Some punsters are so dedicated to their craft that they throw their hats into the ring at pun contests, which are currently held in multiple U.S. cities, as well as the United Kingdom. I regularly participate in a punderful event called Pundemonium at the Finest City Improv, 3746 Sixth Ave, in Hillcrest. The next Pundemoniums, which I hope to attend and perform at, will occur on October 25 (Halloween theme), 10 pm, and December 6 (Christmas theme), 10 pm. 

In Pundemonium, punsters are invited to match wits in various events. In Battle of the PUNdits, contestants prepare and deliver a two-minute monologue riddled with puns on a topic of their choice. Here’s one of my Pundemonium monologues:

I’m reel-y hooked on catchy fish puns. With pro-fish-in-sea, I castanet over life under the sea. Some fish split are into groupers; others united for a common porpoise? Please mullet over. 

One tragic story indicates that life down there can get pretty shad and crappie. There was once a brain sturgeon on the staff of the community health fishility. He was in fact one of its flounders, wiser than Salmon, a good sole, a fin fellow, an angelfish who would never shrimp from his responsibilities and who whistled a happy tuna — a total starfish.

One day one of his patients, a shellfish, crabby whipper snapper, started carping that the sturgeon’s treatments had made him eel. His mussels ached, he had an awful haddock, and he became hard of herring. He felt like a battered fish, which almost krilled him. So he conked the sturgeon with a malpractice suit asking for a payment of a krillion sea dollars. The two of them had become anemones. The whipper snapper was no angry that he threw a bottle of Omega-3 pills at the sturgeon. Fortunately the injuries were only super fish oil.

Good cod and holy mackerel! The sturgeon was in a real pickerel. The board demanded his oyster. But fortunately, the case smelt to high heaven, so after the judge tested the scales of justice, she denied the plaintiff’s clam and found the sturgeon not gill-ty.

The hospital tried to hire the sturgeon back, but by then he had hit the bottlenose pretty hard and couldn’t stop floundering and weeping and whaling. This resulted in a terrible loss of net income, his sole source of money, and he had to borrow from a lone shark and prawn his belongings. With no plaice to go, he had to sleep in a tentacle on Squid Roe, even when the wind would blowfish and it rained catfish and dogfish.

That’s my tail — hook, line, and stinker and lox, rockfish, and barrelcuda. Please drop me a line to let minnow if you have other finny tails.

Recently, I published a column about fadspeak, the trite cliches that pollute our language. I received a billowy mailbag of readers responses. Here are two representative statements:

DEAR RICHARD: With regard to the cheap shot artists who frequent fadspeak, I would hope they would not continue to kick the can down the road, nor stoop to new lows. Know what I mean? Life is too short to not face the music. Been there, done that! Is there no end in sight? I’m busy as a bee, but honey works better than vinegar, so maybe we can rein in this behavior before our last rodeo. As we climb to the top of that last mountain, we should try not to trip over our own words, lest we be sentenced to leaving it all up in the air. – Richard Rachel, University City

DEAR RICHARD: It doesn’t bother people that “going forward” never modifies the subject of the sentence. I also wonder whether they are “going forward” into the future or into an alternate dimension where clarity and grammar are optional. It continues to amaze me that TV reporters and even anchors make so many grammatical mistakes. –Jess Barmatz, La Jolla

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On Tuesday, October 22, at 4 pm, I’ll be launching my PODucation™ program, a series of language lessons for the digital generation. This event will take place at San Diego Central Library Teen Center, 2nd Floor, 330 Park Blvd. If you wish to attend, please email me at richardhlederer@gmail.com, and I’ll add you to the invitation list.

On Thursday, October 24, 10-11 am, I’ll be performing “A Treasury of Halloween Humor” at Rancho Bernardo Oasis, Rancho Bernardo Road, 17170 Bernardo Center Drive. For information, call (858) 240-2880.

Please send your questions and comments about language to Richard Lederer.