A Geek History of Time - Episode 205 - The History of Paronomasia Part I

Episode Date: April 1, 2023

I'm not here to poke holes and suspended this belief. Anyway, they see some weird shit. They decide to make a baby. Now, Muckin' Merchant. Who gives a fuck? Oh, Muckin' which is a trickle, you know, baby. You know what it's called? Well, you know, uh, you really like it here. Uh, it's kind of nice and uh, it's called as Muckin' Home of the Sun.

It's called Muckin' Home of the Sun. So, yeah, sure, I think we're gonna settle. If I'm a peasant boy who grabs sword out of a stone, yeah, I'm able to open people up. You will, yeah. Anytime I hit them with it, right? Yeah. So my cleave landing will make me a cavalier.

Good day, Spree. If Sysclothon it was empty-headed, plumbian trash, it was empty headed, but being trash is really good and gruey. Because cannibalism and murder pull back just a little bit and build walls to keep out the rat heads. And it's a little bit of a round of twos. A thorough intent doesn't exist. Some people stand up quite a bit,

some people stay seeing quite a bit. So let me just... This is a geek history of time. We're in Connect, never rehearse, we're in World's Head, World's Head, Street Teacher, and also now, just to put you in the corner. It's a pretty sudden. Here in Northern California, and I think I mentioned at the beginning of one of our last couple of episodes, that I'm going to be taking over DMing our D&D game, my long running groups D&D game. What's actually going to happen is, me and one of the members of the group are going to be taking turns, so we're going to be

in order to keep the workload manageable for both of us, we're going to be in order to keep the workload manageable for both of us. We're going to be switching off. And he's going to be running first, which means I had to come up with what my character is going to be for that game. And I put in a fair amount of time, putting together a ranger. We're gonna be playing Pathfinder First Edition for anybody who's listing, who's like, oh yeah, okay, what are you guys playing? And so for character creation for that particular system, there's a lot of stuff you gotta figure out.

And I put in a whole bunch of time and I figured all the stuff out and I had it backstory in my head. And I got into doing all of it and I looked at the character and I was like, yeah, yeah, this is pretty good. This is great. And this is this is a break from my usual pattern. You know, I'm not, I'm not going to be playing the lawful good paladin guy tank anymore. And as soon as that thought came out of my head, I was like, well, but, okay,

in the system, what if I tried doing that? out of my head I was like well but okay in the system what if I tried doing that. So just like a Corleone when I try to leave it pulls to be in that in that game, I'm going to be tanking as a as a pal in again. But you know, everybody's, everybody's expecting it at this point. So they're like, yeah, well, of course, just like this other member of the group is always going to play a wizard 99% of the time. It's going to be a dwarf just because that's his stick. So anyway, that's what I have going on. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin and history feature at the high school level up here in Northern California. And you, as we've established before, I am further along in the parenting scheme of things than you chronologically.

I have a 30 and a 10 year old. Yeah. You will run into this moment at some point in your life as a dad. You need to plan ahead for how you're going to do it. Okay. At one point, your child will challenge the throne. At one point, your child will challenge the throne. They will challenge you to a foot race, saying that they know they can outrun you. And at that point, you will still need to beat them.

Okay. The problem is, it will be a peric victory because my back is fucking killing me. You need to bring the old man still had it, right? I absolutely did. Absolutely did. But like my 10 year old, she is always stymied by the fact she's like, how are you able to like block every punch? How are you able to outmaneuver me every which way?

How are you so much more agile than I am? I'm 10. I run everywhere every day. I'm on a bike all the time. I don't see you doing anything ever. And it's like that's true. That's very true. I've worked on being very idle. I am fat. I am out of shape. I am broken down. These are absolute facts. I guess, yes, I have said all these things. And then I point out, I'm like, and as fat and broken down as I am, I can still whoop your ass. So heads up.

And she's bothered by that. Rightly so. So she challenged me to a food race today. I said, all right, go get your stocks and shoes. She's like, what really? I'm like, go get your stocks and shoes. I will beat you wearing my sweats barefoot on the pavement. And so we went outside, marked off the spots. And I told her, I said, now I'm going to have to hold my sweats up because they're going to fall down by don't. And I'm still going

to beat you, keeping my sweats from falling down around my ass. And she's laughing. I said, you tell me when? And she said, go. And she takes off running. And she thought she had me. And I pass her right toward the end. To be honest, I thought I would have gotten ahead of her a lot earlier.

Um, but back to as I still did it, still ran past her. And I was pulling my pants up back around my ass because they had fallen down. Um, and I went back inside and I said, now just so you know, my back is killing me. And I'm going to go sit down now. So my back by my knee, for some reason, my neck hurts right now. Like there's nothing okay. You know, your spine is one big long spring. Evidently. So it's a bit of an outstead. Yes. Thated. So I won. And that's the important part. And I told her to, I mean, like that's, I love being very transparent with her. And I'm like, Oh no, I beat you.

And I said, if you challenged me to do this 10 times in a row, the only time I would beat you was this time. And that's the only time I'm going to do it. So you come back to me when you're ready. And I will beat you again. And I will be in traction for 10 days after. Nice. See, the temptation I'd have is, you know, to the argument of, I run everywhere.

I'm, you know, I'm younger, I'm all of this. And I'm doing more things and you're just sitting there idle. My response would be it's the divine right of dad. This is why I'm the father. Right. Part of the station child. Yeah. Just know your place and they celestial hierarchy. I told her as we're walking back in like by the time you're 13 you're going to be able to outrun me no problem. And she's like really?? I said, yeah, she's like, so your, our brother could, my brother could outrun you right now. I'm like, no, probably not. He doesn't run as well as you do actually here.

You're, you're better. Yeah. No. And I don't want to find out. All right. So Let's not, let's not take any shots at the throne. I made two, three weeks mean two three weeks to recover.

See me in March or April. Yeah, let's say April. Yeah, just to be safe. Listen to a cushion. Yeah. So that's that's what I got going on. All right. Have you ever heard of Parano, No, Mazia? That's what I got going on. All right. Have you ever heard of parano mazia? Hero, no mazia. I have not. Is that a Greek word?

Sounds Greek. Yeah. It is. It is. It originally came into our lexicon in 1577. Okay. It's actually it's Greek and Latin as a lot. Okay. Smart words tend to be.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. tend to be. Okay. Para meaning beside or near and Oh, no, Masha meaning naming or having to do with naming things. Okay. Innocence. Yeah. It's a it's a rhetorical device that can be defined as a phrase intentionally used to exploit the confusion between words having similar sounds but different meanings. Okay. There are several forms.

There's visual paranomazia, which is like a picture of the hot place where people like me go, and then people like you hope to avoid, which is slowly slipping under the water, which is really just a reference to Finland. Okay. Hellsinky. reference to Finland. Okay. Hellsinky. Nice.

Nice. Okay. There's also homophonic paranomazia words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings. Like you've heard what's black and white and red all over. Yeah. There's homographic paranomazia words that are spelled the same, but they have different meanings.

