Second Source Puns

... so they can beat the crowds!

Edit: Wow, this is now my second highest upvoted post ever, and it's not even my own joke! Totally should have credited the video I saw this in: https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/h8btkp/protester_has_a_joke_for_the_police_officers/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Thanks for the laughs and great comment threads, Reddit :)

Back in the before times, when sit-down restaurants existed, I used to order boneless cheese sticks and would just throw the word "boneless" in front of any appetizer with 100% corniness. The purpose of this isn't to make a good joke. It's not a good joke. The purpose is to make my dining companions catch some cringe splash damage and want to crawl into a hole and die out of embarrassment for my being horribly corny.

But there is a real, deeper purpose that I've discovered entirely by accident. People, especially young people, are so self-conscious and worried about saying or doing something embarrassing that it taints a lot of social gatherings. They go to a restaurant and are afraid to speak up even when their order is blatantly wrong. They'll tip well even when the food took an hour to arrive and the server has disappeared into the corn stalks behind a baseball field. It takes 2 hours of hanging out together before some friends finally stop nitpicking themselves, uncomfortable in their own bodies and brains, feeling perpetually judged, and begin to relax. These are the kinds of people who go to sleep every night replaying cringey moments from high school. Their last thought of the day is when the Burger King girl said, "Enjoy your meal!" and they said, "Thanks, you too."

It takes 2 hours and/or a lot of booze before they're comfortable enough to take conversational risks and truly reveal themselves. But if I come right out of the gate with a really dumb joke, then we can cut to the chase. There's less danger because someone in the group already shot themselves in the foot, right off the bat. They pulled a pin on the cringe grenade and then jumped on it.

You cringe at my dumb joke and then we're over the hump. Someone has already done something pretty stupid, so go ahead and order the hubcap of nachos and a massive chocolate shake because nobody is going to judge you poorly while they're all judging me.

In terms of price negotiations (haggling), there is a psychological concept called "anchoring". You throw out the first number and all subsequent numbers are compared to that number. This is the same idea. We've already set the humor standard pretty low at "boneless cheese sticks", so you can say the dumbest shit you want and, as long as it's not worse than my cheesy joke, it won't matter.

This is why, when you were a teenager and your dad took you and some friends out, your dad made corny jokes. He knew they were corny jokes. You and your friends un

Mike Rowe on meeting Robin Williams the first time:

The first was in 2006 - June or maybe July. I walked into The Roastery down on Chestnut, ordered a coffee, and sat down to read the paper. I soon discovered I was in one of those chairs with one leg shorter than the rest, and resolved to remedy the problem by jamming a folded-up coaster under the offending limb. I bent down, got the thing positioned properly, and managed to smack my head on the edge of the table on the way back up. Hard. The impact was noisy, and sent coffee slushing all over The Chronicle, which in turn lead to an “Ahh...shit!,” a little louder than I intended. A second later, a voice said, “No, I believe that’s coffee. Shit’s the stuff I see you crawling through every time I turn on the TV.”

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