Puns are a hard fit, I admit. I especially have a hard time with them because they don’t produce laughter in me; I have a hard time recognizing them as humor unless they’re presented in the same way as other jokes, or pre-identified as jokes.
But that joke has status built into it, as well—for example, it’s not funny to say “star-mangled spanner sounds like star-spangled banner.”
Personally, I call these “Bob Hope Humor,” which is when people laugh to demonstrate that they “get” the joke, not because it actually tickles them.
Puns are pretty much “the formula” for making jokes. Though they can get old, they’re always recognizable as jokes, which suggests that a theory based on “multiple meaning/decoding/framing” is probably on track. Hm, I wonder who suggested such a theory… ;-)
Puns are a hard fit, I admit. I especially have a hard time with them because they don’t produce laughter in me; I have a hard time recognizing them as humor unless they’re presented in the same way as other jokes, or pre-identified as jokes.
But that joke has status built into it, as well—for example, it’s not funny to say “star-mangled spanner sounds like star-spangled banner.”
Personally, I call these “Bob Hope Humor,” which is when people laugh to demonstrate that they “get” the joke, not because it actually tickles them.
Sometimes puns are funny, and sometimes they’re just punishing. And a lot of people really, really hate puns.
Go crawl in a hole and die. :-)
My response: http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/954.html
I prefer this one.
Well, what do you expect from a Forum poster? ;)
And this one is a worse pun.
Puns are pretty much “the formula” for making jokes. Though they can get old, they’re always recognizable as jokes, which suggests that a theory based on “multiple meaning/decoding/framing” is probably on track. Hm, I wonder who suggested such a theory… ;-)
You really think puns are “the formula” for making jokes? You think hunter-gatherers were making puns before they were telling funny stories?
I mean “the formula” (like I said) in the sense that it’s guaranteed to produce a recognizable (though not good) joke, not that all jokes are puns.