Odd One Out Puns

And I can’t find my car in the parking lot.

I come from a long line of fathers...

I'm Australian, in Australia, specifically southern Australia. Very specifically, southern Victoria. Anyway. I took a long drive on Friday, out to Halls Gap, which is a beautiful part of the world. Oddly, I noticed along the way a significant amount of dead crows on the side of the road. Now I'm of county stock, and I know well that crows (although technically ravens I believe) are an extraordinarily intelligent bird, and it's very rare that you see one fallen by the roadside. As such, it was obvious to me as unusual. So I looked it up, and as it happened there'd been a study conducted regarding the very road I'd driven down. Turns out, this particular road was notorious for dead crows on account of two very basic reasons, the first, it's proximity to bushland which ensured a considerable amount of regular road kill (possums, kangaroos, etcetera) and second, the road was a significant trucking route. It follows logic, although I did not see it at the time, that it was determined that the trucks, rather than the cars which used the road were to blame regarding the amount of dead crows. How so, you ask? I, too, was interested to know. You see, the front of the average car in these modern times is made of plastic and paint whereas the Australian cross-country truck is equipped with a large alloy bullbar. A crow, when hit by a car will have chips of paint transferred onto its feathers whereas one downed by a truck will have none. Now crows are not usually struck by vehicles, as they are a very intelligent bird. As such, they employ a sentry bird, which looks out as the others eat from the road, and warns them of any approaching danger. Such is the intelligence of the crows! So why should they perish by truck in such numbers? The answer amazed me. As it turns out, a sentry crow sees the approaching vehicle and calls to his friends CAR! CAR! CAR! but he can't say truck

6 couldn't believe it. 7 had finally gone off the deep end. 7 had long offended 6. A repeat 6 offender if you will. But this was unforgivable. 9 was his best friend. How could he do this to his best friend? How could it be that 7 ate 9?

6, filled with fury, called his friends 2 and 4. They would get even. 10 was the best friend of 7 you see. 2, 4 and 6 ate 10 to get even. They then began plotting further revenge, but 7 acted first. He gathered 1, 3 and 5 together to take down 6.

Realizing that the odds were against them, 2, 4 and 6 retreated. Their only option was to turn to 12 who had twice the resources 6 had. 7 couldn't follow.

12 quickly called 3 to find out what the root of 7's attack on 9. 3 wasn't sure. He had only supported 7 because of a long standing friendship. But 3 promised to get to the root cause.

Meanwhile, 7's scheming was not yet done. 12 was powerful, but there was one who could reverse his decision to harbor 6. If he could just convince 21, nicknamed blackjack, to reverse 12's decision, it would all be over.

Three times 7 went to 21's compound. On the third try he was able to get through. After explaining that 6 had masterminded the elimination of 10, a grand meeting of the numbers was called.

Both 6 and 7 argued over the whole thing. 13 had the unlucky task of adjudicating the meeting. Each time 13 made an argument, 6 and 7 would add to it by shouting over each other.

Finally, 21 had had enough. "7, why did you eat 9"

7 responded "I just wanted to get 3 square meals." 21 had 7 eliminated for initiating the battle and 6 jailed for masterminding 10's death. And the war was over.

1. Why was the fraction apprehensive about marrying the decimal? Because he would have to convert.

2. Why do plants hate math? It gives them square roots.

3. Why did the student get upset when his teacher called him average? It was a mean thing to say!

4. Why was the math book depressed? It had a lot of problems.

5. Why is the obtuse triangle always so frustrated? Because it is never right.

6. Why can you never trust a math teacher holding graphing paper? He must be plotting something.

7. Why was the equal sign so humble? Because she knew she wasn’t greater than or less than anyone else.

8. What do you call the number 7 and the number 3 when they go out on a date? The odd couple

9. What do you call a number that can’t stay in one place? A Roamin’ numeral.

10. Did you hear the one about the statistician? Probably.

11. What do you call dudes who love math? Algebros.

12. I’ll do algebra, I’ll do trig. I’ll even do statistics. But graphing is where I draw the line!

13. Why should you never talk to Pi? Because she’ll go on and on and on forever.

14. Why are parallel lines so tragic if they have so much in common? It’s a shame they’ll never meet.

15. Are monsters good at math? Not unless you Count Dracula.

16. What’s the best way to flirt with a math teacher? Use acute angle.

17. Did you hear about the mathematician who is afraid of negative numbers? They’d stop at nothing to avoid them.

18. How do you stay warm in any room? Just huddle in the corner, where it’s always 90 degrees.

19. Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven eight ("ate") nine!

