unit to surround them!

Her: We had better bring the lettuce up to date!

Me: The cabbage are under withering fire, we need support from the raspberry division! The potatoes are mashed, so well need to send the zucchini in their place!

Her: The zucchini can't take that heavy fire, they'll be grated. Send spinach for some extra iron. The sweet potatoes are digging in at the ridge.

Me: Prepare the watermelon bomb, we need to finish this! The eggplant were squashed, deploy the broccoli brigade! The beans need to get out of there, or they'll be split!

Her: Cauliflowers are going in to retrieve the beans. How brave to risk their florets!

The corn commandos are deployed, but the artichokes are all out of heart, we need to boost morale.

Me: The leeks are down! They'll be flattened if we don't do something!

Are the spinach still operational?

Her: Too bad the pepper isn't on our side, they're well seasoned troops.

Spinach is a go!
Nothing has touched it...

Me: But wait! We still have the chillies to give them heavy fire!

Her: And the squashes and peas!

Me: The ginger is holding it's ground, but it's being cut down by the pineapple!

The basil should make things interesting, send them to aid the potatoes.

**Her:

3 spears of asparagus are walking down some railroad tracks when a train comes along. The first asparagus says, "Watch this!"

He proceeds to make his way across the tracks, dodging and weaving between the wheels and making it clear to the other side.

The second asparagus says, "I got this!" and proceeds to dodge and weave across the track and between the wheels, only at the last second gets bumped off, leaving her with a bruised behind.

The last asparagus strolls up to tracks and hops right over and BAM gets slammed by underside of the train right in crown, breaking the stalk and sending him flying. His 2 friends come running up, they gather him up as best they can and rush him to the nearest hospital.

After a grueling 12 hour surgery, the head surgeon comes out to the waiting area to update the asparagus spears.

"well, I have good news and I have bad news." he said.

"The good news is your friend is going to live."

"The bad news is he will be a vegetable for the rest of his life."

After the fireworks, we were gathering up our things to leave. She asked if her new turtle was OK. I picked up its little carrier, peered inside, and said, "It looks a little shell-shocked."

So, I'm the coach of my daughter's soccer team. After a tournament, we had to do our share of the clean up and they told us to gather all of the cones set up on the fields. I turned to few girls on the team and said:

"I guess you could say that we're CONEsolidating."

... I wonder why my daughter doesn't want me to coach next year.

We walked past the entrance where people were setting up for card game tournaments, including Magic: The Gathering. He stopped me and said completely deadpan, "This is where the magic happens."

I was gathering the leaves from my huge pile of leaves and placing them in a garbage bag inside of a garbage can. To squeeze them down, I lifted my foot up and stomped on the leaves. One of my buddies who's like 13 says to me from the other side of the fence "All you can do is hurt leaves." I stare back at him and say "so the others know they better leave me alone."

My dad would gather us around in a circle, claiming to be a magician. Then, he would roll up his tie yelling, "Which part of the tie will drop first, the big or the small!" We would guess while he's rolling up the tie. He lets it go and yells, "IT'S a TIE!"

So the other day my uncle was riding his '81 Honda, just out for a cruise. And the bike caught on fire. A guy came running up to him and threw him a fire extinguisher. He caught it cause he's a bad ass. Any way after my uncle put out the fire that was melting his bike and burning him. A crowd of about 13 people were gathered around, and he pipes up saying

"Wow, that's one hot bike."

Needless to say no one laughed. He was the only psycho laughing after being on fire minutes before.

At a family gathering today, my uncle comes up to me and the following conversation occurs:

Him: touching jacket "Is this felt?" Me: "I don't know..." Him: "Well it is now!" Me: -_-

Whilst I really enjoy Dad jokes (why else would I be subscribed here) I cannot endorse this one at all, but every year or two Dad will break this one out at family gatherings, weddings and funerals.

A man was recently fired from his job and needed somewhere to make some money. Fortunately a circus was in town, so he went along to see if they had any vacancies.

When he walked onto the site he saw the main tent and walked in. The ringmaster came up to him and asked what he wanted.

"Can I have a job please?" said the man.

"Well what can you do?" replied the ringmaster.

The man thought about it for a bit before he knew what he was going to do. When it came to him he didn't say another word, but he brought his arms in like this (Dad proceeds to demonstrate by bringing his hand up to his armpits making wings) and started to flap his arms (Oh look, Dad's flapping his arms too).

Not much was happening at first, but slowly you could see his feet rise, ever so slowly off the ground. Eventually the man is a few meters off the ground, flapping his arms, but that's just the beginning.

He then flies to the top of the tent and starts speeding up, flying laps around the tent. He's showing off now, doing loop de loops and diving down. Eventually he feels he's shown his worth and lowers himself down to the ground.

He looks at the ringmaster and says "Well, what do you think?"

The ringmaster looks back and says "Is that all you can do?" (Long pause) "Bird Impressions?"

The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave.

Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.

When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards."

He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling."

So the magistrate kept listening, "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..."

Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate.

He stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Beethoven decomposing."