Righting Reflex Puns

When she arrived at the zoo she went to see her manager and asked what she should do, the manager told her to first go feed the sharks, so she went off to feed them. Whilst she was shovelling the food into the pool a shark jumped out of the water and tried to bite her, as a reflex she hit the shark with the spade and the shark died. Worried about losing her job this soon the woman started brainstorming what to do, eventually she decided to feed the dead shark to the lions thereby removing all evidence and so that is what she did. Shaken but glad she had avoided detection the women went back to see her manager and asked if there was anything else that needed doing, she was told to go and clean out the monkey cage.. So off the woman went with a wheelbarrow and shovel to clean out the cage, as she was shovelling the poop into the barrow a monkey jumped down from the tree towards her! As a reflex reaction the women smashed the monkey with the spade and it lay dead. Thankfully she knew just what to do and so she threw the monkey into the lion cage. Shaken and ready to go home by now, the women went to see if there were any final jobs that needed doing: she was tasked with collecting the honey from the bees. So she got changed into her protective gear however she forgot to tuck in the back of her shirt so when it came to doing the bees, one particularly large bee came and stung her right on the behind! The woman screamed and started whacking the bees until many lay dead. By now she didn’t even have to think.. she collected the dead bees and threw them in the lion cage before going home for a quiet evening.

The next day there was a new lion in the lion cage. The new lion said to the other lions “so what’s the food like here??” The other lions responded...

“Actually it’s quite good. Yesterday we had FISH, CHIMPS and MUSHY BEES!”

I have written this book to sweep away all misunderstandings about the crafty art of punnery and to convince you that the pun is well worth celebrating.... After all, the pun is mightier than the sword, and these days you are much more likely to run into a pun than into a sword. [A pun is a witticism involving the playful use of a word in different senses, or of words which differ in meaning but sound alike.]

Scoffing at puns seems to be a conditioned reflex, and through the centuries a steady barrage of libel and slander has been aimed at the practice of punning. Nearly three hundred years ago John Dennis sneered, “A pun is the lowest form of wit,” a charge that has been butted and rebutted by a mighty line of pundits and punheads.

Henry Erskine, for example, has protested that if a pun is the lowest form of wit, “It is, therefore, the foundation of all wit.” Oscar Levant has added a tag line: “A pun is the lowest form of humor—when you don’t think of it first.” John Crosbie and Bob Davies have responded to Dennis with hot, cross puns: “...If someone complains that punning is the lowest form of humor you can tell them that poetry is verse.”

Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century self-appointed custodian of the English language, once thundered, “To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the national till without remorse... ”

Joseph Addison pronounced that the seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and tho’ they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius, that which is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art.

Far from being invertebrate, the inveterate punster is a brave entertainer. He or she loves to create a three-ring circus of words: words clowning, words teetering on tightropes, words swinging from tent tops, words thrusting their head into the mouths of lions. Punnery can be highly entertaining, but it is always a risky business. The humor can fall on its face, it can lose its balance and plunge into the sawdust, or it can be decapitated by the snapping shut of jaws. While circus performers often receive laughter or applause for their efforts, punsters often draw an obligatory groan for theirs. But the fact that most people groan at, rather than laugh at, puns doesn’t mean that the punnery isn’t fu

Background: Head on a swivel = slang for "quick reflexes", more or less.

So some of us were taking a water break on the bench, when I spotted a wild baseball traveling right for my head going about 80 mph out of the corner of my eye. I lifted my glove and caught it in the most nonchalant way I could.

Team mate: Wow dude, way to keep your head on a swivel.

Me: Oh, no, my head is on a neck.

Team mate: blank stare