Pun-ishment

ooh, I love puns.

Here's an old one, and it's somewhat belated, but I like it still:

A man arrives home one night after work to find the house empty. On the coffee table is a note from his wife: "Dear John. I've gone away with the gardener."

He sits down in shock, his head in his hands; in utter despair. After some time of feeling miserable, he discovers that he's hungry. He goes to the fridge, but it's empty except for a bottle of beer and some old, smelly cheese.

"Oh, well," he says, "I can make a toasted cheese sandwich, I guess."

He slices the cheese, puts it on some bread and puts the sandwich in the broiler. Then he picks up the bottle of beer and looks at the label. It's some kind he's never seen before--must have belonged to the stupid hippie gardener that ran off with his wife. On the label is a sheep: Ewe Beer brand.

With a shrug, he opens the bottle and takes a sip. And it's not half bad. He drinks most of it down before he smells smoke.

He rushes into the kitchen, sees smoke pouring from the oven. He retrieves the sandwich--it's burnt to ashes. But, it's all he has to eat so--

He has a smelly crisp mess and a hippie's Ewe Beer.

New documentary about the diminishing way of life among Scandinavian peoples:

"The Last Lapp --The End Of A Race."

Once, in Thailand, there was a man named Chan who was a dealer of exotic hardwoods. He carried everything from mahogany to kokobolo, from ebony to purple heart. But by far, his greatest business was from selling teak to Scandinavian furniture designers.

It was the 1960s and Chan rapidly became a very wealthy man.

Until one day, he arrived at the lumber yard to discover a large portion of premium teak was missing. Chan was devastated. Upon inspection of the lumber yard, they saw tiny footprints, as though made by a small child. He called the police. They questioned everyone in the town, especially the children, but it was soon obvious that none of the townspeople were guilty of lumber thievery. Chan's insurance company paid the damages and a large fence was erected around the lumber yard.

A month went by and no more lumber was stolen, and the incident was forgotten.

But then one morning, Chan found that almost an entire unit of premium teak was gone. Again, there were the small footprints in the dirt all around where the teak had been. Chan's insurance company hired private detectives to stake out the lumber yard, because it was obvious that the thefts occurred only at night.

It was around three o'clock in the morning, two nights later, that the detectives were startled to see a large bear lightly hop over the fence, pick up a large bundle of teak boards and leap back over the fence where it disappeared into the jungle.

Of course they notified Chan and the police and of course they gave chase. Near dawn they located the bear, its den almost completely full of the missing teak. The surprised bear was last seen vanishing into the jungle, a few of the contraband teak on its shoulder. But most surprising was that the bear had tiny, naked human-looking feet.

Said the chief of police: "Well, there goes boyfoot bear with teak of Chan!"

A Sunday School teacher read a passage from the Old Testament book of Jonah to her class:

"And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah;
and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and
three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from
the belly of the fish, saying 'I called to the Lord out
of my distress and He answered me." and the Lord spoke
to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land."
(Jonah 1:17)

When she had finished reading, the teacher said, "Now, children, you have heard the Bible story of Jonah and the whale. What does this story teach us?"

Little Johnny raised his hand and said, "You can't keep a good man down!"

Years ago, Quasimodo took a brief vacation from the great cathedral of Notre Dame. A series of young substitutes filled in for him. One morning three monks were walking outside the cathedral when the ringing of the bells were suddenly interrupted by a terrible cry, followed by an even more terrible thud! as one of the substitutes fell to his tragic end.

The three monks rushed to where the young man lay.

"What happened? Who was it?" One of the monks inquired.

"Such a shame," said the second monk. "He's a dead ringer for Quasimodo."

"I don't know his name," the third added. "But his face sure rings a bell."

It's a little-known fact that at one time those same monks ran a small florists' shop outside the cathedral to support their many charities. Unfortunately the shop was small and closed-in and turned out to have continuing difficulties with ventilation. The original architect, Brother Hugh, had gone away on pilgrimage, and no matter how many times the others tried to clear the vents, they had no success.

Finally Brother Hugh returned. Under his direction the faulty vents were torn out and replaced entirely...

...thus proving that only Hugh can re-vent florist friars.

There once was a famous pianist from New York City who was scheduled to give a concert on a Sunday night in Chicago. Having never before played in this particular hall, he had intended to arrive Friday night in order to have all day Saturday to become familiar with the piano. However, his plane was delayed and by the time he reached Chicago, it was well into Saturday evening. He was very tired. Because the promoter had assured him they had a well-maintained Steinway grand, he decided that a few hours before the Sunday concert would be sufficient. He checked into his hotel and fell to sleep.

After a late breakfast, the pianist went to the concert hall to check out the Steinway. The stage manager let him into the empty hall and he sat down to play. The first arpeggio struck his ears like fingernails on a blackboard. The piano was horribly out of tune.

Irked, the pianist called the stage manager, but he denied culpability, claiming he only moved the piano on and off the stage. The pianist called the promoter, but he was in church and couldn't be reached. In a panic, the pianist resorted to the yellow pages, calling one piano tuner after another. But, being Sunday, none were available.

Except the last name, in small print, a Vicktor Opürnokyiti.

"Ja, Ich vill komm toon yar piano," said a rather old sounding and obviously foreign voice. "Ich vill be yet ofer."

At least this old geezer is prompt, thought the pianist, when the stage manager led a wizened little man onto the stage. "Please," he said, looking at his watch, "be quick as you can. I have a concert in four hours."

"Ach, not ein problemo," said Opürnokyiti, and he got right down to work. The pianist sat in the hall, reviewing sheet music. The old man finished tuning the piano with just a little more than two hours to go before the concert. The pianist thanked him, paid him his fee, and after he was alone in the hall again, sat down to play.

