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Posted on 11/07/2004 10:36:37 PM PST by JustAmy
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I like the poem! And I like the pink tulip tree.
Gee, that's what I celebrate every day! hehehe Here's a joke for y'all.
Q. What does the proper Southern woman make for dinner?
A. Reservations
On a different note... I am pleased to say that I'm not working at the newspaper any more! Hooray!!!! I'm free! Just got back from Indianapolis last night and am going back in a couple weeks. It's so nice to have the freedom to travel and be with Missy when she needs me. The wedding is just a little over a month away.
Um...how do we celebrate this?
What do folks have to say about punning?
Fred Allen: "Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he
should be drawn and quoted."
Dave Barry: "Puns are little 'plays on words' that a certain
breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in
a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that
you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth
now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are
thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat,
the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the
first day even if they have plenty of food and water."
James Boswell on puns: "... a good pun may be admitted
among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation."
Anthony Burgess: "... plurality of reference is in the very
nature of language, and its management and exploitation is one
of the joys of writing."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In a lecture on Shakespeare, he said
that punning "may be the lowest, but at all events is the most
harmless kind of wit, because it never excites envy."
William Combe: "A paltry, humbug jest; those who have the
least wit make them best."
John Dennis: "A man who would make such an execrable pun would
not scruple to pick my pocket."
John Dryden: ... to "torture one poor word ten thousand ways."
Henry Erskine: When asked if the pun is the lowest form of
wit, he replied, "It is, and therefore the foundation of all
wit."
Oliver Wendell Holmes: "People that make puns are like wanton
boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse
themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset
a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered
witticism."
Oliver Wendel Holmes: "There is no such thing as a female
punster." {I guess that means that punning is a crime for
malefactors only!}
Samuel Johnson: "If I were punished for every pun I shed,
there would not be left a puny shed of my punnish head."
Arthur Koestler: "... two strings of thought tied with an
acoustic knot."
Charles Lamb: "... a noble thing per se. It fills the mind,
it is as perfect as a sonnet; better."
Charles Lamb: "... a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather
to tickle the intellect."
Oscar Levant: "A pun is the lowest form of humor - when you
don't think of it first."
Leonard L. Levinson: "... a joke based on the infirmities of
language."
Christopher Morley: "... language on vacation."
Edgar Allen Poe: "Of puns it has been said that those who most
dislike them are those who are least able to utter them."
Sydney Smith on puns: "The wit of words. They are exactly the
same to words which wit is to ideas, and consist in the sudden
discovery of relations in language."
Jonathan Swift: "... a talent which no man effects to despise
but he that is without it."
Jonathan Swift: "Punning is an art of harmonious jingling
upon words, which, passing in at the ears, excites a titillary
motion in those parts; and this, being conveyed by the animal
spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the cockles of
the heart."
Louis Untermeyer: "... something every person belittles and
everyone attempts."
Noah Webster: "... a low species of wit."
Ambrose Bierce: "... form of wit, to which wise men stoop and
fools aspire."
Okay, okay. So you don't parle francais. You tried to figure
out that Victor Hugo quote above until you were sacre bleu in
in the face. Well, the quote roughly translates as, "Puns are
the droppings of soaring wits." Ha!
What are some examples of puns by celebrated individuals?
* William Blake: "Her whole Life is an Epigram smack smooth &
neatly pend. Platted quite neat to catch applause with a
sliding noose at the end."
* Peter DeVries: "The things my wife buys at auctions are
keeping me baroque."
* Ben Jonson (English dramatist) was asked by a friend to make
up a pun. "Pun what subject?" was his quick reply. The
friend chuckled and said, "Oh, the king." Ben replied, "But
the king is not a subject; he is the king!"
* George S. Kaufman: "One man's Mede is another man's Persian."
* Groucho Marx: "Time wounds all heels."
* Groucho Marx, while discussing a safari in Africa: "We shot
two bucks, but that was all the money we had."
* Harry Truman, inviting guests to his home in Independence
for one of Bess' home-sooked meals, often quipped, "Missouri
loves company."
* Oscar Wilde's "work is the curse of the drinking classes" is
the most quotable quote in saloons, bar none.
Examples of Puns
Daffynitions: (words that sound like groups of other words)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alarms: What an octopus is.
Crick: The sound that a Japanese camera makes.
Dockyard: A physician's garden.
Incongruous: Where bills are passed.
Khakis: What you need to start the car in Boston.
Oboe: An English tramp.
Pasteurize: Too far to see.
Propaganda: A gentlemanly goose.
Toboggan: Why we go to an auction.
Definitions: (witty transpositions of real words)
~~~~~~~~~~~
Alimony: The bounty of mutiny.
Archeologist: A man whose career lies in ruins.
Atheist: A person with no invisible means of support.
Diplomacy: Lying in state.
Diplomat: One who is disarming, even if his country isn't.
Egotist: One who is me-deep in conversation.
Flattery: Phony express.
Hangover: The wrath of grapes.
Income Tax: Capital punishment.
Kleptomaniac: One who can't help himself from helping himself.
Middle Age: When actions creak louder than words.
Olympic Officials: The souls that time men's tries.
Psychologist: A person that pulls habits out of rats.
Saxophone: An ill wind nobody blows good.
Palindromes
~~~~~~~~~~~
Several of the examples listed below come from books by John
Irvine:
If I had a HiFi
Lisa Bonet ate no basil
Madam I'm Adam
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas
Senile Felines
Epitaphs
~~~~~~~~
Stranger, tread this ground with gravity:
Dentist Brown is filling his last cavity.
Signs of the Times:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Over an antique shop: "Remains to be seen."
In a brassiere shop window: "We're the real decoy."
At a brothel: "It's a business doing pleasure with you!"
In a butcher shop window: "Never a bum steer."
On a diaper service truck: "Rock a dry baby."
On a divorce lawyer's wall: "Satisfaction guaranteed or
your honey back."
On a junkyard fence: "Edifice wrecks."
At a lumberyard: "Come see, come saw."
On a plumber's truck: "A flush beats a full house."
Over the psychiatrist's couch: "I shrink, therefore I am."
At Spooner's Tailor Shoppe: "It's our measure to pleat you!"
At the tire store: "We skid you not!"
Spoonerisms:
~~~~~~~~~~~
"Is it kistomary to cuss the bride?"
"Three cheers for our queer old dean Victoria!"
LOL!
I'm not working at the newspaper any more! Hooray!!!! I'm free! Just got back from Indianapolis last night and am going back in a couple weeks.
Cool, Jen. No wonder I haven't seen much of you lately. Enjoy the free time!
Whoops. Tulip, my last post was supposed to be sent to you. Sorry.
Long time no post!
How are you doing?
How are feeling since last Tuesday? :0)
LOL!
It makes more sense now. LOL!
:) What did I do?
Hi Pippin! So thrilled about the election! I was in shock all last week. Today is nice and rainy in Tucson - such a treat whenever it's overcast and drizzly since we only get 12" of actual rain each year. How are you?
Hi, TT!
Thank you for the precious poem and graphic!
Hi Pippin! How are you doing?
I'm just feeling such a sense of relief and a sense of America having dodged a HUGE bullit!
I thought you deserved an explanation for "Four more ears...." LOL!
GRRRRREAT!!!!!!!:)
LOL! Thanks! ;0)
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