Like if I use too large ocean fish to to keep a beat my big bass drum. Nice. Okay. Yeah. There's homonomic paranomazia where you have to use both homophonic and homographic paranomazia to be able to understand this type, which is cool. Cordoroi pillows are making headlines this shopping season is a good example. Puerto Rai Pilos are making headlines this shopping season is a good example. Okay. Okay. There's also recursive paranoia where two appear in the same sentence, but the second one's meaning depends on the first, like a Freudian slip goes under a dress when you're meant to wear one thing,

but you, uh, but of your mean mother, um, or okay, and slip is where you say one thing, but you mean your mother. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And there's compound paranoia where you say one thing, but you mean your mother. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's compound Paranomazia where you stack them up in a sentence. Like, why can't you starve in the biblical desert? It's because Noah sent ham and his descendants mustered bread in the sand, which is there.

Well, okay. Yeah. So, tonight, so, so is this just going just gonna be one one long set of excuses for you to make shitty puns? No, we are talking about the most complex and superior of all art forms puns and their history. Okay That's that's the episode tonight. I that's that's the episode tonight. I have a long week to cut down on beer. You want to pause it so you can go get it. No, I hailing you. Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. All right.

You ready? Hold on. Hold on. Oddly, I'm not angry about that. Oddly that one that one that one. I thought it would get me the grapes of wrath, but yeah, yeah. Yeah, it probably should have. Yeah, I'm going to need to stand back from that one. Nice. Okay, all right. Ready? All right. Let me go.

Okay, I know that you like it. Shot in the back of the head. Yeah. All right. Go for it. Like rabbit punching. All right. So when I was, Ed has literally disappeared from the screen here. I will, I will begin. When I was in first grade, I was not the favorite student, but my first grade teacher was my favorite teacher, Miss Lee. And I was in a first grade class. I was one of maybe three or four white kids. I was in San Francisco at Frank McCompton High School,

which is named after the very first Irish mayor of all of San Francisco. Okay. It was over off of, not too far from the Arguelo entrance to the park. So I'm in there. My best friend at the time, Tim is in there, and I'm pretty sure he was the teacher's favorite. He just would light up a room.

Okay. Um, and he shared his crusts with me. He's the reason why I like peanut butter, chocolate chip sandwiches, actually, because I didn't tell people I was hungry, but he didn't mind sharing his crust with me. Okay. So when we were given assignments, I was, I was a very early reader. When I was in, in preschool, they wouldn't make me take naps. They would just have me come sit down and read books to them and shit. Okay. Yeah. It was, it was really cool.

Tim would draw. He was an incredible artist. Okay. is really cool. Tim would draw. He was an incredible artist. And so he would draw. And we got these assignments that are blank comic panels. So the pictures would be there, but the the talk balloons would be empty and it was your job to fill them in. So okay, getting it's just using language and writing and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a bird talking to a hole in the ground and the hole in the ground responds. And the bird talks to the hole in the ground

and the hole in the ground responds. And the bird talks to the hole in the ground and the hole in the ground responds. And then the final panel, the bird looks at the camera. And sticking out of the hole in the ground is a worm with a night's helmet on. Okay. And the worm is saying something and like, you know, the good grief kind of symbol where like, it was frustrated. Yeah. That's what's above the bird's head. So I had to fill it all in.

So the bird will just bird and worm. Okay. So bird says hey worm come out and play. No Hey worm your friends are in danger here. You better come save them Not working Hey bird it's like worm war one out here Next panel where are they I'll kill those Nazis Okay, six years old. This is somewhere in a five-minute... So many. My parents house.

Yeah, so many things that this was prophetic of all at once. Mm-hmm. Yeah, all right. Yeah, my deep hatred of Nazis, my inability to keep a chronology straight, which one would think would be a crippling trade for a history teacher, but it turns out now because that really keeps repeating. So you're just like, you know, I forget what version this is. Yeah.

Yeah. And then of course, a desire to pun. Yeah. So that's where it started. Okay. So in literature, puns have been used long before the word Paranomazia was created. I can actually remember Cicero making a pun using the words for salad dressing and justice, both being the word

use, being chriseled on top of two criminals whose name sounded like the word for onion from a court court case called pro cluentio. He also made an anti-Semitic pun in pro war. Okay, wait, hold on. Yeah. Okay, sister O lived win. Uh, which century he was born in 106 BCE. He was born in 106 BCE. Okay, and he so Okay, and and okay, and you're and you're telling me that anti anti-Semitic jokes

Existed all the way back to the to the Roman Empire. Oh easily. Yeah. Yeah. Really. Yeah. Okay, So he made some sort of like reference to ever fucking changes. No, no, wow. He made some sort of passing reference to pork in proiro proiro, or nay, technically. Um, and yeah, it was, it was a big court case. He was not expected to win that one, but he went. Wow. Okay. But in this one pro Cluentio, which, uh, it was a court case in which a man named Cluentius was accused by his mother, Sasha, of poisoning his stepfather, Opeonicus, which is pretty straightforward. However, prior to the case, Cluentius had actually accused his own stepfather, Opeonicus, of trying to poison him, which would have turned his property, Opeonicus' property, over to Cluentius' mom, Sasha, who was married to his stepfather, opionicus, which would mean that opionicus would have access to Clujentius' dad's also Clujentius. Fortune, opionicus was found guilty, in that case, both the prosecutor and the defender

had bribed the jury. So like you said, nothing chance. Did we lose excited? Get a refund? Like dude, no. I paid you fair and square. You back to the case that I mentioned, which happened eight years later after you opionicus had died. Sasi had got her stepson, the child of opionicus, also named opionicus, to accuse her son, Cluantius, of poisoning the newly departed opionicus, also named opionicus, to accuse her son, Cluantius, of poisoning the newly departed opionicus, and the family tree for this court case is fucking insane.

Yeah, sounds pretty nuts. More to the point, in that tree. More to the point, his argument on behalf of Cluantius, he uses a salad and onion justice pun, and this was in 66 BCE. Wow. Yeah. Now going further back than that.

Now again, you know, I'm a latinist, so my efforts were largely that, but I did dip into other cultures as well. Further back than that, I found Plautus, uh, Plautus to his friends, uh, had copied over the play Soudalus from the Greek play of the same name He basically magnificent sevens the seven samurai Okay, in there there's a character named Balio who is a Pimp the word for Pimp and the word for butcher are one letter different Lano and Leno Leno is a Pimp Lano is a butcher Butcher, okay, and there's absolutely wordplay going on there

about the fact that he's a flesh peddler, putting his thumb on the scale, the value of the meat that he sells, the beds, slash the racks that he keeps them in and has them displayed on. Okay. This Roman adaptation version first hit the stage in 1991 BCE. version first hit the stage in 191 BCE. The Greek original action could be as much as 200 years or earlier. And you remember this from a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Yes, the story, right? So the soldier who comes back, the Greek name for him, so in the Greek there's a pun as well. The Greek name for him is basically stabby McStabberstein. Like it's something along those lines. Okay. Yeah. So I found other

older jokes by the way, but none of them that were puns prior to that, but I can all but guarantee in the literature that I can all but guarantee that there were in fact puns in use in all the ancient places that peace people existed prior to this. Okay, well, yeah. Yeah, after a fairly exhaustive search, I couldn't find an example, but where there were there were several sources that pointed me to a Sanskrit pun about floods in the seventh century BCE. Holy cow, okay. Yeah, now there's records of puns in the Tanakh referencing the creation story in Genesis saying that when men and women unite to have sex and procreate they become one flesh So there's something going on there. I don't know the language or yeah You know that kind of thing and that's what I kept running into is like I I didn't find an actual pun where it's like

This was the pun I found this is what the pun was about. This is where the pun was. I found references in ancient Egypt having to do with Partheno genesis of Atum, but I can't find the actual pun. The one where you swap to seed the spits out more kids. Yeah. Okay. And the land. Same thing with Chinese legalists, Shendows, circular pun, having to do with the power of a king and the position of a king, both being tied to the word for power and position. There's a pun in there. Going forward, I found and liked James Joyce's use of a pun in a poem that he inserted into Ulysses, possibly influenced by Shakespeare.

