General Knowledge Puns

EDIT: I am now closing applications and will make a decision in the next day or so. Thank you to everybody who applied - the general enthusiasm and support is wonderful to see.

( as this is a self post, I receive no karma - however I would appreciate it if you upvoted purely for visibility <3 )

Hey everybody,

The /r/dadjokes community is now over 85,000 subscribers strong. That's pretty great. Pretty super great.

Thus far, over the entire existence of this sub, I have been the only mod. Quietly watching, taking your feedback, removing a post here, approving another there - doing my best not to interfere too much. I'm going to be honest, it hasn't been that hard.

You lot are generally a pretty nice bunch, give or take a few of the more vocal lunatics. There isn't usually a lot of work to be done, or issues that need resolving.

That said, I'm not awake all the time. I can't lurk on Reddit all the time. I don't have all-seeing eyes.

So it's about time I gave another pair of eyes moderator status and entrusted those eyes with a duty of care.

Let's get down to the chase; here's what I'm looking for in an additional mod:

• You live in a very different timezone to Syd, AU - GMT+10
• You have a good sense of humour
• You're not in this purely to grow your 'net rep
• You're interested in being fair, and maintaining fairness
• You maintain civility in yourself and your responses at all times
• You have a bit of time every day to go through reports, spam, and post comments
• You understand that your moderatorship will initially be a trial, and can be revoked at any time if you aren't being magical and rad
• Some general CSS/subreddit formatting knowledge wouldn't go astray, but is not required

Here's what I am not looking for:

• Strong, cemented opinions about what constitutes a dad joke and what doesn't - everybody's dad and humour is different
• An overzealous post remover - I am not looking for an enforcer, the title moderator implies moderation
• A(nother) dictator - it is my preference that this subreddit be gently guided, and not forcibly ruled, we let the community find itself and we listen to what they say

If you wish to apply for the title and duty of being a moderator to /r/dadjokes, simply state your case (why you should be selected, what benefits or experience you bring, etc) in a comment reply to this thread. I will then get in touch with the most worthy seeming applicants. Upvotes and downvites will not be taken int

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

So my wife and I went to Great Floors looking for tile and generally getting an idea of what we want to finish our basement bathroom and family room with.

The saleswoman points us to this vinyl plank stuff I've never seen before that you just lay down with no glue or anything that is somehow completely waterproof and lifetime guaranteed and all that jazz. She shows us how you need to use a plunger to pry them back up once they are all tight together.

Me. "Wow, I never would have thought this could work.... I'm floored."

In the ensuing groan fest the saleswoman claims to have never heard that one before, I jested that she sounded knowledgeable for someone who obviously hasn't been working in the business very long.

So me and my sister were in the car with my dad talking about school. she mentions that her friend had stapled her hand and my dad goes "what was she afraid she'd loose it?". Later she was talking about a general knowledge quiz she had to do, one of the questions was how many people are on a rugby team and my dad responds with "all of them."

Ok so my Dad was helping me move into my new uni accommodation last month and in the process we had to carry a lot of heavy boxes up my rather steep stairs.

Understandably, being a man in his 50's, he was a little bit worn out after lugging several metre-by-metre crates up to my room, generally full of heavy electrical equipment and books. After letting out a deep sigh he exhaled - 'Crikey, this is like the Great Stairs Crisis of 1965!'.

To my knowledge, or indeed to anyone else's knowledge (including my dad's), so such crisis ever occurred. I just hope he didn't hear my housemate sniggering in his room downstairs*; he does love a good dad joke.

*Ironically I've noticed that laughing at Dad jokes tends to make said Dad more depressed than when you don't, since they're usually fully aware of how bad their joke is and laughing at it only serves to remind them of the fact that people are actually paying attention to the regrettable nonsense which often leaves their mouths.