Second United Front Puns

Confused as to who it could be, he gets up and opens the door to find the county sheriff standing there.

'Why, hello sir,' he says, 'what can I do for ya this fine evening?'

'I'll get straight to the point,' the sheriff replies, 'I know you've been huntin' grizzlies in these here parts, and that's against the law!'

'Huh? I ain't been huntin' no grizzlies, sheriff,' the hunter replies, 'I been mainly focusin' on them deers i swear!'

The sheriff, not believing the hunter, insists on searching the cabin, with the hunter reluctantly letting him in. Upon his search, the sheriff finds multiple sets of the limbs of grizzly bears, providing all the evidence he needs to arrest the hunter.

The next day, the sheriff is approached at his desk by the hunter's lawyer as well as an FBI officer. Noting this as unusual he stands to greet them.

'I'm gonna have to ask you to let my client go,' the lawyer says.

'Why?' The sheriff stammered

The FBI agent interjects, 'You have violated the Constitution of the United States in imprisoning this hunter. The remains in his possession were all front legs of the grizzly bears, and as such, you have infringed upon his second amendment right to bear arms.'

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