Mark Few Puns

And the guy says “how many tattoos I have now”

There was once a boy. He was the son of the richest man in the universe. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, he dwarfed them all. He was a multi-trillionaire. Now, it was this boy's birthday. His father asked him,

"My son. I am the richest man in the universe. I could buy you anything you want for your birthday. A store full of lego, all the video games in the world, anything. What would you like?"

His son replied.

"Oh father. It would make me the happiest boy in the world if you could get me one pink ping pong ball."

His father was rather confused by this request. Out of all the things he could've chosen, his son chose a ping pong ball. Nonetheless, he agreed and gave him a pink ping pong ball. His son was overjoyed and spoke to him.

"My father, you have made me the happiest boy in the world. May I go up to my room and play with my pink ping pong ball?"

"Okay son, go ahead."

The boy then went up to his room and played with his pink ping pong ball. When his father went in the next morning to check on him, the boy was sleeping in his bed and the pink ping pong ball was nowhere to be found.

On the boy's next birthday, his father asked him again.

"My son. I am the richest man in the universe. I could buy you anything you want for your birthday. What would you like?"

His son replied.

"Oh father. It would make me the happiest boy in the world if you could get me one box full of pink ping pong balls."

His father was again, confused by this. Still, he bought a cardboard box and filled it with ping pong balls. He gave it to his son, who said.

"My father, you have made me the happiest boy in the world. May I go up to my room and play with my pink ping pong balls?"

The father nodded, and the son went up to his room to play. The next morning when his father went to check, the boy was sleeping peacefully and there were no pink ping pong balls in sight. Just the empty cardboard box in the middle of the room.

On the boy's next birthday, his father asked him again.

"My son. I am the richest man in the universe. I could buy you anything you want for your birthday. What would you like?"

"Oh father. It would make me the happiest boy in the world if you could get me one truck full of ping pong balls."

Now, by this point, the father was extremely confused. Why did the boy want so many pink ping pong balls and where were they going? He asked.

"My son. You are the most precious thing in the world to me and I can certainly get you this, but may I ask, why do you want

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

A man visits a tattoo parlor with a rather simple, but strange request. He requests a short, straight line tattooed on his upper arm.

Once the first tattoo heals, he returns, asking for another, exactly the same as the first.

After a few more visits, it becomes clear to the tattoo artist that he's tattooing tally marks on the customer's arm.

Curiosity getting the better of the tattoo artist, he asks, "What are you counting?"

The man answers, "How many tattoos I have."

I work in the toys department at a local store, and everything has recently been marked down to clearance prices due to new items coming in within the next few weeks.

Cue a dad and his six year old daughter. The little girl has a little bit of a southern drawl. The dad says to pick out something on clearance, and she can maybe get it. So little girl proceeds to pick up everything on clearance and announce "This is clearance!" Over and over and over again.

Finally, little girl picks up a Barbie doll and, once again, announces "this is clearance!" Well, to me and the dad, it sounds like she is saying Clarence. So the dad snaps into full on dad joke: "hi Clarence, I'm dad." I laughed out loud and the dad started cracking up too, the daughter confused at the joke.

TL;DR, Southern drawl six year old clearance shopping, making clearance sound like Clarence, dad snaps, "hi Clarence, I'm dad"

A few friends and I were watching the final of the snooker world championship with Ronnie O'Sullivan playing Mark Selby. Someone commented on Ronnie's snazzy watch saying it was a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso. I then proceeded to ask that if it was a Reverso, did it tell the time backwards. As you can imagine it was met with a number of groans!!

My buddy got a new place and I helped him move. He has a lot of electronics and stuff and one of the boxes was marked, "terminal blocks."

I turned to him and pointed at the text and said, can we at least make them comfortable? It took him a few seconds of me grinning like a jackal before he covered his face and sighed in what I think was defeat. Hahaha!