If you see K tell him me, you may see, I'm sorry, quote, if you see K tell him, he may see you in T tell him from me. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's more for the audience. Um, Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more for the audience. All right. Tell him he may see you in tea. So there's that. Ambrose Beers also spoke against puns in the 1800s

as quote, form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire. Fuck you, Ambrose Beers. Um, Edgar Allen Poe had a rejoinder to that. Actually, he says, quote, of puns, it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them. What's up now, bitch? Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud, cocaine enthusiast, categorized puns as a sign of weakness.

And wait, okay, yeah, hold on, hold on. A site, there are many things, there's so much stuff I could say about punning. And I've said a lot of it, much of it not printable. Luckily, this is an audio medium. This is a lot of medium. So we're okay. But a sign of weakness.

Like what was his? I don't know. I mean, he was probably telling his friends like we should buy a boat. You know, like We're going to Vegas right now right now. We're going to Vegas. Yeah Lay down. No stand up. Stand up lay down. Stand up. You know, did you ever dream about eaves like Ziggy. Yeah, Ziggy. We are we are on a different continent. Vegas would be a six-month journey Yeah,, it's just nothing there. Why are you mentioning? Right.

No, no, you don't understand. We need to go to Vegas right now. It's critically important. We got to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Go powder your nose. Oh, there you go with the puns again.

You fucking weakling. Like, at that point, he just sounds like a Jim bro, you know? Yeah. Ah. In the New Testament, you see a pun. Actually, when Jesus is talking to Peter, he just sounds like a Jim bro, you know? And the new testament you see a pun actually when Jesus is talking to Peter, he says upon this rock I will build my church Yes, Petra Straight up a pun. Dude. Oh, yeah, he's his pond. Yeah, he did Play it at one time The one time that's proof he was holy human

the one time, the one time that's proof he was holy human. I think that's proof that he might have been divine to be honest. I wonder there are so many different accountings of the sermon on the mount, including one that was like, he was on a fucking mount. I wonder if like all of them were like just pun haters and they're like, no, no, no, no, no. This is not what he said. He said this thing over here. He didn't, he didn't, he didn't make a pun about the meek. No, right.

That's not, he didn't know. You know, he's like, no, he did, like they're just editing. They're like, oh, there he goes again. Oh, my God. No, he loves him for this because again, you know, the crowd like, there he goes again. Oh my God, no, the crowd loves him for this. Because again, the crowd needs humor, right? Yeah, to 11, to 11, all of the, you know, you need to give up all your monthly possessions.

Right. Your lot is going to be suffering in this world in order to get to the next one. Yeah, you got to lighten it up somewhere. Yeah, you know, so, all right. What do you do? Shadow puppets otherwise? Like, you know, who right. What do you do shadow puppets otherwise like?

You know who knows we we have yeah, well, you know like when he goes and sits in that boat and just starts kind of like Doing the the stimming that he's doing and people come up on him and they're like what are you doing? He's like rock of ages, you know like shit like that like That doesn't make it in it's it's probably in one of the the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's in the book of just regulations. It's just... It's somewhere in the apocrypha. Exactly. And oddly enough, it's funny thing. Oddlet maybe it's part of the Catholic mindset.

You're making all these jokes about him butting. These aren't bothering me. Right. Like for whatever reason, I'm like, oh yeah, no, I can totally see that. You're a feeling of all. I guess, I don't know. So, Plato pund, let's go back a little bit.

Plato pund, and he praised punning in his writings in his writings on rhetoric, I was gonna say, in the Republic, but. No, no. Specifically in the book, the rhetoric, right? Yeah, yeah. He said that quote, in all these jokes, whether a word is used in a second sense or metaphorically, the joke is good if it fits the facts. Well-constructed riddles are attractive for the same reason. Okay. So Plato. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it was Plato the one that was sticking the mud about writing or was that Socrates. So Socrates never wrote anything down. Okay. Plato wrote shit that he'd learned from Socrates and then Plato. Yeah. Yeah. Which by the way, Plato was called that because either he had a, he had like a six head or like instead of a forehead or he was brought back because he was a wrestler which I love. Absolutely love the idea of Plato cutting a promo on people. Let me tell you brother, you're not here. Aristotelian mean I'm training the Aristotelian. Do you mean, yeah, except except the only problem with that is that, um, oh, David, be hold a man.

I had his name a second. Diogenes. Diogenes cut prologue from here on out. Yeah. Diogenes cut promos. Yes, he did. Absolutely. Like, absolutely.

Behold a man. Like, oh, oh, Plato says he's the man behold Plato He holds any man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you choked your chicken yesterday, you know Now I'm not keeping it just to the Western Yeah, well, I mean you've already you've already mentioned China China Class of Chinese literature look at at Mayan culture. In Mayan literature, there's something called the Chilambalam of Chumayel. And again, Latin here. So if I'm mispronouncing, somebody please, please correct. This was a book that came from a series of nine books that was written on the Yucatan

Peninsula containing several miscellaneous, named after the small towns in which they were kept, it makes a pun of the several town names. These books are a mixture of Latin script and hieroglyphic script, and parts of the books date back to the Spanish conquest of that peninsula in the mid 1500s. The collection is largely from the 1600s and the 1700s though, and the Chilambalam translates to essentially a priest whose last name was the same as a word for the word Jaguar, though to the untrained eye, mine for at least an hour of enthusiastic joy, it could look like Jaguar priest. Okay. The sequence of town names got turned into puns. So when the book discusses the wanderings of the Itza people who were people who wandered after the destruction of

their empire by the Patun Maya, they were led by the mercenary king Hunak Kiel, C-E-E-L, Poonak Keel, C-E-E-E-L, and founder of the Kokom dynasty. He'd escaped their capture. He hid out, he prayed to a god, and with the help of sorcery, he destroyed the Itsa Empire in that peninsula. You know, like you do. Yeah, well, yeah, I'll be. So anyway, the town's in that area.

So this is kind of like, what was it were like, it was like Zagats, right? Where it tells you all the really good restaurants. Oh, um, right. Yeah, it's a got. Yeah, it's a got. I think no, no, no, it's a ghost.

The goss is a got. I'm looking at that, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. So it's, it, this, this list of towns is kind of similar. It tells you where the good towns are and the bad towns are. And it's a series of puns as the it's are wandering on their diaspora. So here's a quote. So then they reach ta lab where the it's are stirred for honey.

