Note Head Puns

I originally posted this in r/MaliciousCompliance, but several commenters thought it would be good here as well. I hope this isn't a re-run for too many of you.

This was years ago when my son was starting middle school. I was transporting him and a group of his new friends. One of the friends was French, and spoke French at home. My son mentioned that I had taken French in high school, and so one of his friends asked me to say something in French and see if French girl could understand me.

Before I go on, a note on parenting style: we joke around with our kids all the time. I know that not all parents joke with their children; some of my kids' friends enjoyed to a dad who makes a joke, and some would look at me like I grew a second head.

So I said to the French girl, «quelque chose». Immediately the friends turned to French girl and asked "What did he say?"

I waited, wondering whether she would join my joke.

A sly smile crept across her face as she said, "he said...something". The rest of the trip, the friends tried to convince her to reveal what it was that I had said. «quelque chose» is the French phrase for "something".

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

Draw Bridge Ahead

Note: homeostasis is a scientific term for "equilibrium". Sorry if this went over your head 😁

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

They scan the room and approach the table of an available recruitment officer. "Hello gentlemen, please have a seat and we can begin." The two men sit in the chairs and pull up to the table. "Now," says the recruitment officer, "hopefully we can find employment for both of you based on your prior work experience. We have a wide variety of jobs available. I'll ask you some questions and we can go from there." The two men nod eagerly in agreement. The officer turns to the first man. "Can you tell me what you did for work before today?" "I'm a pilot," the man replies. "Oh, that's great," the officer exclaims, "I already know that we are definitely looking for pilots!" He takes some notes and turns to the second man. "And can you tell me what you did for work before today?" "I'm a wood cutter," the man says in reply. "Oh, dear," the officer says, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, but we have don't have any positions like that. I'm afraid we can place your friend, but not you." "That's impossible!" the man sputters in disbelief. "I'm sorry, sir. There's nothing I can do." says the officer. "We aren't currently looking for any wood cutters." "But that's insane!" the man shouts in frustration. "If I don't cut the wood, how is he supposed to pile it?"

"Doctor, could you write a note for my wife letting her know my head isn't up there?"

So I was at orientation for my new job yesterday. There's 2 people there from the company, and 4 of us new people.

After the orientation is done...

Guy next to me: (silences phone because it's ringing) Sorry... my dad's calling me.

Guy from company: What's he calling you? Mine normally calls me my name.

Guy next to me: That's weird! I thought your name was Mike! Nice to meet you, my name!

Both of them both start to crack. I nearly snort what's left of my kit kat up my nose because I started laughing and the other 3 people there are shaking their heads slowly at us.

Side note: both of them are dads and in their 30's. I'm 21, and not a dad.

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

The CIA had changed its recruiting practices, what with all the recent leaks and other problems. So Mr. Johnson was more than a little surprised to see a pine tree, which was dressed in a rather nice suit, waiting outside his office when he arrived at 9 am. He asked his secretary, "Gladys, who is this?"

"Mr. Johnson, this is Mr. Cone, our newest hire. He wanted to talk with you about the Honduras assignment."

Mr. Johnson spoke to Mr. Cone in his office. His new pine tree colleague was very knowledgeable and well-spoken, but there was something about him that threw Mr. Johnson off. He tried to dismiss his concerns as imaginary, but it gnawed at him all through the morning. He barely touched his lunch, as some of the things Mr. Cone had said were still swirling around and around in his mind. He was sure something was wrong, so he went in to see the head of their office branch, Mr. Smith.

"Johnson! Come right in, come right in," said Mr. Smith, puffing on a cigar. Mr. Johnson poured himself a tumbler of whiskey and sipped at it nervously.

"You're being rather quiet today, Johnson. Tell me, what's troubling you?"

"It's just this new guy, Mr. Cone," Mr. Johnson said carefully, staring at the bottom of his whiskey glass. "Are we sure we know him as well as we think we do?"

Mr. Smith took only a small puff from his cigar before letting his hand rest back on his desk. "Now really, Johnson," he sighed, "you're a good agent. Your caution has served you well in the past, but paranoia doesn't look so good on you. Mr. Cone has the most impressive resumé I've seen come across my desk in the last fifteen years. I've personally had him vetted by the best men in the business. He's going to be an asset to this office."

That was the response Mr. Johnson had been afraid of getting, but he continued to press his cause. "I understand that, sir. It's just that I'm getting the strangest feeling from this Cone fellow. Don't you think he's a little too perfect? A little too well-qualified?"

Mr. Smith stopped smoking his cigar altogether. A distant look came into his eyes as he mulled over the possibilities. "You don't suppose--"

"Yes," said Mr. Johnson, "I think he's a plant."

Note: I'm a mom, not a dad, but I'm pretty sure I only thought of this because my father-in-law tortures me with these kinds of stories almost constantly.

In class we were talking about different ceremonies about "becoming a man". The story goes that a tribe in Peru sends nine 15 year olds into the woods for three days and each has to collect a different item. After the time is up the tribe beats drums to call the boys back. When they return the shaman lays them in a circle around the fire heads pointing inwards and begins to heat up a spear. After The metal is red hot they begin to cut out and remove the boys kidneys. Of course my class asked "why?!" Mind you we are taking this story as notes. He looks at as dead in the face and says "The culture believes they will receive their adultneys" Tl;Dr cuts out children's kidneys because they think they will grow adultneys.

So just now my Dad was looking through the local takeaway menu because I was heading over the shops and he wanted something to eat, so he finally decides that he wants a burger, hands me a £5 note and says "It'll be about 3 pounds" to which I responded "That's a lot of food, you sure you don't want a quarter-pounder instead?"

Unfortunately I was the only one chuckling to myself.

Background: Wife and I took our son to his 1 month pediatrician appointment yesterday, where the only minor issue she noted was a slight flattening on the left side of his head because he likes to look one way instead of the other. Hilarity ensued when we got home.

Wife: "If we're not careful, our son is going to have to wear one of those special helmets because he'll have a flat head."

Me: "Then I guess it's a good thing we didn't name him Phillip!"

/cue rimshot