Overpowering Puns

It really sucks.

At first the curse just brought him bad luck, causing vital equipment to break and provoking frequent but small injuries to him and his crew. Soon, however, the curse darkened and diggers the man had hired to help work his claim began to die in bizarre ways.

One was killed by an African scorpion that should never have made it to Alaska, let alone have survived the cold. A second drank a gallon of the mercury used to separate the gold from the ore. A third was found with a tree growing up through his body.

The man himself who owned the claim became more and more pale. His eyes became all white. His skin began to give off an overpowering smell of sulfur. He slept all day and at night he wandered the mountain above his claim, coming back each day looking more like a beast than a man.

The curse became so bad the last worker alive ran away to the nearest town to tell the authorities what was happening at the claim.

In an attempt to save the claim owner's life and lift the curse, a priest was brought in by dogsled to perform an exorcism on the man.

A sherriff from the town came with the priest as a bodyguard.

The exorcism was long, but apparently successful. Immediately the man's color returned, the sulfur smell disappeared, and he was able to sleep through the night for the first time in six months.

After the man awoke, the sherriff immediately arrested the man and brought him back to town with the priest. Standing in front of the judge, the sherriff was asked what charge the law had against the claim owner whose life had just been so dramatically turned around.

The sherriff looked at the man, then looked back at the judge and said in a slow and rumbling voice, "Possession as a miner."

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

She smiled, blushed a little and asked, "Why? Because I have so many layers to my personality!?"

"No."

"Oh, OK, something stupid like, you'll cry when you slice me up?!"

"Nope."

"OK! OK! You'd prefer it if I was battered?!"

"Nah."

"You either love me or hate me? I'm good in small doses? I can be a bit overpowering?!"

"No, no and no!"

Exasperated, she shrieked, "Oh, all right then, why?!"

"You smell like an onion!"

Me: How is your Pasta? Her: They put way too much thyme in it. It's overpowering everything else. Me: I guess they have bad thyme management then?