Once A Pun A Time

"THE ABILITY TO MAKE AND UNDERSTAND PUNS IS THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT" - Anonymous

Here are the 10 first place winners in the International Pun Contest:

1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall The one turns to the other and says "Dam!"

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says "I've lost my electron." The other says "Are you sure?" The first replies "Yes, I'm positive."


5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?", they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, " I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain ; they name him "Juan." Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

8. These friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail, and ,with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a "super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis".

10. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Like them and laugh, or blame Susan S. Yes, I already know that my title is a very bad pun, so you don't need to tell me.

Winning Bid - $60,000

Following up on my earlier post, the eBay auction for the Ten Commandments tablets from the movie with Charlton Heston is now closed. Lapin and I thought you'd like to know.

Doxy In The Comments At OCICBW

(...I ask for your prayers, MP--and those of the rest of the OCICBW denizens. I'm here for the International AIDS Conference, and there is not much good news this year. Vaccine trials are being pulled left and right, while infection numbers in the U.S. are rising dramatically....)

Thanks,
Doxy

All together now: Let us pray.

UPDATE: Doxy is indeed correct. From the New York Times:

MEXICO CITY — The United States has significantly underreported the number of new H.I.V. infections occurring nationally each year, with a study released here on Saturday showing that the annual infection rate is 40 percent higher than previously estimated.

Thanks to Lapin for the link.

Questionable?

From Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent at the Guardian:

It has been asked of [Archbishop Rowan] Williams, time and again, how he arrived at the decision not to invite the excluded yet omnipresent Robinson and his answers have been typically Rowanesque: "The problem we faced within the Anglican communion [was] that bishops gathering for Lambeth represent not only their diocese but their participation in the fellowship of worldwide Anglican Christians. Where there are bishops whose participation in that worldwide fellowship is for one reason or another questionable, that is the reason for questioning their participation."

How to describe the logic (or lack thereof) in the phrase that I bolded? Bishop Robinson's presence is questionable because certain people (bishops?) question his presence. However, certain other people (bishops?) question his lack of presence or exclusion. I hear over and over that the ABC is a brilliant man, but he seems to have placed himself on the horns of a dilemma here. Ouch!

"He puts the cant into Canterbury," grumbles one Anglican. How I wish I knew the identity of the "one Anglican" who said that.

Whose Sacrifice?

From Jim Naughton at The Lead:

A touching, revealing moment at the press conference just now. The bishops have been talking for several days now about sacrifice. “What are you willing to sacrifice” to keep the communion together?” The clear implication is that Western churches must sacrifice their desire to include gay Christians more fully in the Church.

Katie Sherrod of the Lambeth Witness asked the question I wanted to ask. In sum: who exactly do the bishops think is authorize[d] to negotiate on behalf of gay and lesbian Christians throughout the Communion? The primarily male, exclusively heterosexual delegations from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada?

The people who are being asked to make a sacrifice are not represented at this conference.

Katherine Ragsdale, also from the Witness, put a finer point on it with her question. It is the essence of Christianity to sacrifice one’s self for others. It is in the inverse of Christianity to ask others to sacrifice themselves for you. The future of the Anglican Communion may rest on the willingness of gay and lesbian Christians to “sacrifice” for it.

And the Communion doesn’t have the good grace to ask them to make that sacrifice directly, preferring to pretend that the Western churches have the moral authority to act as their surrogates.

This is the feudal morality—lords making decisions for their vassals.

At least Bishop Charles Jenkins of Louisiana had the good grace to say that he recognized that gay people had been disenfranchised, and to say that this presented a moral dilemma for him.

I've been saying it over and over, ad nauseam, that Jesus calls us, his followers, those of us who claim membership in the kingdom of God here on earth, to sacrifice ourselves, to take up our crosses and, in some cases, even to lay down our lives, as we seek to follow him and serve our brothers and sisters.

He never, ever calls us to lay crosses on the shoulders of others or to sacrifice others, no matter how righteous we believe a cause to be. It's all well and good to speak of sacrifice, but of whose sacrifice do we speak?

I'm pleased that Bishop Charles Jenkins, my bishop, recognizes that gay folks have been disenfranchised, which presents a moral dilemma for him.

Thanks to Katie Sherrod and Katherine Ragsdale for asking the right questions, and thank you, Jim Naughton, for this report.

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Thought For The Day (Non-Serious, I Think)

Perhaps the bishops at Lambeth would find it easier to come together in agreement about an Anglican Covenant by including the old club custom of the blackball.

Queen's Bloomers Bring In $9000 At Auction

LONDON - Her majesty would not be amused. A pair of Queen Victoria's bloomers, with a 50-inch waist, were snapped up for $9,000 by a Canadian buyer at a central England auction Wednesday.

Auctioneer Charles Hanson said Queen Victoria's underpants belonged to "a very big lady of quite small stature with a very wide girth." She was said to be 5 feet (1.52 meters) tall.
....

The royal drawers belonged to a family in western England whose ancestor was a lady-in-waiting for the queen.

I'd call that a bloomin' windfall for the seller.

The subject line of the email from Phil stated, "Old Queen's crotchless panties bring $9000". I decided against using that for my headline.

From Yahoo News.

A Gift For You, MadPriest

Al Bowlly - "My Melancholy Baby"

He's English! Watch the eyes.

Shall I Ban Lapin For This?

Alas! He's another one of my suppliers of material. I think I need him too much to ban him.

Click on the picture for a better view.