Above The Fruited Plain: Vandals Bolster American Sentiment

Lincoln, NE – A new fad has taken root in the graveyard enthusiast community; tired old headstones are getting a facelift.  Volunteers with a local group are sneaking into cemeteries all over the city in the dead of night to paint the monuments with bright colors and add cheerful decorations.

“We just feel that the grey monolith has run its course.” says Lemonn Gentworth, president of Graveyard Rejuvenators International: Midwest, otherwise known as GRIM.  “There’s no reason people looking at a cemetery should ever be reminded of death, and nothing says “death” like ugly grey rocks sticking up out of the ground.  With a little paint and maybe some tasteful dolphin figurines, cemeteries might become a place so removed from the awful stigma of death that you could host a toddler’s birthday party, or have a badminton tourney, or sell puppies to homeless people, or whatever.  The possibilities are really endless.”   To date, Gentworth and his volunteers have “colorfied” (the official GRIM term) about 100 graves in and around Lincoln, with plans to move on about 250 more.

While it should be noted that these activities are viewed as vandalism under the law (punishable by death in North Korea) and there has been some outcry from concerned citizens.  Local resident Jarvis Wayne II voiced his concerns on the back porch of his humble farmhouse on the outskirts of town, overlooking his neighbor’s fields, and the family graveyard that lies just beyond the white picket fence.  “Well I was actually pretty shocked at first.”  he said. “I just woke up one morning and saw all of my ancestors had a coat of yellow paint on the headstones.  I called my preacher just to make sure you know, there wasn’t anything untoward about it, you know with the dead and all that.  And then I called the hospital to make sure they would tell those ambulance helicopter pilots that I did not have a landing pad in my back yard, what with the yellow and all.  After that, the more I thought about it, I guess it was really OK.  I think Grandpa Jarvis might even have liked it, you know with the yellow and all.”

Despite the controversy, one would be hard pressed to recreate a more idyllic scene of Americana .  A salt-o-the-earth midwesterner, sipping tea on his porch, the sun setting on the horizon, illuminating the Amber Graves of Wayne.

What Do When Rain?

Wiring Diagram Joke

Lunch Room Rules Baby!

They really cut loose during meetings at this place.

What, Son? Yes, Watson Made a Funny

This is a very large screenshot of a transcript of the NPR quiz show, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” with host Peter Sagal.  On this particular day, one of the guests was Texas musician Dale Watson, and below you’ll find his answer to the Sagal’s question, “How do you feel about the banjo?”, as well as the fact that I read transcripts from NPR in the middle of the night, apparently.  If you’re wondering whether of not this is funny, I think the word “laughter” there in the transcript should settle that debate.  If you’re interested, the entire transcript can be found here.  Hey, making that link was pretty fun, let’s do it again just for fun.

 

Richard Nixed for Bad Pun

As a young man, Richard Nixon captained a small, oar-powered whaling vessel.  On one particular day, spotting a whale off the starboard bow (where else?), he called for the weapon. “Spear!” He said.  Then, as levitation began to get away, he called to the oarsmen for more speed.  “Row!” He said.  Then, being distracted by a cloud that looked like a wildebeest, he pointed, and prophetically yelled, “A Gnu!”

In Every Tense of the Word

Jerry and his fellow night shift workers at the sporting goods store, would sometimes pass the time by playing catch with items from the camping department.  Around Christmas time, Doug the Supervisor caught wind of this game and left the following note on the break-room refrigerator:

Because our customers have wanted to present perfect tents to their loved ones as gifts, and inasmuch as we will have wanted them to buy future perfect tents, any employee caught playing Pass Tents should know, that they will be causing Doug the Supervisor to be presently tense, and will be finding themselves unemployed, and only able to live in future progressive tents.

Other People Do Puns Too: #1

The Reader may be forgiven for believing that Two Weevils is the only source of language humor on the internet, and perhaps across all media.  In fact, the casual Reader may have come to believe that wordplay is a new concept, invented right here at this blog.  To limit the prevalence of this abominable, yet completely understandable error, from time to time I will share with the Reader the work of other pun enthusiasts in a segment I have cleverly named Other People Do Puns Too or, OPDPU (dashitall that’s a clever acronym). This is a fine example.
http://bizarro.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bz-panel-04-23-15.jpg

If you can show me a better play on the word dinosaur, I’ll eat my socks …or maybe just put them my feet, or maybe fold them and put them in a drawer or something.

