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Horrible Puns with Long Setups
…have always been a passion of mine. That’s why if any of my family is present when I say out loud, “That reminds me of…” they immediately try to divert my attention. If that doesn’t work, attempted strangulation has been known to occur.]
While opening a package of lemonade mix this morning, I was reminded of the story of a lion and a cheetah that fell in love. They had a son, who had the characteristic lordly manner of his father, but the spotted coat and great speed of his mother. He was known throughout the jungle as Tear-Along, the Dotted Lion.
What are you waiting for? Let’s hear a worse one.
Published in General
Do you have fairy washing-up liquid in the US? Because if so then I’ve a really terrible one for you.
After Quasimodo’s death, the bishop of the cathedral of Notre Dame sent word through the streets of Paris that a new bellringer was needed. The bishop decided that he would conduct the interviews personally and went up into the belfry to begin the screening process. After observing several applicants demonstrate their skills, he decided to call it a day when a lone, armless man approached him and announced that he was there to apply for the bellringers job. The bishop was incredulous.
“You have no arms!”
“No matter,” said the man, “observe!”
He then began striking the bells with his face, producing a beautiful melody on the carillon. The bishop listened in astonishment, convinced that he had finally found a suitable replacement for Quasimodo.
Suddenly, rushing forward to strike a bell, the armless man tripped, and plunged headlong out of the belfry window to his death in the street below. The stunned bishop rushed to his side.
When he reached the street, a crowd had gathered around the fallen figure, drawn by the beautiful music they had heard only moments before. As they silently parted to let the bishop through, one of them asked, “Bishop, who was this man?”
“I don’t know his name,” the bishop sadly replied, “but his face rings a bell.”
The following day, despite the sadness that weighed heavily on his heart due to the unfortunate death of the armless campanologist (now there’s a trivia question for you), the bishop continued his interviews for the bellringer of Notre Dame. The first man to approach him said, “Your excellency, I am the brother of the poor, armless wretch that fell to his death from this very belfry yesterday. I pray that you honour his life by allowing me to replace him in this duty.”
The bishop agreed to give the man an audition but, as the armless man’s brother stooped to pick up a mallet to strike the first bell, he groaned, clutched at his chest and died on the spot. Two monks, hearing the bishop’s cries of grief at this second tragedy, rushed up the stairs to his side. “What has happened?” the first breathlessly asked, “Who is this man?”
“I don’t know his name,” sighed the distraught bishop, “but he’s a deadringer for his brother.”
About the time of Quasimoto, there was a jester noted for his outrageous puns. The king finally had enough and had the jester arrested. After an all too brief trial, the jester was sentenced to be hanged. On the day of execution, as he was being lead to the scaffold, a messenger arrived from the king. “His All Gracious Majesty in his great benevolence will commute the sentence if the jester will agree never to make another pun.” The crowd was hushed waiting for the jester to respond. He looked at the rope around his neck and said, “No noose is a good noose” and died happy.
Stephan Pastis does this a lot with his comic strip Pearls Before Swine.
(@peterrobinson , is this in your collection?)
I am reminded of the well-to-do family of potatoes, Mr. and Mrs. Spud. They met and fell in love, and eventually had a beautiful daughter. They doted on her, sent her to charm school, and raised her to possess all the graces expected in their social circle.
Of course, as all children do, the daughter grew up and went away to college, where she met a man and fell in love. She couldn’t wait to bring the man home to her parents, especially because he was famous and well-respected by almost everyone. When the two of them arrived home for dinner, the parents threw open the door to see their daughter with Walter Cronkite.
The parents politely welcomed him into their home, but remained quiet, even sullen, through dinner and dessert. Eventually, young Mr. Cronkite went home, and the confused daughter asked her parents what was wrong.
“I thought you would be excited,” she said, “to see that I am dating Walter Cronkite.”
“He seems nice enough,” the father replied, “but your mother and hoped you would marry someone worthy of you.”
“Of course he’s worthy of me,” the daughter answered angrily. “He’s the most trusted man in America!”
“He can never be worth of you,” the father answered. “He’s just a commentator.”
Not a pun, but this is the best “really long set-up” joke ever:
Let ‘er rip. We’ll get the context.
The Norm Macdonald moth joke is awesome!
Thank you all for bringing a smile to my day.
Roy Rogers was furious that some large animal had chewed up his new boots overnight. Later that day he returned home with a large puma he shot and his wife burst into song: “Pardon me, Roy, is that that cat that chewed your new shoes?”
[hint for non-elderly: 1941 Glen Miller/ Andrews Sisters song about a train.]
There was a young rabbi who wanted a vacation. He didn’t have a lot of money, so he wound up with the cheapest foreign travel he could find, which was to the Land of the Trids. He got there, and it was a nice place. Speaking with his hosts at dinner, he said, “I’m surprised this place isn’t better known. It really is lovely.”
“It’s because we have been at war. Few people want to vacation in a war zone.”
“War? I haven’t seen any war? Where are you hiding it?”
His host Trid sighed, “It’s mostly up the mountain. A troll lives up there. He and his forebears have been terrorizing the Trids for centuries.”
“Does he come down the mountain at night?” the rabbi asked.
“No, no, nothing like that. But the mountain is very rich with resources. We send up people to try to gather the resources or build mines, but the troll always finds them and kicks them so hard they tumble back down the mountain. We are a poor people. All of the riches of the kingdom are up on that mountain. We can’t not try to go up there. But, again, we always get kicked back down the mountain by the troll.”
“Don’t you have an army?” the rabbi asked. “Surely with modern weapons?”