Ta lab means the division of land. It means a division of land, but Huta-Kab means to stir honey. So then they reached Kikil, which they where they had dysentery. Kik means rubber and or blood, but Kikinak means bloody guts, which is their phrase for dysentery. Then they reached Khal, which where they close themselves in call can mean to imprison to shut in to trap or it can be the name of a place Oh wow, okay, so you know, I went to Springfield where I put them on my feet and bounced I went to you know intercourse where I conversed with my cousin I went to mud lick where I and then I went to beaver lick, then I went to Beaverlick, you know, and my

girlfriend was happy, you know, it's shit like that. Like, yeah, I went to Oklahoma. It was okay. You know, it's like, it's those kinds of things. Yeah, yeah. So did you find out if I was right? It was the guy. Yeah, it was the guy. The, the, the got survey. That's what it was. Yeah, that's that. So in 1528, Baldasar Castiglione published something called the book of the court here, wherein he taught proper etiquette for courtly behavior. In it, he carved out a whole section for puns. Ultimately, he agreed that puns were quote more usually praised for their ingenuity than for their humor and I will gladly take that Attack yeah, and so he advised that those who employ them to quote be cautious in their use hunting carefully for the right words and avoiding those that caused the joke to fall flat and seem too labored or as we have said that are too wounding so fuck him and seem too labored, or as we have said, that are too wounded. So fuck him.

Um, I'm, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, is your dog a little shaggy or then he would, would call for? Evidently. Yeah. I see no problem. He was born of a Jack Russell Terrier guy and you, you tend to like the, the Scotty dogs. Absolutely. I see no problem.

Irish World Town. That, that will take you to Britney Spears. Um, 50 years later, when the spirit of the cure is worth worse than the disease. Exactly. Exactly. That's that's probably the one of yours that has made me feel most like I've

been struck by a cross mobile. Like that's fair. The proofs in the pudding. Um, love you. Damn it. Yeah. Yeah. The these massive. Yeah, I'm sorry. I think this is yours, you know, handing you the knife. Yeah, I don't know. I like the Toe dolly clips of Bret Hart was a good one. That was yeah, in the same in the sale category. Yeah. Yeah. So 50 years later, when the Spanish Spanish armada defeated was defeated and routed Sir Francis Drake sent a single word message to Queen Elizabeth.

He was a polyglot plus onephrodisiac that we in English would call the Spanish fly. It has put down his glasses and is fingering his eyeballs, hoping to dig them out. So that's the kind of pun that the 300 all the way in their mass grave at Thermopylai set up and went, yeah, right there. Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, the same guys that said, you know, if to fill the mass of dawn would look at that, wouldn't go, okay, that's, that's goddamn funny right there. That's, that is, that is the height of humor. That's, that, that different than the joke joke about you can send one word to your sister about what she needs to do and you you type out the word comfortable and they're like what

are you doing she's like well she reads slow and it was for her to come pick up the the table you purchase come for table. You know it's it's not that different. So yeah Shakespeare used them a. He did it to enrich the characters on stage to keep the intellectual interest of the noble and common focal like who came to see his plays in the globe. Political commentary was both sharpened and softened by puns. One could claim humor softening the accountability for standing up against authority in Elisabeth in England, while at the same time sharpen the people against those same authorities with the self-same humor. Jokes do have a way of taking the piss out of people in authority, and puns doubly so. This is true. In his writings Shakespeare used over 3,000 puns. The easiest one I can think of is Richard III. Now is the winter or our discontent, made glorious summer by the sun of York.

Because, yep, King of the fourth, the black prince is the hope and the sign of the York family, bringing cheer and brightness to the jury world in England by his presence, making it like the sun was shining and see he's the shining shining shining sun of the your family. Yep, yep, yep. There's a ton more and I'm sure you've got some in mind. Well, I can think of any number of places

where Shakespeare was very clever with banter, puns, like specific puns I'm having trouble with, but what does come to mind is that one of the things I learned recently is that some things that look on the page to us as though they're not puns orally to his audience would have been because of the dialect in which the plays were actually performed. Absolutely. I mean, this is why these things need to be read aloud.

Yeah. And there's, I'm trying to remember which play it's in, but there's a monologue by one of the characters where he says, in which we root and rot and ripe and rape Mm-hmm are our terms that are used and the thing is in the dialect of the time Raw and rot Would have been the same so to the audience it would have been it would have been a pun right us looking at it on the page

It doesn't look like one but but for the folks in the audience, you would have been, it would have been a pun. Right. So us looking at it on the page, it doesn't look like one, but for the folks in the audience, you know, and the pronunciation of ripe and ripe, yeah, like would have, would have been a thing. Absolutely. And I mean, we've seen that with like that, that meme that goes around every couple years of like, y'all crazy, if you think it says data, it clearly says data. Right?

And in our minds, we always switch it to whichever one is wrong and then which I was right, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking of Romeo and Juliet. Shall we take the maiden's heads? No, let's take their maiden heads. You know, and you know, again, it shakes right. Like I said, he did 3,000 of them through his writings. So where else does it, where else does it wasp hide her sting in her tail? Ghosts are what? With my tongue in your tail. Right. Oh, yeah. Come.

That one immediately comes to mind. Kiss me, Kate. Taming the true. Taming the true. Yes, yeah. God damn, what a great couple. Now, during the reign of Charles I, the archbishop of Canterbury, William Loud, L-A-U-D,

so flawed, right? Sensitive about his own height, used a ton of his influence in favor with the Charles court. This is Charles the first one who loses his head. Yeah. To eventually have wound up six and two shorter. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. He uses his influence in flavor and favor with the court to eventually have a royal court gesture who was himself a little person banished because King Archie as the gesture was called insulted the Archbishop once during a prayer for a meal with a pun. And he said, oh, would, you know, and is he's essentially like

being called out for being short, like, you know, so would your would your highness King Archie highness, right, like, you know, so would your, would your highness, King Archie, highness, right? Like to give the benediction, give the, you know, like, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember how wonderfully at backfire when Rufus Sule said, why don't we see a dance from your land, Sir, Austroch, you know, yes, from, okay. So he asks him to do it and so the the Jester whose job is to be funny as fuck says Let us give great praise to the Lord and little Lord to the devil Wow, yeah Don't don't Don't pick a fight with a standup comic man, right?

Like you you come for the king you better kill Like holy crap, which they did. Oh really? Not a child. Oh, no, no, he ends up Well, we'll get there. So leading up to the English Civil War There's a Puritan named William Prince, PRY, and any, who made a visual pun about the Pope that Charles I found so objectionable that he had print branded on both cheeks. Wow, okay. Kind of a cheeky response. A little bit there. Yeah, and he had both of his ears cropped. Oh, yeah. Shit. Okay.

Prin having received the sentence and what was seared into his flesh was the letters S and L standing for seditious libeler. Okay. He then wrote upon in English and Latin as a response. He renamed his facial burns Stigmata Laudice, the Stigmata of Glory. But Laudice is the genitive form of Laud, which is the Archbishop's last name, the same one who went after King Archie. Wow. Now, Laud was less willing to turn the other cheek after both had already been burned. Finn had his last laugh when he was the efficient at a show trial that led Laude to having his head chopped off. Yeah.

Yeah. The round heads were not known for their magnanimity. No, no Like, apparently you burned me. I'm gonna hold on to that for a while. Yeah. Yeah, I mean well I mean in that particular case that's Yeah, not unreasonable that you'd hold a grudge, but right. Yeah at the same time. Yeah Man come on, the restoration saw the frivolity and silliness work its way back into the culture in England, which meant many more body puns,

probably in response to the buckled boot of the Puritans, falling hard and spiritedly during the Cromwell years on hard spirits. England's coffee houses flourished and taverns got ground into the ground. Okay. Yeah. House is flourished and taverns got ground into the ground. Okay, yeah, you're moving up for the hard spirits. Okay, moving on. Coffee House's then as now became a counterculture, counterculture. Okay, yeah, okay. Yeah, we're walking, we're walking.

