Passing Notes Puns

An emperor decided his population was rising too fast and decided to decrease the numbest. Bunches of generous birth and death control methods did he come up with, but the most dastardly scheme was the Neat Edict. His subjects, however, bitterly called it The Press Test.

The emperor, you see, founded a law that anyone found wearing rumpled clothing, after being fined, would find a rock, then use his or her (or their) own forehead(s) as an iron...to press and press to reduce the crinkles in the clothes to half, then half of that, then half of that... As the victims wept, the soldiers jeered at the poor souls and mocked them: "Press! Press! They were halving a bawl.

To the despot's calculated glee, no one could pass The Press Test. As sure as waking up with a sniffle, everyone starts off with a crumple in the blouse and more get added as the day goes by. So there was no shortage of victims squirted into The Press Test arena.

First it was 12 creases legislated, then 5. It soon became Three and then One, before ending in none. By slowly reducing the number of creases permitted in clothing, the whole population was soon caught up in the Emperor's net. It was most unfair, but no matter how hard they pressed for freedom from The Press, the population steadily dwindled.

The approximately equally wicked emperor of the next fiefdom, taking sadistic note, invited his neighbour over to congratulate him. "How did you achieve that?", Vile asked Evil over a poisoned lunch.

Clutching at the tablecloth as he went down writhing, he nevertheless had a last grasp answer:

"By gradual decrees"

The year is 2100, there is a fisherman who just finished dinner and he asks his grandson to go 'get the old bay' so his grandson goes into the pantry and gets the old bay seasoning

The old fisherman says

"boy! that's not the old bay! go and get the old bay!" so the grandson goes back into the pantry, and he looks everywhere, but he can't find anything marked "old bay"

So he goes back to the old fisherman and says, defeated

"I can't find the old bay"

The fisherman groans

and walks outside

a few minutes pass by

and then the old fisherman comes back inside with his wife

and says

"THAT'S not the old bay"

and then he points at his wife and says

"THIS is the 'Old Bae'"

note: I've told this joke at my job in two separate meetings. They are quite fond of "dad jokes" so I thought I would try to share it, and I gotta tell you. The silence was deafening both times. It's now evolving into an ironic joke we tell to make people cringe. So proud of it.

It's not well known that among the species of plants taken aboard Noah's Ark was a very odd berry. This berry had a special property where if you ate too few at once they would be sour, but if you ate too many at once they would be bitter. Even stranger was that the right number of berries to eat at once for perfect sweetness was different for each person.

Shem would never take enough berries and would complain every time "Ugh! These berries are so sour! Why did we bring these plants?" Noah would reply "I've told you over and over, you need to eat a couple more in a mouthful to make them sweet."

Ham would always take too many berries and would complain every time "Ick! These berries are so bitter! I'd like to toss the plants overboard." Noah would reply "I've told you over and over, you need to eat fewer in a mouthful to make them sweet."

Japeth would grab a random amount and whenever they were bitter or sour he'd complain "Why do these berries never taste the same? We should let the animals eat the plants so we don't have to eat the silly berries." Noah would reply "I've told you over and over, you should remember how many berries taste the best."

After a couple of weeks of this, Noah announced "I'm taking charge of portioning the berries. I've made notes of how many of them taste the best for me, my wife, all of you my sons, and your wives. At meals I'll give each of you the correct amount, and NO MORE COMPLAINTS!"

Another week passed and Japeth wanted some berries to take the edge off his hunger, but rather than wander all over the whole ark looking for his father he asked Emzara "Where's dad? I'd like some berries before lunch."

Emzara pointed to the storeroom and said "I thought you were tired of the berries? But there's Noah, counting for taste."

An engineer who was unemployed for a long time decided to open a medical clinic. He puts a sign outside the clinic: "A cure for your ailment guaranteed at $500; we'll pay you $1,000 if we fail."

A Doctor thinks this is a good opportunity to earn $1,000 and goes to his clinic.

Doctor: "I have lost my sense of taste."

Engineer: "Nurse, please bring the medicine from box 22 and put 3 drops in the patient's mouth."

Doctor: "This is Gasoline!"

Engineer: "Congratulations! You've got your taste back. That will be $500."

The Doctor gets annoyed and goes back after a couple of days later to recover his money.

Doctor: "I have lost my memory, I cannot remember anything."

Engineer: "Nurse, please bring the medicine from box 22 and put 3 drops in the patient's mouth."

Doctor: "But that is Gasoline!"

Engineer: "Congratulations! You've got your memory back. That will be $500."

The Doctor leaves angrily and comes back after several days, more determined than ever to make his money back.

Doctor: "My eyesight has become weak."

Engineer: "Well, I don't have any medicine for this. Take this $1,000," passing the doctor a $500 note.

Doctor: "But this is $500..."

Engineer: "Congratulations! You've got your vision back! That will be $500."

I passed my co workers a note that said that they missed a call from "Mr. Baer," and attached the callback number as the direct line to the local zoo.

Played out like this - "Your local zoo, how can I help you?"

"yes, hello, I'd like to speak with Mr Baer..... facepalm I think I have the wrong number..."

When we had to overtake a horse. I did what your supposed to, slowed right down and gave them a wide berth. As we passed, my daughter noted that she didn't even smile or wave thanks at us. So I said, "Yeah, look at her on her high horse"

I was saddened to hear about the passing of Arnold Palmer recently. I'm not a big golf guy, and while he deserves his legacy as a great golfer, he was also an inventor of some note, and I think he deserves some recognition on that front, too. The story goes that while he was on a golf tour in Turkey, he was having a lot of trouble with sand traps there. On the spot, he invented a new type of pitching wedge. He designed it with a broader face, to open up the sweet spot and help get out of traps faster. Sadly, I don't think that he'll be remembered as the inventor of the open-faced Turkey sand-wedge.

He's been practicing for this role for months. He goes down to the opera house on the day of the audition, only to find he's come down with a sore throat and can't hit his notes anymore. In a panic, he asks one of the directors if they can postpone his audition.

"I'm sorry," says the director, "but we can't delay an audition for just one performer. That would set a bad precedent. Instead, I'll let you in on a little opera house secret." The director pours the man a cup of warm, smelly liquid. "Drink this. It's a special tea to help your throat. The recipe has been passed down for decades in this opera company, and I guarantee it will make you able to sing again."

The man wrinkles up his nose and takes a swig. "Euch! This is... awful! What's in this tea anyways?"

"Well, it's a secret herbal tea blend made with... well... fish broth." The director replies. "Tuna, specifically. We've found it helps soothe the throat better than any other fish we've tried."

Sure enough the man is able to sing again! He hits all his notes and gives an exemplary performance.

At the end of the auditions, he finds the director that gave him the tea. "So... what did you think? Did I get the part or not?" He asks.

"I'm sorry," said the director, "you performed well, but we've decided to give the part to someone else."

"That's OK," the man says, "I'm just really grateful for the Opera-Tuna-Tea."

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

I got my kids with this one. While driving through the neighborhood looking at Christmas decorations, we passed an unusual light display.

Kid: Why is there a banana sitting in a chair?

Me: What, do you expect the banana to stand up all night?

(Note: I have no idea why there was a decoration that looked like a banana sitting in a chair)

My sister and I are meeting at the kings game and she calls me to see where I am. I am passing Adams Blvd. and noticed the humor if you say Adams backwards.

Sis: where are you? Me: passing Adams Sis: what? Me: I'm passing "Smada" Sis: what's "Smada" Me: Nothing, what's "Smada" with you?

Note: her bf heard me the first time.

I even heard him groan in the background