The Trid shrugged, “We have tried, but we can’t afford the biggest and best weaponry, nor do we want to blow the mountain off the face of the Earth. What weapons we have just bounce off the troll’s skin. Still, we try. Tomorrow, there will be another expedition by our army.”
The rabbi nodded, “I will see this expedition. Maybe I can think of something.”
So, the next morning, he watches as the Trid Royal Army mounts its expedition up the mountain. He watches with a telescope as they encounter the troll and watches as the troll grabs each one and kicks the Trid as if it were a football, and the Trid bounces back down the mountain.
He approaches the Trid general, “Have you ever tried talking to the troll? Why does he do this?”
The general shook his head sadly, “The troll never talks to us, only kicks.”
“Well,” says the rabbi, “I am a stranger here, and your people have been very kind to me this week. I am a man of G-d. Perhaps I might be able to talk to him.”
The general gives the rabbi a “be my guest” gesture up the mountain.
The rabbi starts up the mountain with all good feelings, but the higher he gets, the more he realizes the scale. When looking through a telescope from far away, the troll had looked large, but now in the setting where he could see how large the boulders were that the troll had been near, he started to get very nervous.
Finally, he turned a corner and there was the troll.
(Continued…)
(Land of the Trids, continued from #13)
The rabbi looked at the troll. The troll looked at the rabbi.
Nothing.
“Hello,” said the rabbi.
“Hello,” said the troll in a deep and rumbling voice.
“Well?” asked the rabbi.
“Well, what?” rumbled the troll.
“Aren’t you going to kick me?”
The troll laughed, “Silly Rabbi! Kicks are for Trids!”
Worst pun I know:
A frog hops into a bank and asks loan officer Patty Black for a loan.
“Do you have any collateral?”
“Only my collection of Hummel figures.”
“What’s a Hummel figure?”
Her boss overheard the exchange and walks up and says: “It’s a knickknack, Patty Black, give the frog a loan.”
So there’s this guy who works at Sea World in the dolphin exhibit. His boss calls him into her office and says, “We have a problem. We’ve got six busloads of second graders coming for the day, and it’s the height of dolphin mating season. If those kids see those dolphins going at it, we’ll get sued for sure. The only thing we know of that will calm down horny dolphins is to feed them baby seagulls. So, take that sack, go down to the lake shore, and collect all the baby seagulls you can find. But be careful, because the zoo had a breakout yesterday and the lion got away. They shot him with a tranquilizer dart, but he still escaped into the woods. Be careful on your way to the lake. Now get going!”
So the guy grabs the sack and heads into the woods. He makes it all the way to the beach without seeing the lion, so with considerable relief, he starts collecting baby seagulls. When his sack is full he gets back on the path and starts through the woods.
He’s almost through the woods when he rounds a curve, and there, lying across the path, is the lion.
He stands there, frozen in fear, until he realizes that the lion seems sleepy. It’s not paying any attention to him. Maybe he can get past it! So, he takes a deep breath, and holding his sack tight to his chest, he steps over the lion. It ignores him.
Just as he is about to run down the path, a policeman steps out from behind a tree and grabs him by the arm. “You’re under arrest!” The guy says, “What’s the charge?”
“Transporting young gulls across a staid lion for immoral porpoises.”
Oh, I hope Ricochet doesn’t have capital punishment.
One of Peter Schikele’s:
I don’t know if that’s a “pun” or a train wreck.
I steal only from the best.
I told this joke while on vacation in Paris, in a big crowd of people inside Notre Dame. I was telling my buddy next to me, and didn’t think anyone else spoke English. When I hit the his face sure rings a bell line, I got three or four groans from behind us.
Come to think of it, that’s how I met a girl we went out afterwards and had a drink with.
Good joke.👍
These are know as “Shaggy Dog Stories”.
Issac Asimov once wrote a 10-page short story titled “Sha Guido G” that ended in a pun. He says that someone complained that it was nothing but a shaggy dog story, and he told them to take a closer look at the title.
A missionary returned from Africa, and gave a talk at a local church. After the presentation he opened the floor for questions.
A young doctor stood and asked if he had witnessed any interesting tribal medicine in the bush.
Why yes says the missionary, there was one tribe who used these enormous palm leaves as suppositories.
How did they work? asked the young man.
Oh quite well, says the missionary. In fact with fronds like those, who needs enemas?
I saw that they were having a pun contest. So I thought up ten good ones and mailed them in.
I checked later to see the results, figuring that at least one of them should have won, but no pun in ten did.
If we don’t have any, do we still have any chance of understanding the pun?
Some monks in an abbey always sold flowers in the village square at market time – they were very popular.
But one year the flowers were different; the monks had been pursuing some strange Mendelian experiments with geraniums and Venus fly traps on the side, and the result was that some of the flowers were carnivorous. Yikes.
Soon all of the dogs and cats were missing from the market square, and the town fathers knew they had a problem.
So two of them went to the biggest strongest man in the district, Hugh the blacksmith, and explained the situation.
Right says Hugh. I’ll be back in a jif. And he heads up the hill to the abbey.
After a bit the townsmen hear some distant arguing, then some crashing and banging, then what sounded like a bunch of tonsured heads banging together.
A few minutes later Hugh comes walking back down, gives the men a thumbs up, and returns to his work.
Amazing! the first man says. Boy, we sure picked the right man for THAT job!
Well of course, says the other. Only Hugh can prevent florist friars!
I’m not clicking like on this one until I get it.
I’ve got 99 problems, but a (female dog) ain’t one. See here.
No wonder I didn’t get it, even though I had all the words right.