So I'm only hoping that friend of the show Gabriel Cruz is listening to this because he is Catholic enough to think that this is penance still. So. So puns stayed this is saving me a lot of time in purgatory. I will say. I will say. Limit here on earth. Yeah. Pretty will say. Limit it here on earth. Yeah, I promise. Puns stayed not only on stage as a mainstay. Are you good? Yeah. Okay. They allowed authors to make body jokes about genitals and poop and a safe and less than legally obscene way because of how clever it is. Because to get it, the officials in charge of censorship had to admit that they were thinking

along the same lines, which is hard to argue decency and vulgarity when your own outward decency is laced with an inner understanding of vulgarity. Mm-hmm. Well, you know, I can't define porn, but I know it when I see it. Right. Okay, if you know it when you see it, then what are you doing judging it? Do please recite what it was. Just go home. Just go home. And that brings us roots is like I have to I have to interject here. Like when you're when you're in the classroom, and you know, either you have a malapropos and that, you know, turns into something, you

know, being, you know, not the way you meant it, but phrasing kind of situation. You used the word do it in front of any middle schoolers. Yeah. And, and, and you, you, you have a kid start snurking. You got to look at him and go, I'm sorry. Why is that funny? Like, and the hardest part is you have to be totally stone faced and not show any emotion about it, just be totally like I'm teaching boy by role doll to my sixth graders right now. And of course, it takes place in the 1920s in boarding schools in England. And so he refers to the officials and the adults of authority that he's having to deal with. And I mean, they're all universally assholes. But he, he, he, a couple of the lines

refer to the headmaster of the school. And I'm reading this passage to my students and I say headmaster and and I have two boys two twelve-year-old boys in the front row start snirking and I don't I don't respond at first I just note it and I keep going and the next time I say it they snirking again and I had to do that I looked right at him and I said, can you explain to me why you find that funny? They're six graders. So fortunately none of them like took the challenge yet. They haven't gotten, they don't have enough testosterone courses. They just haven't dropped yet.

Yeah. So the one of them that I was actually looking at just went white as a sheet. Uh, uh, uh, uh, that's what I thought. Mm hmm. Anyway, carrying on. So yeah, it's, it's the same thing in reverse. Like, yeah. It's funny too, because like when it's just the two kids that get it, I will give them a wink and a nod is like, I know, let's go. And then they're forever like in my pocket, like they know that they have been seen. And they feel so smart. So that brings us to 1644, which is where the word pun actually is dated. Really? Yeah. It took that long. Uh-huh. Oh, wow. Three letters, man. There was a character named Mr. Puni, PUNI, P-U-N-Y, and Abraham Cowley's comedy, The Guardian, which was first acted out in 1641, who was described as, quote, a young

galant, a pretender to wit. So first of all, a pretend to to wit. Yeah. Okay. The play got revised in 1661 and the adjective punish was used to describe his non-wet, well, non-wet. Secondly, fuck you. Um, by by the 1700s, dictionaries are citing a pun as quote, acquibble, witty conceit, fancy, clench. The idea of a play on words existed prior to this and was used to describe such, but the original connotation of pun seems to have been quote an over subtle distinction or what I would call to clever for the room. So third of all, fuck you. Uh-huh. You know, I there's there's a level on which I feel like this this whole episode is is just you feeling like you need to to stand up and justify. Yeah, you know, I'm I feel seen and attacked yes. Okay. But that statement. Okay. Like there's a part of me that really

wants to say, I don't have to justify anything. I'm right. And then there's a part of me that really wants to say, I don't have to justify anything. I'm right. And then there's other parts of me that were like, all right, there's like 400 years of history of people bitching about not being smart enough to understand puns. So clearly, someone thinks that I need to justify something.

So I have to do an apologetics because God damn it. Right, because there are stupid people in charge of writing things. Yes. I've all fuck you. So there's so much etymology that's interesting about this, but mostly, honestly, just to me, and it's all conjecture. So I'm loathed to spend very much time on that conjecture. So let's stick to the idea that it's unknown and it's English etymology beyond a lot of conjecture from multiple nearby languages.

Okay. Now during the Enlightenment, Smarty Smart Pants derided puns is vulgar and low humor. Their obsession with seriousness and with themselves and their own intelligence was exactly at odds with the salon culture of preziz pedantry and intellectual currency that pervaded rich women's parlors. Punns were good for pubs, not for powder wig folks.

Okay. So you're starting to see a class divide here, right? And I'd mention coffee houses because that's kind of a big deal. Right. And I'd mentioned coffee houses because that's kind of a big deal. Yeah. 1677 Roger the Strange published coffee house gests, which had a chaplain in the army praying that the parliament be blessed by God, quote, grant they may all hang together. Which I love. A bystander said in response quote with all my heart and the sooner the better. That's a really good way to wind up having your headdark in a cage. But now you see where Ben Franklin got his shit, right?

Oh, yeah. Well, and tie all. We all should hang together. We should all say I'm saying separately. Yeah. So punning politically was back, baby. And it was being filtered through bitter and dark books written in coffee houses. And of course, this stirred the temperaments of the king worried that another rebellion was brewing, but Charles, the second's efforts to mean mug the coffee houses by outlying coffee, chocolate, sherbert, or tea, left folks cold. People shot back in the King quickly, we asked. What? Okay.

All right. Yeah. And that brings us rather quickly to Jonathan Swift. Nice. You just put on your stuff. Nice. Yeah, I can't damn the timing. He's a famous satirist and author and he was a frequent patron at coffee and tea houses, especially a famous one called Will's coffee house, just east of Covent Garden. Yes. Whitty people would

gather there foaming at the mouth for Whitty exchanges, and he'd pun to cross two languages frequently, which I fucking love. The name of the island in Gulliver's travels is... Willaputa? Laputa. Oh, Laputa. Yes. Which is Spanish for the whore.

The whore. Yes. But at this time, there is a shift occurring in intellectual circles toward the serious and the stodgy. The idea of legitimacy could be suosed out by looking at how one reacted to puns. If you roll your eyes, complain about how low-born it is, congratulations, you're an enlightenment thinker. If you appreciate it and admire its artistic merit and cleverness, then you're not a dick.

Totally, totally unbiased interpretation of all. 100%. 100%. This is verifiable, too. I mean, I'm pretty sure Hobbes was, as a matter of fact, a complete asshole. I'm not going to don't doubt it. Yeah. Like, whether that was without look like his, yeah. Yeah. But at this time, there was a shift occurring within intellectual circles in all seriousness, like toward rationalism and precision and, and, and a dogmatic adherence

to like narrow definitions of logic. Um, okay. Yeah. What do you mean? In other words, the speech and debate approach to writing. Um, so, uh, yeah, it began to overtake any respect of puns. Puns are by their nature, a big, u.s. and protein. They're easy to dismiss as mere

rhetoric for the unsubstantive arguer. I understand why they're doing that. They're just dumb. So like, I'll put it this way. Okay. Do you think Ben Shapiro likes actual puns? No. Shapiro likes actual puns. No. Yeah. I mean, Ben Shapiro has no sense of fucking humor. So I mean, like, exactly. There's like, there's that to start with.