A Tale of Two Phillies

Farmer Jim had a beet farm that he worked with an old plow horse named Sheila, who had faithfully served him for ten years.   Ever vigilant and dependable, Sheila was as devoted as any horse has ever been to the farming of beets.  Jim also had a son-in-law, Kevin, who was neglecting to take responsibility for his family, that is, Jim’s daughter and grandchildren.  One evening, Jim unhooked the old horse from her plow, put a saddle on her, and rode over to Kevin’s house to confront him.  An argument ensued that resulted in the son-in-law fleeing for his life as Jim tried to run him down atop the age-ed steed.  Sheila, at this stage in his life, unable to endure a sustained manhunt, collapsed from two broken legs, and Jim was forced to put the poor animal out of her misery.  Jim wanted to honor his old friend, and her fidelity to the beet farm.  So, he dug a deep grave, placed the horse at the bottom, and covered her with the very beets she had helped cultivate.  In summary:  In trying to horse a dead-beat, Jim was forced to dead a beet-horse, and in the end he had to beet a dead horse.

After the solemn funeral for Sheila, Jim went to see a man about getting a new horse.  Amos Horseworth, as it were, the horse dealer, had promised Jerry that he had for him a horse that would rival old Pam in every aspect, and would possess one new faculty that neither Jim nor Sheila had ever dreamed of.  That is, this horse had been bred for super-equine vision.  Where most plow horses will look no further than the end of their nose, and peradventure a few good ones, the end of the row, this horse had the ability to affix her gaze on an object sixty miles ahead, enabling her to plow rows so straight, Jim’s Beet Farm would replace the Equator and Prime Meridian, as the standard from which to measure Earthly locations.

Furthermore, Amos wanted to give the horse to Jim, free of charge.  Because he couldn’t imagine the vulgarity of bringing money to the table to replace such a priceless friend as Sheila, Amos would hear nothing of payment, it wouldn’t even be mentioned.  Not so much as an insinuating eyebrow was to be raised: no clearing of the throat, no tugging of the earlobe, no code talk of “how much does that dog weigh?” or any such thing.  They were to proceed as if no two men, in the history of the world, had ever even conceived of any agreements, save those of pure charity.  The terms of this agreement being so favorable to Jim, he didn’t bother with whether the claims of this horse were true, or even really, whether the animal was fit in the usual sense, he just accepted the offer of Horseworth.  That is, remembering the words of his father, he thought he “shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

As time went on, everything the Dealer had told Jim about this horse proved to be true.  Jim’s rows of beets were the truest that anyone had ever seen, and their distance at both ends from the Tropic of Cancer was measured, and found to be within .0001 inches of perfection.  And through the empirical testing of a group of nay-sayers, much to their chagrin mind you, it was proven with such certainty that this horse could count the number of yellow feathers in a finch’s tail from 75 miles away, that it was widely reported that they had begun to say “yea.”  Sharon’s Potentate, as Jim had named her, became the most valuable horse in the world, and Jim, on account of the straight rows in his fields, the happiest man in the world.

In time however, the value of the animal became a matter of concern for Jim, so he took out a $10,000,000 insurance policy.  The insurance company, now having an interest in the health of the horse, sent in a team of veterinarians to give Sharon’s a once over, one of which was a world-renowned equine dentist, whose celebrity status had moved him to sack his given name, and adopt the single title: Dave.  Dave arrived with a photographer, intent on making digital files of the horse’s teeth, so he could keep better track of her oral health.  As the equipment was being set up in preparation for the creation of these new Graphics Interchange Format pictures, something about it gave Jim a strange feeling, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.  Not being a man of superstition, he dismissed this premonition as the result of his not having eaten breakfast.  But as just as soon as Jim thought he had put the matter to bed, his worst fears were realized.  When the final teeth pictures had been loaded onto the photographer’s computer, Sharon’s Potentate fell down dead.  All of the puzzle pieces in Jim’s mind falling into place, he realized that he had not remembered his father’s words correctly.  In hopes that no one would ever make this mistake again, on Sharon’s‘s tombstone, Jim had the stonemason engrave the words:

We GIFed a Look Horse in the Mouth.

Five Short Puns

Do you know what a Frenchman does when he realizes he’s been drinking American wine?  He screams with terroir.

What do you call a sweater you hate so much that you only wear it once?  a cardineveragain.

When H.T. Hallswell opened a hotel that bore his name, his friend eyed the finished construction and remarked, “Hallswell, that inn’s swell.”

Do you know what Paul McCartney says to his friend Leeland when they go to the casino?  “Bet it Lee, bet it Lee.  Bet it Lee, bet it Lee.”

Steve the Giraffe lived next door to some very disagreeable wild pigs.  They were always protesting everything he did, and it had become unbearable.  He decided to sell the house and move away, but he couldn’t find a buyer who wanted to live beside pesky nay-boars.