20. Why DID seven eat nine? Because you’re supposed to eat 3 squared meals a day!

21. Why does nobody talk to circles? Because there is no point.

This actually happened a couple years ago, but I've decided to finally come out if lurking to share it here.

I was on a trip with some friends and we had stopped for lunch. We weren't very busy so my buddy and I shared a plate of wings and a couple pitchers of beer. When it came to pay, the bill was $20.01 (I don't remember how much it actually was, but it was an odd number) and we just split the bill down the middle. When we got our checks, his had the extra penny. We joked about him paying so much more, and so I said I would add an extra penny to my tip, plus one more penny to one up him.

Afterwards when we were walking out my buddy turned to me and said "do you think she'll she even notice?" I said "I like to think that she will notice and maybe chuckle at it. Besides pennies can add up and make a difference, but that's just my 2 cents"

I am not a dad yet. But I definitely feel the fatherly humor running through my veins.

There was a village that had four competing pie shops, each inhabiting their own corner of the town. One of these shops was named "The Circle".

The Circle wanted to gain an edge on the other shops, they wanted to stand out. They realized they could transport more pies in their boxes if they made the pies square instead of circular, so they would stack better. The only place in the village to have these oddly-shaped pies is at The Circle.

So, for the area of The Circle, the pie are squared.

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

The man never took it seriously at first, he figured he was just getting older and blamed it on age.

After a few weeks, the man has developed an incredible frequent and annoying cough.
His wife is annoyed and is constantly telling him to go the doctor, but the man kept refusing.

One day during an argument, his wife has had it with his coughing and hacking and tells him "Im making a bet, if this damn coughin kills you i'm writing ' I told you so' on your tombstone!"
The man laughs her off since they both have a twisted sense of humor, and tells her its a deal, if the coughin kills him she can carve that.
The man continues on for another week

One day the man is out going for a walk through his neighborhood, when a freak accident occurs between a truck carrying coffins and a car, which results in a coffin flying off the truck, tragically landing on the old man and kills him.

Later at his funeral, his wife makes a very odd request to have them carve "I told you so" on his headstone.

When the caretaker asks her why she wants to do this, she tells him about their dark humor, and fills him in on the bet they recently made.
The caretaker is touched by the story, and agrees to do it for her, because in the end,

It was that damn coffin that killed him

One of the classic  Abbott and Costello  routines, where Bud Abbott takes advantage of a common math mistake that we all make to fleece his pal, Lou Costello, out of all of his money.  The skit ends with a simple ‘read my mind’ routine that takes Lou’s last remaining bill.  This routine was done  many  times, both in the movies and their radio show.

Bud Abbott: Do me a favor, loan me $50.
Lou Costello: Bud, I can’t. I can’t loan you $50.
Bud Abbott: Oh, yes, ya can.
Lou Costello: No, I can’t. All I got is $40.
Bud Abbott: All right, give me the $40 and you’ll owe me 10  
Lou Costello: Ok, I’ll owe you 10.
Bud Abbott: That’s right.
Lou Costello: How come I owe you 10?
Bud Abbott: How much did I ask for?
Lou Costello: 50
Bud Abbott: How much did you give me?
Lou Costello: 40.
Bud Abbott: So you owe me $10.
Lou Costello: That’s right.  [Pause] But you owe me 40.
Bud Abbott: Don’t change the subject.
Lou Costello: I’m not changing the subject; you’re trying to change my finances. Come on, Abbott give me my $40.
Bud Abbott: All right, there’s your $40, now give me the 10 you owe me.
Lou Costello: I’m paying you on account.
Bud Abbott: On account?
Lou Costello: On account I don’t know how I owe it to ya.
Bud Abbott: That’s the way you feel about it, that’s the last time I ask you for a loan of $50.
Lou Costello: But how can I loan ya $50, now. All I got is 30.
Bud Abbott: Well, give me the 30 and you’ll owe me 20.
Lou Costello: Ok. This is getting worse all the time. (Look at audience) First I owe him 10, now I owe him 20.
Bud Abbott: Well, why do you run yourself into debt?
Lou Costello: I’m not running in, you’re pushing me!1
Bud Abbott: I can’t help it if you can’t handle your finances. I do all right with my money.
Lou Costello: And you do all right with my money too.
Bud Abbott: Now I asked you for a loan of $50. You gave me 30, so you owe me 20. 20 and 30 is 50.
Lou Costello: No. No. No. 25 and 25 is 50.
Bud Abbott: All right, here’s your $30, now give me the 20 you owe me. Fine guy, won’t loan a pal $50.

