Social Order Puns

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

It is a known fact that the penguin is a very ritualisticbird which lives an extremely ordered and complex life.

The penguin is very committed to its family and will mate for life, as well as maintain a form of compassionate contact with its offspring throughout its life.

If a penguin is found dead on the ice surface, other members of the family and social circle have been known to dig holes in the ice, using their vestigial wings and beaks, until the hole is deep enough for the dead bird to be rolled into, and buried.

The male penguins then gather in a circle around the fresh grave and sing:

"Freeze a jolly good fellow." "Freeze a jolly good fellow."

They were taking a walk but were way too close to each other given the social distancing orders. When I confronted them about the need to keep at least 6 feet apart, one of them looked at me dumbfounded and said, "We're just trying to flatten our curves!"

A 22 year-old man was obsessed with tractors, so much so that he had no social life outside of his fascination with farm machinery. His mother eventually intervened, forcing him to throw away all of his tractor merchandise and ordered him to find himself a girlfriend.

The man went to a bar that night in search of a partner and encountered a beautiful blonde. After exchanging pleasantries, the two moved outside in order to have a proper conversation away from the music. As they ventured into the smoking area, the woman complained that she hated the cigarette fumes which had engulfed them. Without flinching, the man took a huge, deep breath and inhaled all of the second-hand smoke in the vicinity.

Staring on in amazement, the woman asks how he could possibly have removed the smoke from the room.

The man turns back to her and replies: "I'm an ex tractor fan"

As I'm sure many of you can remember (or not), senior prom was one of the most exciting events of our pre-real world existence. However, in order to get to the actual event, there were three significant steps that needed to be taken care of:

1. Sober up enough before actually getting to the venue
2. Find a date who wasn't even weirder than you were
3. Rent a tuxedo This last part posed quite a bit of a problem to me, mostly because tuxedos can be very expensive to come by. Luckily enough for me, a local formalwear shop had a great deal going on; they would give you massive discounts and even hefty prizes for referring as many of your friends as possible to their business. Eager as I was to save a few bucks, I proceeded to text everyone in my phone's contact list. Almost every one of them neglected to respond to my pitiful pleas of financial assistance, not wanting to get caught up in this scam that I myself had meandered into. Finally, my token black friend, Malik, unwillingly took my bait. He tentatively responded, asking more about what he could get out of the deal for himself. After much persistence on my part, he finally declined, trying his best to let me down gently. As my poor little heart finally broke completely in two, I decided to alleviate the social tension, replying to him, "Alright man, well, suit yourself."

An international chess tournament was taking place at a hotel in New York. Grandmasters from all around the world came to compete. As things were getting underway, everyone gathered in the hotel's lobby to socialize and brag about their skills. All of a sudden, the hotel manager bursts out and orders everyone to leave. The players ask why, and he responds:

"I don't like chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."