The unintended pun in everyday life.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Obvious Bad Puns Block Subtle Unintended Puns?

I've begun to wonder if the proliferation of very corny, very bad, very un-funny, intended puns in the headlines of many web articles makes it more difficult to perceive the more fascinating and elegant unintended puns, which, as I've pointed out many times, are all around us. That is, we get so used to the stupid puns we see that we become innoculated to subtler word play, or our brains block us from noticing what would be more enjoyable word combinations, simply to protect us from going insane from the bad word play, and the very unenjoyable word combinations that blast us way too often.

What do you think? I know that when I have on occasion alerted a friend to a pun he just unintentionally said, the response is often, "But that isn't funny." I have tried to explain that I'm not saying it's funny, only that it's interesting (not embarassing) that he happened to choose those particular words. But usually the person is still unhappy and feels the butt of a joke he doesn't get. I now wonder if it's partly because of the widespread use of bad puns in the media, which make people "gun shy" about puns.

On to some recent puns:

Here is a "multi-media" pun:
March 10, 2011
I have had a cold for a while, and now my head is totally filled with unpleasant fluids. While attempting to empty my head of some of this stuff, I was thinking that my head felt like it was going to explode, and I said to myself that the feeling was like: “...it blows me away.”

The next one was spoken during announcments at our church.
March 6, 2011
We have a small mercy/outreach effort, in which we collect non-perishable food items and bottled water from the congregation, put these things into plastic bags, and then ask folks to give them to those in need. We are supposed to hand them out from our cars and say something like, "This is to show God's love for you." The ministry is known as "Meals in Wheels." The announcer was explaining about a time he did it when he could tell the recipient was surprised by the gesture, and started thinking about it.
He said: “The person took the bag, looked at the contents, and you could see the wheels turning.”

Please post your comments and puns. I look forward to hearing from you!

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