A man walks into a peculiar bar. There’s a small man no more than a foot tall playing the piano in the corner, men with horns and many other odd things. He noticed people huddled around a table. He walks up to the bartender and asks “what’s going on over there?” The bartender replies,” oh it’s a game, if you win a genie will grant you one wish”. “Really! Can I wish for anything!?” The Bartender says “yup just be specific and enunciate. Trust me” “How do you play!?” The man asks excitedly “It’s simple if you roll snake eyes you win. Everyone gets one chance and no more” The man runs over the the table and waits his turn. Once he gets up to the table he rolls snake eyes, he’s ecstatic. A genie appears over the table and says”you get one wish” The man is jumping up and down in excitement. He can hear the bartender saying something but ignores him and says”I want a million bucks!” The genie says”done” snaps his fingers and disappears. In that moment one million male deer, elk, antelope and other animals fill the bar spilling out into the street. After several minutes the stampede leaves the bar and the man says” what was that that wasn’t what I wanted!?” The bartender says “what did I say!? I told you to be specific and enunciate!” “Oooh I see But how did you know that would happen” the man says “Do you really think I wished for a twelve inch pianist?”

Friend 1 just moved out of his parents house and Friend 2 just came back from the military.

Friend 2: We need to clean up this dump!

Friend 1: This place was cleaned yesterday!

Friend 2: If you want things done right, you have to do it yourself; I'll do the cleaning on the odd numbered days, you do the cleaning on the even ones.

Friend 1: We're going to clean everyday!?

Friend 2: No, just the odd and even ones!

Once, there was a young woman who wanted to do a little psychological experiment. So she carefully bred cherry trees to bloom in multiple colors, and arranged to have them planted such that the trees of one color would spell out the name of some other color. You know, to test the Stroop effect.

However, the instructions (which were, admittedly, odd) weren't transmitted to the workers (all starving underpaid grad students) effectively, so the groups of various colored cherry trees were planted such that the colors matched the names, completely invalidating her experiment.

She's now the Stroop drupe group blooper girl, Stroop drupe blooper girl, Stroop drupe blooper girl...

She now focuses on Anglo-Saxon royalty.

Liam Neeson is a huge movie star. He is so busy filming and traveling that he rarely checks his correspondence. One day, he goes to the post office so he can receive all his letters and a mailman asks him to sign a check out sheet. As Liam reads the paper, he notices something odd: right next to his name, the mailman wrote his name backwards. When asking why, the mailman replies: "it's not your name, sir, it's just that since you rarely come here, you haven't seen your mail before and I just wrote it down as a note".

And he was right, for Liam Neeson had "no seeN maiL".

The end.

I apologize for this wall of text, I didn't know where I should cut out parts because they're all relevant to the story. Sorry again.

Hey TFR people! So for background, I work at a kiosk in a mall where I repair cracked phones and do other mind numbing work that I can now probably do in my sleep. I've been doing this job for a little over two years and can fix an iPhone, for example, in about 15 minutes. I apologize for the wall of text. Anyway, this story happened last night.

So, a family of three walk up (mother, father and daughter) but only the father spoke to me and this is where conversation starts. Note: When I was handed this girls phone she had a case with this image on it and was already about to laugh. Customer will be C and I of course will be Me.

C: How much does it cost to fix my daughters phone and can it be fixed?

Me: Oh it's very repairable, after tax and labor, it comes to $xxx.xx.

C: Do it

Fuck, he's one of these guys...