I think when you look at people and you're like, oh, that guy totally edges because he thinks of his mom, I think those people aren't gonna like puns So okay, then Shapiro okay, Alex Jones. Yeah Who's that one guy who who writes books? Who's who's like those guys Jordan Peterson? Yeah him that fuck okay? How okay? I just want to know sure how is that how that? What that one guy who writes bucks? Who's like those guys? Yeah, it's Jordan Peterson. Yeah, he's amongst those guys like. Yeah.

So okay. And so, uh, there was a cult of simplicity, which allowed for greater complexity of thought. And, and that's good. I think that is good. You're like drilling down on what words mean. Yeah. Because the more you drill down on what words mean, the more you can actually expand their use and stuff like that. So I get that. And that's how it's going.

Well, it's during that same time that Samuel Johnson, or it might have been earlier, no, no, it's around that same time period that Samuel Johnson is, in fact, putting together the first, what we recognize as dictionary of the English language. Oh, I'll get to him. Yeah. Okay. There'll probably be in the next episode. But yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Samuel Johnson, who's famous for saying, I don't remember asking you a god damn thing.

I think. No, different, different, different, different, different J. No, he's the one that, um, like people accused him of resembling a hound, right? Does he look like a bitch? A bitch. Yeah. That was Marcelo's Wallace. Oh, okay. Got you.

Yeah. Well anyway, Marcelo's Wallace is the one who won the battle of Sterling Bridge. Right. Right, right, right. Yeah, I'm after he started Viking and the nuts. Yeah. I remember now. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, but so there is this cult of simplicity. And I understand the need for it and to drill down and atomize the language, but at the same time, you're atomizing language. It doesn't have a standardized spelling yet. Like, there's, there's a lot of work to do before you can get there, but there, you know, that's unfortunately not how evolution of anything works. So yeah, um, the cult of simplicity

led to a greater complexity of thought, and that turned it into a bit of a complex. Therefore, puns would not do. Language, frankly, would not do with these people. There was so much emphasis, so much more emphasis on mathematics and science because quantifiability was preferred. Law didn't even. Yeah. This was the era that gave us calculus. John Locke himself spoke against language in favor of math because it freed the mind from quote, the cheat of words. Yeah. Which really helps to explain why he was able to write

about natural rights and yet think it was well within his rights to invest large amounts of money into slaving ships. Because it's about quantity. Mm-hmm. And also, it's really hard to drill down on the rights of man if you define man so broadly. So finding ways to start categorizing what makes a man versus what makes a savage is really

helpful to your pocketbook. You need to define whiteness in order to do that and what better way to do so than by the legitimized cult of rationality and precision. Okay. At this point, I'm going to quibble a little bit about the way you're using whiteness. Well, the Portuguese invented whiteness in the 14, 1500s. Oh, okay. So by this point, the English thing, English in fact the Portuguese are why we have the Derogatory term mulatto

Okay, because it means mule and a mule is the sterile beast that is a mix, right? Okay, so it's very dear. I Had I had forgotten about the Portuguese. Yeah, they're Yeah, and of course, it's the English so they take there the Steve Jobs being shitty. They take everybody else's ideas and they're like, Oh, but what have we made it better? Yeah. What if we streamline that? Right. Or actually, no, I'm sorry, no, no, the English don't streamline fucking your opera. I'm sorry. No, let's, let's add multiple layers to it. And let's, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it becomes really easy to say, hey, I don't make the rules when you're the guy making the fucking rules.

And so the English slave trade made whiteness a very popular thing. It didn't invent whiteness. That was again, the Portuguese. But the English slave trade made it very popular so that the West Indies and the American colonies slave labor camps that we call plantations and celebrities get married at could still claim to believe in natural rights. Yeah, because the distinction was that, well, you know, they don't really count because savages right. They're too close to nature for natural rights. And you're like, what the fuck words even like yeah. Yeah. In 1681, you

had something called the Servant Act in Jamaica, which served as a template for South Carolina shortly thereafter. It highlighted a privileged class quote, whites. Okay. And yet white is a very ambiguous term. One that genuinely begs the question, really. And it doesn't hold up to questioning scrutiny or mocking given even half a fucking day. How else to get rid of those three things, but to delegitimize puns and narrowly define what counts as rational, logical, and valid linguistically. Tie it to math. It's insurmountable and unassailable. So now you're getting a book, quantum,

and shit like that. Right, okay. Ruth was found in things, not in words. Therefore, the proof was in many ways, a shopped around mutually agreed upon confirmation bias. Okay. This is how you've shop around. That's yeah. Yeah. This is how you get phrenology, which comes on the heels. It comes on the heels of these shifts. And it's science that legitimizes the racism and white supremacy via a self-contained logic system of science. Yeah, well, a circular logic that's based on a preconceived set of assumptions.

Like, okay, look, we know that this biased assumption is the case. And so we can see that all of these people have this trait in common that is different from this other group of people. And so this just proves what we already knew to be fact, but now we have something we can point to and go, well, see if their head is shaped like that then that means that. And the funny thing is, like, now that I say that out loud,

you couldn't get away with that in a speech and debate competition. because you could if you spoke fast. Thank you, Mr. Big competitions are not about fact anymore. They are about quick rapid fire rhetoric. It is gish galloping. It is Roger Stone. It is Ben Shapiro. All the fucking place.

Yeah, that sucks. I'm sorry to hear that. Nothing about eloquence. Nothing about the validity of your arguments anymore. Ah, that. Yeah. I am so sorry to hear that. Yeah, I'm sorry to have to say it.

Part of being just diet inside. But okay, but like, I'm not, I'm not the one, you know, taking the crazy pills here. Like that is 110% a circular fucking argument. Yes. Yeah. And my intuition led me to this. And now I found proof that backs up my intuition. It's like, Oh, well, okay, bully for you, but fucking no. Wow, how amazing that you ended up on the top of the heap when you just figured out. Like, what are the odds? Yeah.

One, the only one who's capable of those kinds of thinking because I'm on the top of the heap. It's like, what? Yeah. Okay. Now that's not to say that science didn't take huge steps forward. Calculus is, I don't know, I never got to it.

Let's be honest. I slept through algebra two. I don't like sequels, but I think calculus is pretty cool. Like it taught us shit that I don't know. Well, okay. It laid the groundwork for figuring out the actual model of how the solar system works. And by extension, how the rest of the galaxy functions in terms of, there you go, gravitation and physics. Yeah, so yeah. And then it has also turned out to be incredibly useful

for any number of other things, but yeah. There you go, like there you go, go science, right? Yeah. Thank you in cell Newton, you know? You know, okay, no. No, I don't think in cell. You're right. Yes. He was, he was ace. I'm, I am, he was ace. Okay. I will, I will argue, I will argue to my grave. Okay. You know, what do you think? You think he wanted to fuck and he didn't know how to get going. Okay. I think the passion with which he kicks that rock when he finds out or it's stone,

when he found out somebody else did something really cool mathematically. Yeah. If he had found his person, and he would have he would have fucked their brains out. Okay. All right. That's a killing.

I would say he was incidentally ace. Okay. He was you know, but I I think he really wanted a bone Okay, but Nobody's also petty is yeah, he was also petty as fuck Again, it's worth noting more prove that I don't know any ace people who aren't chill Okay, all my ace friends are chill as fuck. Like, okay, he is petty. He's petty because he's not coming enough. That's okay.

