Mark Wells Puns

She’s a caring cairn Karen.

Which is mad because those places are really well lit. (h/t Mark Smith)

So, she walks over and takes a seat next to him on the bench, turns to him and says, "Sorry to bother you. I know this may be a little forward but I would love to grab coffee with you some time."

Flattered, the man responds, "Sure... but what makes you so certain you and I would get along so well?"

"Well..." the woman says. "A couple things, actually. I noticed you were wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt. Iron Maiden are my favorite band of all time. When they went on their reunion tour in 1999, my parents took me to see them in Cleveland. I was 12 years old and it was the first concert I ever went to. I absolutely love Iron Maiden."

The man can't believe it.

"I saw them play Cleveland in '99! First concert I ever went to on my own. My best friend Jimmy Spitz and I told our parents we were sleeping at each others' houses, snuck out, took a bus into the city and saw them play at the Plain Dealer Pavillion!"

Naturally, they're both shocked.

"If that isn't weird enough..." says the woman. "I noticed you're reading Mark Twain. I was a communications major in university and I actually wrote my thesis on Mark Twain and how he used satire as a lens to comment on current events of the time, comparing him to satirical news sources of today. He's my favorite author."

Now the man is really taken aback, "Get out of here! I was an English major in university! I specialized in 19th century American literature and this is like my fourth or fifth time reading Tom Sawyer, I absolutely love Mark Twain."

They both can't believe it...this has got to be a match made in heaven.

"Ok..." the woman says. "Well, buckle up because here's the icing on the cake. I noticed you're eating a prune. Prunes are my absolute favorite fruit. When I was a kid, my grandfather lived on a farm. He had an orchard that mainly grew apples and some lemons, but he knew how much my sister and I loved prunes so he kept a couple of plum trees. Every year at the end of the summer, we'd go up and harvest the plums with him. He'd dry them and by the time we'd go back to his place for Thanksgiving he'd always have those prunes saved just for us. They're my favorite fruit! I love prunes, you're eating a prune, this has got to be fate. What do you say?"

The man puts down his fruit and responds,

"It's a date!"

One shows the other a prototype thermometer.

"We haven't figured out what to call it yet, but I need you to tell me what temperature this room is when i turn off the air conditioner so it cools to room temperature."

The other scientist gives him the OK and he walks out of the room to turn off the heater.

"OK, what temperature is it?"

"There's no marks on it!" The other scientist replied.

"Well, tell me the height of the mercury on the inside, relative to length of the bottle!"

"Alright" The scientist says. "In that case, it's fair in height"

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

I didn't even mean to make a dad joke, apparently after seven years of being a dad, it just starts to happen.

I was installing some shelves up on the walls over my computer desk. Having just finished marking the walls where I was going to insert the screws, I was now installing the brackets onto the boards.

From behind me, I heard my wife say, "How's it going?"

Me: "Well, it's shellfish."

Wife: "It's what?"

Me: "Shellfish. I'm still putting the mounting brackets on, so it's not a shelf yet. It's shelf-ish. Shellfish."

At least my daughter thought it was funny.

… u/ebkbk for this post: Today, my son asked "Can I have a book mark?" and I burst into tears. 11 years old and he still doesn't know my name is Brian. made on 24.11. with 38.9k upvotes

[also already made by u/Tface on 25.03. for 16.9k upvotes]

Let's move on to the top 3 of each month:

January:

1. Is this sub still active? by u/I_Fart_Liquids on 01.01. with 36.4k upvotes

2. Gonorrhea would have been a great name for diarrhea medicine by u/daugarten on 20.01. with 30.8k upvotes

3. An open letter to the mods of r/dadjokes: by u/Alfie_13 on 27.01. with 18.9k upvotes

February:

1. Was watching Star Wars with my daughter. She asked why Luke was climbing inside a Tauntaun, I said to keep warm. by u/jakeisbill on 05.02. for 20.3k upvotes

2. My daughter asked me what I'm posting on Reddit... by u/madazzahatter on 25.02. for 18.3k upvotes

3. When a woman is giving birth, she is literally kidding. by u/ownworldman on 23.02. for 17.7k upvotes

March:

1. I got an e-mail saying, "At Google Earth, we can read maps backwards!" and I thought... by u/madazzahatter on 21.03. for 22.2k upvotes

2. Today, my son asked "Can I have a book mark?" and I burst into tears. by u/Tface on 25.03. for 16.9k upvotes.

3. [When I reach home, my 1.5 y.o. son rushes out to the gate to sit in my lap while I park the car. Then he just grabs the steering and starts shaking it with brrrmmm brrrmmm sound. His cute antics always make me forget that he's suffering from a rare disease.](https://www.reddit.com/r/da

Well, really it's more of an Accent mark.

Im helping clean out an old garage that's been filled with random storage for a couple decades. For the last 10ish years it's had a mouse problem.

A couple weeks ago I set out traps and none of us have had time to be there since. Came back today and three of the four had caught mice. Pretty happy with that.

I chucked out the carcasses and when I went to reset the traps I got a bit of a surprise and my comment drew my friend over.

"What's up?" he asks.

"Look at this," I reply, showing him the traps. "After the first three mice got caught another one came along, opened the lid, and ate the rest of the peanut butter. And then look at this! He stuck his nose into the fourth and are just enough of it not to trigger the trap!" Holding up the trap and showing the teeth marks in the peanut butter.

"That's...disturbing," he replies, "why'd you bait it with peanut butter though? Wouldn't fruit be better?"

"Well, I looked it up online, * and three out of four mice say it's to die for."

———

Until the * I genuinely intended to say why. But it was too good to pass up.

Also, anyone have a cat I can borrow?

I'm a 29-year-old dad of a 2-year-old. Wife and I stopped at Hot Head Burritos yesterday and the girl making the burritos said, "I'll mark yours with an X," to my wife.

I said, "Yeah, she's an X.... well, actually, she's my current."

Groans everywhere. I thought it was hilarious.

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"

I'm not usually one for bars, but since the smoking ban in Illinois, they're not so bad. I'm not much of a drinker either, but this one place in particular offers free soft drinks for designated drivers of groups of three or more. You have to get them from a location separate from the bartender. You declare yourself upon entering the place, then your hand is marked, and from that point, you're not allowed alcohol, but you get the free soft drinks.

Their specialty is their own brand of a mixed fruit drink that's really good. It's popular enough that you're usually standing behind six or seven people to wait your turn. So, Saturday night, while I'm waiting for mine, this cute blonde walks up behind me. I figured I'd try to be witty and asked her, "Can I buy you a drink?"

She scowled at me with, "Well aren't you the funny one?"

"What's with the attitude?" I asked her.

"Sorry," she said. "It's them." And she thumbed toward a table with (would you believe it?) a brunette and a redhead.

"Why?" I asked. "What'd they do?"

"I'm just getting sick of it," she said. "Every time we come here, it's always me in the punch line."