Arrrrr, me swabbies! Avast, me hearties! Ahoy, me seadogs! Blimey, me scallywags! Schooner or later, it’s Davy Jones’ locker in the briny deep for ye landlubbers. Buckle your swashes. All hands on deck. Batten down the hatches, lower the boom, and hoist the mainsail. Shiver me timbers and blow me down. Take out yer triangular […]
DEAR RICHARD: Thank you for giving me the bird in your recent column about our feathered friends. I just wish I could be your wing man, but I suppose that would require me to be in the pecking order. I certainly don’t have much perch-a-sing power. In any case, just flying high in your universe […]
Carnivores eat meat. Herbivores consume plants. Verbivores devour words. I am such a creature. My whole life I have feasted on words — ogled their appetizing shapes, colors, and textures; swished them around in my mouth; lingered over their many tastes; and felt their juices run down my chin. During my adventures as a fly-by-the-roof-of-the-mouth […]
Centuries ago, the Pilgrims found in America a wild fowl somewhat similar in appearance to a guinea fowl they had known back in England — a fowl that acquired its name because it was first imported by way of Turkey, a Middle Eastern nation that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Because we perceive this bird as ugly […]
In America, we celebrate just about everything, so it may come as no surprise to you that, in two days, March 4 (March Forth!), my pun pals will observe National Pun Day. After all, a good pun is like a good steak — a rare medium well done. A few weeks ago, I participated […]
Frosty the Snowman and his wife live in an icicle built for two in the Snow Belt on the snow banks of Lake Snowbegone. Where they live, it’s so cold that Starbucks serves coffee on a stick! It’s so cold that people have to scrape the ice off their glasses! It’s so cold that […]
DEAR RICHARD: Contemplating the spread of laboratory-grown, humane meat, I began to imagine a menu for such delectables: Faux-let Mignon, Fakin’, Top Sir-lyin’, Paté Faux Gras, Not Roast, Cloned Beef & Cabbage, Spore Ribs, Prankfurters, Not Dogs, Honey-Baked Sham, Saw-such, Nutton, Chicken Winks, Presto Duck, Cheatloaf, Not Worst, Shadow Briand, and Fauxlish Sawsuch. -Linda […]
Peter Fitzgerald, of Imperial Beach, shares his take on punning with a Shakespearean twist: “All the world’s a pun and all the men and women merely players with words.” How true. My invitation for you readers to wing me your original puns generated a veritable tsunami of submissions. I’ve placed 20 additional readers’ puns […]
Brush up your Shakespeare. Start quoting him now. Brush up your Shakespeare, And the women you will wow. – Cole Porter, “Kiss Me, Kate” Name a play written by Bartley Campbell. Of course you can’t, nor can just about anyone else alive today. Yet Campbell (1843-1888) was a popular American playwright whose giant ego […]
A good pun is like a good steak — a rare medium well done. In such a prey on words, rare, medium, and well done are double entendres, so that six meanings are packed into the space ordinarily occupied by just three. Punnery is largely the trick of compacting two or more ideas within […]