All right. I mean, he's trying to do like what's it called? Uh, not Agrile Mancy. That's that's giantism. Alchemy. That's the other thing. It all comes around to Andre the giant. It really does.

Like only what the. Yeah, but he's trying to do alchemy and shit. Like he's clearly trying to turn things into things because he doesn't know how to use his prostate. Like, you know, yeah, he's not. All right. He's not. He's not filling up to be not. All right. He's not. He's not feeling up to be ace.

All right. I think that might be the title. PUNs. Wiser Isaac Newton. I don't know if to be ace. Be ace. There you go. Um, but anyway, I found it.

Mark that. Yes. So, yeah, science did take huge steps forward. A course. Yeah. Like, uh, but it wasn't the best first draft, let's say, and puns suffered from this, as well as a movement toward the encyclopedia

and standardized spelling, because now you could say, well, you can't pun that way, it's not spelled right, which, you know, fifth of all. We're okay. You know what, you know, Fiddler ball. Where? Okay. You know what? I, you know, you know, my, my usual reaction is torture is hatred. But even I look at that and I'm like, fuck the spelling. If it works verbally, what the hell? Come on.

Thank you. Exactly. Okay. No. In fact, bullshit. My favorite kinds are where the spelling hides the pun until you read that shit out loud. And then you're like, oh, God damn this guy. I love that. And Jesus Christ were these enlightenment assholes just like hot about their attacks on puns. Like in 1709, the same year that the Tatler and the spectator came out in England, these publications.

Yeah, yeah, specifically that were made for coffee house consumption Anthony Ashley Cooper the third or all of Shafesbury wrote character characteristics of man It's because the spelling is not standards fucking me up Characteristics of men manners opinions and times characteristics of men, manners, opinions, and times. And he celebrated the decline of puns. Quote, we have seen in our time the decline in ruin of a false sort of wit, which so much delighted our ancestors that their poems and plays as well as their sermons were full

of it. The very language of the court was punning, but it is now banished the town and all good company. There are only some few footsteps of it in the country. And it seems at last confined to the nursery of youth as the chief entertainment of pedants and their pupils. So fourth of all, fuck you! you. We're so much better that we don't pun anymore. Right. Like and and I I I understand getting hit with a pun is a painful fucking experience. I don't understand that. I know you're you're you're clearly not wired the same way. I guess I'm a top. I don't know. I don't know what's going on that's so different between me and you pour unfortunate people.

But as much as you know, I'm not a top by the way. I don't know the energy to be a top. And I don't have the temperament to be a bottom, to be honest, I'm like an incidental switch like that. You're your your your apathetic switch. Yeah, you're you want to do by virtue of my virtue of laziness. Yeah. I'll always pick second, you know? Okay. This is there. All right. Whatever, whatever you want to do. Yeah. But as as much as like I get, I get immediately and irrationally angry. Right. When I get hit with one, when I think Vainey meaty pun slaps you right across the face. Yeah, I just get turkey slapped by one. Yeah. Even even as angry as I get about that.

Calling it a false wit is like explain to me how it's false wit. There is a level of cleverness that has to be involved and the cleverness is either there or it isn't. The only false wit is upon that like doesn't work Yeah, like if you try upon and you fail then well Too bad so sad that's there's no wit there, but like if it actually works. Yeah, how how do you I it's it's it's a It's sophistry. Yes, is like, what is that?

Okay. What's that a big keeping to a field that you have no interest in going in? Yeah. I was like, well, go fuck yourself. Yeah, fuck off. Yeah. We're going to open the gate now.

Fuck off. Yeah. You know, I'll take the shaft, Shaft's, Barry. There you go. I'm bear your shaft deep in that field. There you go. You know, and let me park my bike. Uh, nice. Not even mad. Yeah. Now it's also it's, it's, it's likely he didn't like the punting attack on his favorite coffee house. So I, Jesus, these people always give themselves away. It's not that he hates puns. It's that he hated that it was used against him just like loud, right?

Yeah. Um, somebody made a punting attack on his favorite coffee house in London a few years earlier. The Amsterdam was called the Amsterdam double coffee house. And he just took years to come up with his explanations to why it's not okay, because he has no fucking imagination, but his bitterness brought him there. Okay. I think, I think. Amsterdam Noble.

Right. It's not a great one. Like, you know. It's still original. Like, I'm okay with bad puns that are original. What I'm not okay with is somebody going, you know, I tried, I tried almost a dozen puns, you know, and to see if I could make someone laugh,

but no pun intended. And it's like, oh, God, I read that meme so many years ago. Yeah, you know, like that kind of shit, like stop feeling jokes. Like, and I don't mind repeating puns. I don't mind people taking mine and, and I don't really mind repeating other people's because I'm credit usually. Um, but I do mind uncreative ones. Yeah. Yeah.

But anyway, Joseph Addison, the English essay is to play right poet and politician as well as central casting tight ass who You're not at all bitter no Central casting I'm pretty sure some of my students would argue that's me, but wow. You're saying it's a casting grump. Like, there's a difference. You're a central casting grump. You're not a central tydas.

Okay, that's fair. But he hung out with Jonathan Swift and he founded the Spectator magazine. And he wrote that it was a good thing that quote, Aaron Pundes were quote, banished out of the learned world, citing them as a medieval holdover well past its expiration date. Like how the fuck is this a sign of progress?

Like it's plain to me. Right. Look, we've squeezed all the joy out of things. Aren't we better now? It's like, no, you're just British. It's just actually, you know what, I don't know what year was that? Let's see. That's 17 what now? I want to say it's before 1714. So I think we're talking like 1705 1709 1710 Okay I just have to point out that that we can't even call them British Because the active union didn't happen until 1801 you're just fucking English. Yeah, yeah

God damn fucking English. There you go ass Assholes. Yeah. Right. So in 1714, there's an anonymous pamphleteer who wrote, quote, wrote something called God's revenge against punning, shewing the miserable fates of persons addicted to this crying sin in court into Anttown. Okay. I might occasionally in reaction to something you've Turkey slept me with yeah get dramatic in that way, but anybody Reading it would know that I'm intentionally engaging in and you know, I probably yeah, this this this individual was not doing that though no fucking pamphleteering it like Like taking you know how much it costs

to write shit back then to take it and to print it out? Yeah. And this is what he dedicated his time for. This is some anonymous pamphleteer. So we're getting here, by the way, our anonymous commenters. We have a comment section. Okay, that just completely shifted my paradigm view.

Yes. Of the press. Yes. In this time period in England, I'm going to have to contemplate that later. But okay. You ready for this shit? In the pamphlet, the motherfucker, whoever it is, compares puns to the great fire and to the black death.

What? Contagion and all. The black death. Yes. Here's the quote. This does occasion the corruption of our language and they're in the word of God translated into our language, which certainly every sober Christian must tremble at. Okay. Yeah.

And now, and now, and then we see where it comes from. It's humanless religious assholes. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. Jim and Christmas. The author then linked horrid accidents and deformations to the sin of punning as well as excessive drinking and Toriesome. Oh my God, you know who this was. No. This was Jack Chicks earliest known English ancestor. Jack Chicks. Oh God. Chick Tracks. There's those vile little black and white comics.

