The Search Is Over Puns

There once was this fella was born with a silver screw in his belly button. His parents, and later himself, searched far and wide trying to find someone that knew how this happened and how to remove it. As he grew older he cared less and less about the "how" and more about the removal. One day in his never-ending search he encountered a wizened woman who said that she knew of a place where you could go and a mysterious force would be able to remove the screw. But, before she provided the location she asked him if this was REALLY something he wanted done and if he knew all the consequences of his desire. The man hastily said that he was 10000% sure and more than well informed of the consequences. So, she gave him the location of the cave and the instructions on how to gain the help of the mysterious force. He was to go to the cave and sleep nude in the cave over night and by the morning his request would be fulfilled. He made his way to the spot with all due haste and followed the instructions to the letter. He did this and fell into a sound sleep. During the night a heavy fog rolled into the cave and a shining silver screwdriver floated into the cave with it. It floated down to the man and gently removed the screw. When the man woke up in the morning and saw the screw on the ground beside him he quickly reached down and felt his belly button. The screw was gone! He sprung up with great joy but the minute he landed after his leap of joy his butt fell off. He froze in horror and started to scream "Why did my butt fall off?" over and over.

The moral of the story is "Don't mess with things you don't understand or you will lose your butt."

He's someone who has been very creative in his ways when he delivers his jokes to his victims, I'm a bit ashamed I didn't see this one coming

He called me on the phone, saying he needed help with doing something, sounding fairly serious on phone. He said "soljakwinever I need your help with something on amazon. I keep searching for lighters and it's not working right. Can you open it on your phone for me" Recently he's been asking me for help with some computer stuff, I built it for him lately and it's got nothing problems, blue screens over stuff, he's very smart but I wouldn't say he's anywhere near 'tech-literate'. But his is getting issues like I've never seen. So I assumed he needed help with something like that. I answered "Sure Bryan. Let my just open the app." Pulling Amazon up on my phone. "So what did you need help with? Something about lighters" I ask. He replies still sounding serious "I keep searching for lighters and the app keeps showing me matches. Can you try it and see if that happens to me too." I type 'Lighter' into the search bar, submit the search and looking at my results, seeing product listings for lighters. "Looks normal to me. I'm seeing nothing but lighters" He responds starting to crack "Yeah! Nothing but matches!"

I got played.

EDIT: Wording fix

Back a few decades, I was working in a program with a local college in the Middle East.

The name of the program for ExPats has the clever acronym of "IDEA" (hey, I said it was clever); which stands for "Inter-Departmental Educational Adjunct". It's interdepartmental because my particular specialty not only covers field geology but also paleontology and a bit of archeology thrown in for good measure. Everyone hopes to have a good IDEA...

ahem...

Well, we saddle up and head for the Dune Sea out in the west of the country, where the Precambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, Cretaceous, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene crop out and access is relatively easy and non-injurious.

Well, we caravan out, some 30 Land Cruisers, Nissan patrol, and the odd Mitsubishi Galloper strong. We all get our maps, compasses and split up into 5 or 6 special interest groups ("SIG's"); where each IDEA has his own GPS and LIDAR laser ranging apparatus. Reason being, that there are very few benchmarks out in the desert, and even those are constantly at the mercy of the shifting and ever-blowing sands.

Since we're split into groups and at any one time, ranging up to and including some 50 km2, when a real find is located, a device called the "DIME" (Digital-Interface Monitor Encoder) is attached and programmed into the GPS for location later; it is a digital sort of low-frequency transponder, developed from technology used by offshore drillers and jacket setters where benchmarks are even more transitory.

The way it works is rather simple. When something is to be marked for later retrieval, a series of wooden posts are pounded in a triangular manner around the find and the DIME is set, programmed with the GPS and attached to one or more of the posts.

That's the theory, at least.

Everything works well, especially all the hardened electronics and computer gizmos, but attaching the DIME to the stakes is the real problem. It can't be nailed, screwed or fastened with any sort of metal contrivance as that farkles the magnetic field and causes all sorts of goofy spurious signals. Zip ties don't last long in the heat and duct tape is right out. Many sites have been lost to the shifting sands this way.

Velcro doesn't work too well, as the sand fills the hooks of the receiving piece of velcro and soon renders it useless. String or fishing line work, but that's temporary (they melt). Glue or mastic are out as these are supposed to be temporary. Even plastic sleeves don't work due to the heat out

So this is a bit long, sorry about that.

Zorro and his best bud the Lone Ranger were riding through the desert one day, I forget where they were heading to or where they had come from, but we can safely assume shenanigans of some kind were the driving force.

They have been travelling for most of the day and are starting to get tired. There has been a discussion about making camp for the night, but as things are they have agreed to continue riding for a while longer, till the sun starts to set. Away and off to the west the Lone Ranger spies a plant that seems to have large pink flowers that hang in strips with white stripes running the length of them.

"Zorro, what's that over there?" he asks.

Zorro turns in his saddle and raises his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. "Ah, it looks like a bacon tree, quite common in these parts. Let's ride on, there is a good place an hour from now to set up camp."

The two friends ride on and as the sun is beginning to descend the have stopped and are making camp. As Zorro begins to make a fire he says to the Lone Ranger, "You know, I quite fancy some pork. You ride back to that bacon tree and get some for supper, and I'll finish setting up camp here."

"No problem Zorro, I won't be long" replies the Ranger, jumping back into the saddle and returning the way they came.

Time passes, and the sun begins to get low in the sky. 'Odd', thinks Zorro 'he should be back by now.' Another hour passes and the shadows are growing longer. 'I might have to go investigate, it's not like him to take his time.' More time passes, and, just as Zorro has decided that he must go search for his friend in the dwindling light, he hears the sound of Silver's hooves. Looking into the gathering gloom he sees his friend riding towards him. As the Lone Ranger nears Zorro can see the Lone Ranger is injured, there are cuts and bruises and he has an arrow through his hat.

"What on earth happened, Lone Ranger? Did you make it to the Bacon tree?"

The Lone Ranger dismounts and sighs heavily.

"That weren't no Bacon tree, Zorro. That was an Hambush."

This is directly translated from greek, but you'll get it.

Me: Hey, dad, do you have any money?

Dad: Yeah, don't worry about me.

He cracks up and searches all over the house for my mom to tell his joke.

I didn't want to admit it, but it was pretty funny. Almost forgot about the money. Almost.

I was sitting in his seat talking to my mother/grandparents for a bit when an idea hit me. So after some brief set up, I went searching for dad.

Me: I really like the small touches they added, like the personalised messages on the table placements

Dad: What?

Me: You know, the name tag to show where people are sitting

Dad: Yeah, I know what you're talking about, but there's no message on them.

Me: Yes there is! It's on the inside of them, just have to flip them over to read it

Dad: I'm telling you, there's no message on them!

Me: I absolutely guarantee that there is a personalised message written on your name tag!!

So, determined to prove me wrong we go inside to his table and he flips over his name tag to find, in my handwriting, "told you so".