Let It Loose Puns

He picks up the ketchup bottle, glances at it and gives a hearty chuckle before slathering his brat in ketchup.

Puzzled, the woman watches as the next customer, a young girl, walks up to order her hot dog.

As she takes the container of relish, she bursts into a fit of giggles and walks off with her food, still laughing merrily.

A middle-aged man steps up next. Shoveling sauerkraut onto his hot dog, he laughs uproariously and walks away grinning.

When she reaches the front of the line, the woman asks the hot dog vendor,

“Excuse me, sir, but why does everyone laugh when they get their hot dogs?”

“It’s simple, ma’am.” he says, handing her a piping-hot sausage. “I’m surprised you haven’t discovered for yourself.”

Glancing at the mustard, the woman lets loose a peal of laughter.

“Ya see, ma’am? The real_joke’s always in the condiments!"

Back a few decades, I was working in a program with a local college in the Middle East.

The name of the program for ExPats has the clever acronym of "IDEA" (hey, I said it was clever); which stands for "Inter-Departmental Educational Adjunct". It's interdepartmental because my particular specialty not only covers field geology but also paleontology and a bit of archeology thrown in for good measure. Everyone hopes to have a good IDEA...

ahem...

Well, we saddle up and head for the Dune Sea out in the west of the country, where the Precambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, Cretaceous, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene crop out and access is relatively easy and non-injurious.

Well, we caravan out, some 30 Land Cruisers, Nissan patrol, and the odd Mitsubishi Galloper strong. We all get our maps, compasses and split up into 5 or 6 special interest groups ("SIG's"); where each IDEA has his own GPS and LIDAR laser ranging apparatus. Reason being, that there are very few benchmarks out in the desert, and even those are constantly at the mercy of the shifting and ever-blowing sands.

Since we're split into groups and at any one time, ranging up to and including some 50 km2, when a real find is located, a device called the "DIME" (Digital-Interface Monitor Encoder) is attached and programmed into the GPS for location later; it is a digital sort of low-frequency transponder, developed from technology used by offshore drillers and jacket setters where benchmarks are even more transitory.

The way it works is rather simple. When something is to be marked for later retrieval, a series of wooden posts are pounded in a triangular manner around the find and the DIME is set, programmed with the GPS and attached to one or more of the posts.

That's the theory, at least.

Everything works well, especially all the hardened electronics and computer gizmos, but attaching the DIME to the stakes is the real problem. It can't be nailed, screwed or fastened with any sort of metal contrivance as that farkles the magnetic field and causes all sorts of goofy spurious signals. Zip ties don't last long in the heat and duct tape is right out. Many sites have been lost to the shifting sands this way.

Velcro doesn't work too well, as the sand fills the hooks of the receiving piece of velcro and soon renders it useless. String or fishing line work, but that's temporary (they melt). Glue or mastic are out as these are supposed to be temporary. Even plastic sleeves don't work due to the heat out

Many years ago,  Red Skelton  told the following joke using his inebriate character, Willie Lump Lump.

Willie explained to the young lady, “I keep a mongoose in my coat pocket.   That way, when I go home after drinking, and there are snakes all over the lawn of my yard, I let the mongoose loose and he kills them all, so it’s safe for me to enter the house.”

The young woman sadly tried to explain, “I’ve got news for you, Mr. Lump Lump, those snakes are imaginary!”

Willie Lump Lump replied, “I’ve got news for  you, so is the mongoose!”

http://red-skelton.info/articles/jokes/willie-lump-lump-and-the-mongoose/

I needed to run to Home Depot just a little while ago, and my eight year old son has been driving my wife insane, so he was sent with me. He asked a hundred questions about what tool does what and why I needed this or that. Despite my distracted supervision, he surely mixed up several loose nuts and bolts.

At the exit of the self checkout line, there's a massive gumball machine that holds massive gumballs. I rarely carry change, so he's out of luck.

Sonny Boy: Dad, can I have a quarter?

Me (checking out): Nope. Don't have one.

Sonny Boy: You don't have any cents?

Me: If I had any cents, I'd have left you at home tonight.

No, he didn't get it, and I'm shocked he set it up so well by saying cents. But, the dude in the line next to me let out a solid guffaw. We made the satisfying, knowing eye contact of two dad joke aficionados. I'm glad someone else heard it.

In the not too distant future, web censorship is pervasive; speech and freedom are strangers to one another; while pirates sail the seas with impunity, digital pirates are incarcerated by the busload.

Anyone who speaks out against this ban on open-dialogue or the free-sharing-of-ideas is ground down and hidden away, and the resistance is loosing its will.

A small group of contributors to reddit, huddled together in a bunker beneath barely-waving flags of Snoo, worked tirelessly to repost new ideas from around the internet, to release ideas from their chains, and make speech free ... again!

But it was not to be - a gang of the governments anti-piracy enforcers descended on this, the last bastion of humankind's will to share-freely. Arriving in an armored bus, ten shock-troopers breached the bunker and it looked like the day was lost.

Fortunately for us all, one brave redditor led the collective out a back entrance and they circled to the driveway. This leader told the other redditors to wait in the bushes while he overpowered the one soldier left guarding the transport. There was a flash of movement, a crack from a fallen branch as it struck the guard, and then, stolen keys in hand, the hero revved the engine and told the redditors to pile in.

He had to will himself ignore the gas gauge as he floored the accelerator on the 25,000 pound ticket to freedom - there was only survival or defeat, and nothing in between. Sirens came alive behind him as he rushed for the border to the promised land, to the Free-North.

As the engine begins to cough, the titanic weight of the transport cleaves the barricades asunder and the pursuing vehichles have to hard-brake to avoid skidding beyond their corrupt jurisdiction. Both exhausted and elated, the redditors follow their hero to the freedom promised by their new surroundings ... but their peril is not yet passed.

Though most of the pirate-hunters glower from the south-side of the border, one special agent has crossed over and is speaking with the border guards. The tension is thick. A long-faced guard turns to the newcomers, clearly troubled by what he must do.

"Folks," he says, a pained look on his kindly face, "I'm sorry, to do this, don't cha' know, but I got no choice, eh!"

Confused, the redditors look to one another, and tremble as they notice the agent's smug expression, greedy eyes fixed on the leader of the exodus.

"Look here, now, you are all welcome here, of course, and since speech is free here, we are

I ordered a bunch of loose fancy tea on the internet. Wanting to let people in the house know that I am expecting a package, I said, "Hey, I just ordered a bunch of tea. It's coming FedEx. It should be here on Friday or Saturday." To which my mom says, "It'll have gone cold by then."

We were all sitting there watching an Animal Planet special on bird migration (not by choice, the remote died), and after a few minutes apparent contemplation dad let this one loose on us.

"Did you hear about the ornithologist whose expedition was cancelled due to a severe snow storm?

I guess you could say things took an arctic tern for the worst!"

I think I may be booking a seat on the soonest ice floe out of this burg just to get away.

Oh no, he's got me doing it! It's spreading - run, save yourselves!