Those those vile little black and white comics Jack Shake published like so many different ones I'm trying to remember the name of the one but famously He he published a comic that they were all like these vile little comic books basically in which he Clearly had had never actually spoken anybody who'd played a tabletop role playing game. But he totally jumped on and fueled a portion of the satanic panic around D&D is trying to get to a point within playing the game where they learn Black magic and sorcery and it's all devil worship and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah.

And so there was that one and then, but he's this, he was, he has passed. And it's a rare thing, I will say this about anyone, but the world is a better place for his not being in it anymore. I'm sure there are people who mourn him, but I'm not going to be one of them. He wrote all kinds of stuff that was anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-Catholic. One of my favorite examples of his type of track was the death cookie. That's the actual title in which he made the argument that Catholics

engaging taking part in communion, taking part in the Eucharist are are unknowingly performing a Babylonian ritual. Oh, good fucking God. I mean, like, and and all of his all of his tracks would end with, you know, some, some poor idiot who, who had been fooled into saying the wrong magic words, being confronted by a very sad, but very cruel Jesus who said, I'm sorry, I cannot recognize you and let you into heaven because you repeated the special thing. The one that comes to my mind in this context is the phrase that Muslims say, the confirmation of faith.

You know, there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. The phrase that they say, somebody gets, you know, this evil Muslims trick somebody into saying it, and because you've said the words, well, you know, you're a Muslim now, so you can't get in heaven because that's false. It's just the ugliest horrible, horrible, horrible, all of the worst shit in American evangelical Christianity is what shows up in these things. So this asshole that you're talking about,

who anonymously published this pamphlet about, puns are destroying our language and cutting us off from God by doing it. It's like, as a believer, I have to look at that and be like, how small and weak do you think God is that exact thing That's the thing like when people like I don't go for witchcraft. I'm like isn't your god like all powerful Why do you wear like you know and and and and I'm and this is after Mm-hmm. This is well after

James And this is after, this is well after James. So these people are probably, this individual is probably pointing to the King James Bible, which evangelicals in this country have done for fucking ever. Yeah. Like 99% of serious Christian religious scholars will point to it and go, yes, if you want to know the worst translation ever

ever widely published, it's King James. That's it's a shitty translation. But like, well, no, it was divinely inspired. You know, you're all just like, you know, jealous, you have your noses up your own butts or whatever it is they they try to claim. Like anyway, yeah, this this this individual you're talking about very clearly is operating in the same vein of bitter twisted narrow, hateful religious zealotry as Jack checked 200 and some odd years later. It's it's yeah. Yeah, no, I do not disagree. I'll lick. I I I fully agree with you on this. So and actually that's where I'm going to hold it because in the next episode we're going to start with Jonathan Swift. Okay. And we'll go from there. So so far, what have you gleaned?

So so far, what have you gleaned? Well, that as much as I have the visceral reaction, I do, too, being assaulted with a pun. I can't imagine being that uptight about them. Like on an intellectual level, I don't understand, and I'm going to have a hard time wrapping my head around, the idea of puns somehow being primitive. Like, I really like the way you describe it

in this protein. I do really like that. But the while protein and primitive can be used as synonyms, like there's some overlap there, it's not the same damn thing. And what good is a language where there is no flexibility? Like, if you have to have a precise word for every single concept and every single idea, and there's never words that can have multiple meanings or where there's situations

where two words, you can't have two words for the same thing. Well, and that's that just ends up being artificial. I mean, honestly, what you're doing, I have zero problem with deciding on terms and saying, these are the terms in which we're going to examine this. And this will be the lens with which we look, right? I had zero problem with that. I have a problem when you say, okay, this circumstantial jargon, because that's what it is now applies to that word outside of this realm. And it's like, no, it doesn't. That's not how a language works. As the guy who taught a dead language for the better part of his career. Your way that language is die is the second you actively try to restrict

the meanings of words instead of allowing them to grow and expand. I don't like that kids are using the word finna, but I'm not going to stop them because it's a shortening of fixing to and fixing to is from a Southern dialect thing. And guess what? It has diffused. And you know what? It's fine. It's it's it's going to be okay. And if you sit there and say, well, that's not a word or that that word is being used improperly there because it really just means this, then you are 100% killing off a language. You are divorcing that culture. You're freezing it in place that your culture therefore is static and

And when you do that you you have signed its death warrant. Yeah, so I really You're finna kill it. Yeah, you know, I I really have trouble with with people Taking their jargon and then expanding that out. Again, no problem using the jargon. But the moment it turns into a calcifying force. And at the same time, I completely understand people's frustration with dumbasses using the word theory in a pejorative way, when I'm talking about evolution. It depends on like, like, I get that, but that just, there's, their solution is never to be like, okay,

we can only ever use this word this way. Their solution is never to do that. Their solution is you have to understand that in different contexts. It means different things, which to me absolutely takes care of that. Like, yeah. Well, because there's, there's a level of intellectual honesty involved in a willingness and a willingness to put in psychological effort. Absolutely.

That's required. And it's not, honestly, at the end of the day, it's not a rhetorical trick, like the other side is trying to do. Yeah. You're saying, oh, it's just a theory. Mm-hmm. Yes, precisely. Yeah.

So, okay. Cool. I asked you, Gleen, do then I, I ranted. That's, that's what we're doing for, for, for this particular topic. So that's, that's totally understandable. So is there anything you would recommend people to read? Um, not right now. I, I am stuck in a mode where everything I'm reading right now is student work ahead of grades. So I have not had the opportunity to do anything. What about you though?

I'm sure you have something. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm going to tell people to go pick up Ian McDonald's Ian is spelled I a I N Okay, Ian McDonald's Book called Miss Punderstood over 400 hilarious puns one liners and dad jokes He doesn't do the the eight page long Set up for one tiny little pun like I do, but we still love him. He's my friend from Scotland who does really good pun jokes and stuff like that. And his book is phenomenal. My daughter reads it probably every couple of weeks. So I strongly recommend Miss Punderstood by Ian

MacDonald. All right. Very cool. Where can people find you if they want to or if you want to be found? If I want to be found, I can be found at Mr. underscore Blalock on TikTok. I can be found on Twitter at catfetcher. And then we collectively can be found on Twitter as geek history of time. And www.geekhistoryoftime.com, or geek history time, pardon me, dot com, is our website. And of course, we can be found on the Apple podcast app or on Stitcher, wherever you have found us, clearly you have. And so when you have an opportunity, please take

a moment to give us the five star review that you know we deserve. And please, if you haven't done so already, hit the subscribe button. And where can you be found? Yeah, just want to remind people, we are not Orion's belt. We deserve more than three stars.

We are not a waste of space. And yes, you can find me on TikTok at duh harmony one two inches in the middle there. Ed is rolling his eyes. And actually find me there because there's a bunch of puns on there. I made a bunch of puns, I think last year. I do want to update it. But right now, there's a lot of good puns there. Just a lot of a lot of fun stuff. You can also find me, depending on when this drops, either March 3rd, April 7th or May 5th, you will find me in Sacramento at Luna's

with capital punishment slinging puns. We have booked several really good lineups. You're gonna wanna see all of them if you're in the area, bring $10 proof of vaccination. We encourage you to wear a mask because, you know, 4,000 people died yesterday from COVID. So it's still going. But, uh, yeah, come check those things out. And, and that, yeah, that'll do it. So, all right. For Geekestree of Time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.

time, Ed Blalock, and until next time, keep rolling 20s.