Suffering from a pocket full of tearable pun-ishment
By Burton W. Cole
The sheet was mixed in with the other notices with rip-off tabs pinned to a public bulletin board. You know the ones—the upper three-quarters of the paper details the service or item offered, and the bottom quarter is snipped into little strips with the phone number printed on each.
They’re the paper version of hippy vests with all the dangling fringe. Except in this case, you tear off a strip of “fringe” and stuff it into your pocket, where you will find it again six months later but have no memory of why you’re carrying a random phone number.
But this one…
The top declared in big letters: “These puns are tearable.”
And printed on each tab was a pun:
“A pessimist’s blood type is always B-negative.”
“A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.”
“Santa’s helpers are subordinate Clauses.”
“Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.”
The rip-off of the rip-and-save ads is the brainchild of Brian Atkinson and his TearablePuns.org. The slogan: “Tearable Puns are so ripping good, you want to take them with you! Put a pun in your pocket!”
Most of us would consider a pocket full of puns inhumane pun-ishment. But for those of us who enjoy wordplay, or who are just plain grumpy and love to groan, here’s a collection of puns I’ve ripped off from various tearable, er, terrible sites and joke books.
• I quit my job as an undertaker. I couldn't keep letting people down.
• I didn’t like my beard at first, but it’s grown on me.
• I’m addicted to brake fluid. But I can stop at any time.
• A skunk fell in the river and stank to the bottom.
• Of course, I can jump higher than a house. Houses can’t jump.
• What did one eye say to the other? Just between you and me, something smells.
• A nose smells better than it tastes.
• The snail didn’t move. It was an escar-stay.
• The atom wasn’t allowed to testify in court because atoms make up everything.
• Be kind to dentists. They have fillings too.
• Straws are for suckers.
• Corduroy pillows make headlines.
• What kind of concert only costs 45 cents? A 50 Cent concert featuring Nickelback.
• “Moose are falling from the sky,” the wife yelled. Never one to give her credit, the husband corrected, “It’s reindeer.”
• Don’t trust stairs—they’re always up to something.
• Sam has the heart of a lion, the brains of a chimpanzee and the footing of a mountain goat. And that’s why he was banned from the zoo.
• I lost my mood ring. I don’t know how I feel about that.
• I got fired from the calendar factory because I took a day off.
• German sausage jokes are the wurst.
• If you dream in color, it’s a pigment of your imagination.
• What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches? A nervous wreck.
• A lazy baby kangaroo is a pouch potato.
• I was going to make myself a belt of watches, but I realized it would be waist of time.
• A clown held open the door for me. It was a nice jester.
• A bee that can’t make up its mind is a maybe.
• Someone stole all my lamps. I’ve been delighted.
• Pour coffee — it gets mugged every morning.
• Once he moved his pillow to the fireplace, Jason slept like a log.
• A dinosaur with a large vocabulary is called a thesaurus.
• What do you use to make vegan doggie biscuits? Collie flour.
• The vegetarian beauty queen said she wanted whirled peas.
• What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.
• What do you call a lawyer who can cook? A sue chef.
• When the cheese factory in France exploded, there was nothing left but de Brie.
Bombard Burt with puns at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.