The sound that emanated from the piano was, if possible, worse than before. It was like listening to pigs in a slaughter house, accompanied by a drunken steel drum band and several klaxon horns.

Furious, the pianist rushed to the phone and called the old piano tuner. "Hey, old man," he shrieked. "I don't know what you did, but this piano is worse than it was before! Get your sorry butt back here and fix it. I have to play in two hours!"

"Ach, Ich bin zo zorry, mein Herr," the old man said, "But Ich kannot."

"But you came before! I beg you, please come fix this piano. Why can't you come now?"

"Vell, you see," said the old man, "For you, Opürnokyiti only toon once."

Detective Lieutenant Roger McCoy was called to the crime scene at the big mansion in the ritziest part of town. It belonged to Benjamin Hollister, the CEO of the largest employer in the county. Hollister, it seemed, had come to a rather gruesome demise sometime in the night. McCoy drove up the long drive and stopped by a small crows of police officers. He ducked under the crime scene tape and almost threw up. It was horrible. There was the flattened body, pressed into the lawn, nearly unrecognizable as having ever belonged to a human being. Two employees from the coroner's office were examining the body.

"Sergeant Hanson." McCoy greeted the nearest officer, a cute red head. "What happened here?"

"We're still trying to figure it out," she said. "At first, we thought it was some kind of ATV, based on the damage done to the turf." Here, she pointed to several smooth-bottomed grooves that criss-crossed the lawn and the body. "But the tracks aren't parallel. We're working on it, sir."

"Who found the body?"

"The gardener, sir. Hennessey's over there getting his statement."

The coroner noticed McCoy, stood up, gingerly removed his gloves, shook his head. "Hey McCoy. This one's a doozy. Cause of death appears to be suffocation due to several large and heavy blunt objects. Never saw anything like it."

A couple of officers came running up, one carrying a small, pointed red hat, the other, what looked like a bowling ball. "You ain't gonna believe this," said the officer with the hat. He wore an amused expression.

"What's so funny, Garvey?" McCoy said.

"Sorry. Just that it looks like this is belonged to one of the perps. You know what it is, right?"

"Looks like a hat," Hanson said. "A ... gnome's hat."

"A gnome? Like one of those garden decorations?"

"Is what it looks like to me," said the officer. "And Peterson--" he indicated his companion-- "found that bowling ball."

"Not just this one," Peterson said, "but a dozen or more of 'em. Scattered all over in the bushes out back. Lots of tiny footprints, too."

"Oh come on," McCoy said. "You're trying to tell me that a garden gnome killed Hollister?"

The officers wore sheepish but amused looks. "That's what we're saying, Lieutenant. There's no other explanation."

"How is it possible?"

The coroner looked at the bowling ball, nodded. "That's the murder weapon all right. Or one of 'em. Hollister was definitely smothered to death."

"By garden gnomes? Those ugly little plaster things?"

"Not plaster ones," said a voice. McCoy looked around to see two other officers coming up, carrying two wriggling little bearded men by their collars. They wore pointy toed little red shoes, green jackets. One was bare headed, the other had on a red pointed hat that matched the one officer Garvey held. "These guys did it. Wasn't hard to get a confession out of 'em."

Just then, the gardener came up, tugged on McCoy's sleeve. "D'ya know what happened?

The detective looked at him for a moment, then shaking his head, said, "Well sir, it looks to me like these bowling gnomes smothered your boss."

Wow, some of these are painful.


So Miss Patricia Black is a bank teller, and good enough at her job that when a frog comes hopping up to her desk one day, all she says is, "Yes, sir, can I help you?"

"I hope so," says the frog, "I'd like a loan."

"I can do that, sir, but I'll need some collateral."

So the frog hops up on the desk, dragging a Hummel statue as tall as itself. Now Patty's a bit surprised, since that doesn't fit any kind of collateral she's ever heard of, but she manages to keep a professional face, and excuses herself to get the manager's signature on the loan.

So she takes the little statue and the loan paperwork into the manager's office. "Well, sir, this, ah -- Kermit Jagger -- wants a loan, but I don't know about this statue as collateral..."

And the manager says, "It's a knick-knack, Patty Black; give the frog a loan! His old man's a Rolling Stone."

Heh, heh. I love these stories.

Just goes to prove, a pun is its own reword.

Also the lowest form of humor, unless you make it up.

In the earliest part of the 20th century the young Basque men of the villiage took their elder to see his first movie. The old man froze in the aisle when he saw a train rushing towards him. Then someone yelled Fire! While the young Basques tried to pull the elder out of the theater they were trampled to death, proving the old adage:

Never put all your Basques in the same exit.

www.donaldmichaelplatt.com

The recent demise of Mr. Heath Ledger is a sad thing. Fans of his, however, can view his last two films, which will be released posthumously.

I apologize in advance for the following, but the above announcement has prompted another entry into this horrible thread.

Gus McPhee had a large field in the lowlands of Scotland. At the urging of his banker, he decided to sell some of the sod, and a good amount of topsoil beneath it, which was very rich. McPhee divided his field into plots and marked the corners of the plots with a number of wooden posts.

His business boomed. Gardeners from miles around came to get his fertile topsoil. While at first, he could keep track of his business in his head, it soon became necessary to resort to bookkeeping. His banker was pleased, too, that McPhee had such good records, and told him so.

McPhee said, "Och, 'tis nothin'. I just keep track of it all in my heath humus post ledger."




sorry

Mahatma Gandhi was universally respected for his ideals and spirituality. He clothed himself in a simple loincloth and walked long distances in his bare feet. His custom of frequent fasting did make his constitution somewhat less than robust and also resulted in problems with bad breath.

He was a super calloused, fragile mystic, plagued with halitosis.