Well Ordered Set Puns

A guy walks into a bar and orders a beer. "What's new?" the bartender asks. "Well I finally retired my old car," the guy says. "Oh yeah? Did you find someone to buy it, or did you scrap that old thing?" the bartender asks. "Oh, nothing that drastic," the guy says. "I just got it a new set of Goodyears."

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

Still one of my best so here's the set up.

I take my wife on a cruise for her birthday. Each night during dinner they have a section of things you would not normally try but you're on a cruise so try it. Anyway one night they had braised ox tongue. So I order it and get a side eye from the wife while doing so. It arrives and I had correctly anticipated her question. Anyway here's the conversation...

Braised ox tongue appetizer is set before me. I cut a small piece and put in it my mouth and begin to chew.

Wife: Well, how is it?!? Me: (slowly looking up) it's... tasty.
W: Did you really order that just to make that joke? Me: yes, yes I did.

In all actuality it was quite good.

So tonight for dinner, I made a glazed ham. I've been a cook for a few years, so time at home with the wife and kids to cook a good meal is rare.

Well, my wife comes in the kitchen and asks me if I'm going to score the ham (For those unaware, it means to cut lines in it, in order for the glaze to get into the ham and keep it moist while cooking.)

I nodded, picked up my knife, stood over the ham, and as I'm about to cut into it, I yell, "7.5, too much water." Then set the knife down and grinned.

She groaned something fierce, but still loved the dinner.