Me: Alright then, I just need a name and signature on this disclaimer we have.

At this point, I've taken their phone and am prepping to work on it.

C: Do I have to use my real name?

PAUSE Now, over the 2+ years I've worked here, I have never heard this question. So I was kind of taken by surprise by it. For a minute, I thought he was one of those paranoid people. PLAY

Me: Um.. Well I guess you don't have to. It's preferred since we can look you up in our system faster later.

C: Oh ok.

I turn back around and start to use my tools on the phone when customer guy throws me another curve ball question.

C: Can my daughter still play the piano when this is done?

I manage to turn and see him smirking a little and go back to his serious poker face so I pick up that he's joking.

Me: Well I would hope so. Slight laughter

C: Oh ok great! She's never even touched one before so it's good to hear her skill won't change in the slightest.

I'm on the verge of outright laughing at this point. I manage to hold it back and finish my repair. I snap her grumpy cat case back on, hand her phone back when she mentions the home button isn't working.

Oh that's an easy fix

Me: Ah, don't worry. Give me one second and I'll have that fixed.

C: One. Try it now "Insert girls name"

Me: Haha well I haven't done what I need to yet.

I pull out a giant clear bag half full of spare parts.

**

My girlfriend and I were standing in the bread aisle at Safeway, browsing the local bread selections. One of the lone bags in the rack shifted oddly by itself and almost fell out of the rack hanging halfway off. My girlfriend noted that it looked like it was trying to jump off so I said. "No, don't jump! You have your whole loaf ahead of you!"

Friend: Yo, JA24, I was thinking of starting a business
Me: Oh really, doing what?
Friend: Airline Pastry catering
Me: ...sounds oddly specific
Friend: Well it's just a pie in the sky at the moment!

He comes out with these all the time, he's destined to embarrass his kids with these one day :P

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

Last night i got on twitter, one teacher from a gaggle I follow is talking about Peter Pan and tossing out pun after pun. Another teacher just asked "Can we make him stop?"

I replied, "When d'he start?"

Then another teacher jumped in with "Wendy do you think?"

Huh? I scratched my head. Was my unusual spelling so odd that it wasn't clear what i was going for? She got it enough to use THE SAME PUN in the SAME way.

And then her comment got favorites and 'attagirls'.

So questions: 1) which phrasing was better for the pun?

2. If the second is better, is it still better immediately following the first?

My 6th grade teacher had a reputation of being the meanest, strictest teacher on campus, but once I made it through his class, I realized he could be a jokester, too.

-In math class, he liked to tell a long, complicated story about a boy encountering a genie, eventually wishing for some odd things, just to end it with the punchline, "Gee, I'm a tree." (geometry)

-Another one of his long jokes consisted of a man being chased by a hearse. In a fit of desperation, he throws some Halls throat lozenges at it...."and the coffin went away."

-During study time, he would sometimes grab a balloon from his desk, blow it up, and proceed to slowly let air out of it, just to produce the squeaky noise.

-His favorite short joke: "Doctor, doctor, I broke my arm in three places!" "I advise you to stay out of those places."

-He was also probably the all-time leader of correcting, "Can I go to the bathroom?"

-He would also occasionally play opera music at the end of the day, not dismissing the class until we made it through an entire song without laughing.

-There were also a couple words that incited a specific reaction from him. Many of these words showed up often in history class, which is his favorite subject (probably because of all the jokes):

• CARGO - "cargo beep beep".

• RAY - Whenever the word or name "ray" was mentioned, he would always respond with "You can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay, but ya doesn't have to call me Johnson." Needless to say, we hated the math lesson about rays.

• HUDSON - During mentions of the Hudson River in history, he would always sing back "HUDSON 3-2-700."

• OKLAHOMA - Whenever Oklahoma came across, he would sing the famous line from Oklahoma! the musical. (with an especially long "ohhhhhhh!")

• SURELY - "...and don't call me Shirley." (but of course, who doesn't respond with that?)

• GERONIMOOOO!!!! - pretty self explanatory.

• Sticking with these obscure quotes and references, his two favorite days of the year are November 5th and March 15th.

Anyway, it was a fun year with that teacher. I'll add more of his quirks if I think of any.

-Also,