A Geek History of Time - Episode 206 - The History of Paronomasia Part II

Episode Date: April 8, 2023

I said good day sir. You don't ever plan anything around the Eagles because the Eagles represent the grace of God. You heathen bastards. One of vanilla nabish name. Well you know works are people too. I'm thinking of that one called they got taken out with one punch. So he's got a wall, a gall, a gall, and a wall. Every time you mention the Eagles, I think done Henley.

Ha ha ha ha! 1.0-1.1 2.0-1.1 2.0-1.1 2.0-1.1 2.0-1.1 This is a key history of time. Where we connect an urinary to the real world. It is a play-locked rural history, a village teacher at the middle school level here in Northern California. And I am staring down the barrel of quite, quite an event, a milestone of sorts in my

marriage and in my career as a parent. Tomorrow, my wife will be leaving for five days, four nights. I say in that right? Anyway, she's leaving tomorrow and will be back on Thursday. As we record, this is Saturday night. She is leaving to go to an out of state convention for her industry. And this is a big deal for her career because her company is spending a lot of money to send her to this thing.

And this is the first time that she has gone to this thing. Other co-workers have gone to this. This is her first time going to it. It's a big trade show. And this is going to be the longest period of time that she and I have slept apart since I moved in with her 10, no, sorry, nine years ago. And I am not doing okay about it. I have to confess. Um, when, for whatever reason, one of us is sick and, and one of us, you know, moves to the guest bedroom on the other side of the house, I have a hard time falling asleep with that. Um so this is this is going to be rough. This is also going to be the first time that

she will be leaving our son behind. He has on a couple of occasions stayed with his grandparents, but this is this is the first time he's going to be at home and she won't be. So I'm not really looking forward to how that's going to go because that that could go just fine. Could just be, you know, me and daddy get to do whatever we want. just be, you know, me and daddy get to do whatever we want, which he's already expressed, says, so we can do whatever we want. Like, well, what do you mean, whatever we want? Well, we can wrestle. Okay. Yeah, we can totally do that. All right. Cool.

Just remember that, you know, when daddy says the stop word, you've, you've managed to hit him in a sensitive spot, and we need to knock it off. But yeah, so it's going to be a very long week. So that's what I got going on. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin teacher and a US history teacher up here in Northern California, the high school level. And per the usual, I end up enraptured in your story and forget entirely what updates I'm

gonna share. So yeah, I can't, I can't for the life of me recall what I was going to say. So, okay, let's just jump back into it. Yes. When last we spoke, it's funny too, because there was a story that I had that was a good one. But when last we spoke, Joseph Addison, and then followed by an anonymous pamphleteer in 1714, wrote God's revenge against punning,

chewing in, chewing the miserable fates of persons addicted to this crying sin in court and in town, wherein he compared puns or linked to them to the great fire, to the black death, to just all kinds of terrible things. And that essentially puns get you further from God. And that's, okay. And that's another reason I say that this guy is like the earliest known ancestor of Jack Chick because that same attitude of will, you know,

the great fire was caused by too many people making dad jokes is just like, well, you know, God is punishing Florida because of gay people. Like feminism is why Hurricane Katrina happened. Like it's actually what? Yeah, it's the same, Yeah, yeah, it's it's the same Demented weird

Yeah, I'm very weak. Therefore my god is by proxy very weak even though he's omnipotent It's yeah weird thing. Yeah, it really is so but you know We don't what we don't have when Pat Robertson gets on the 700 club and says dumb shit like that Because we don't have Jonathan Swift. They did. Like we had Chris Hitchens for a while who as far as being a dick back to them, pound for pound, probably the best in years. Yeah.

As far as being fun. Oh, no, no, no, son. Yeah, no. You know, I can't think of any like Chris for Hitchens not known for his sense of humor. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, who wrote a, a, a article in the Atlantic saying that women aren't funny and got it published. Like, yeah, he's really, it's, it's really interesting. He, you have to, he's a very well-written rock and, and asshole. Whereas then you have pen, pen, jolette, who is kind of funny, but doesn't have the gravitas. intellectual chops and, okay, that hitches ass, right? So we didn't have anybody like that to counter, you know, Pat Robertson. But in 1716, Jonathan Swift took to the skies and he wrote a response called quote, a modest defense of puning

or a complete answer to a scandalous and malicious paper called God's revenge against puning. Oh wow. Because in the 1700s, if your title was anything fewer than 400 words, it was not worth taking seriously. Yeah. So in short, Johns and Swift highlighted the difference between good and bad puns, and that anonymous pamphletier had not done so. Okay, but Swift did it in the Swiftest way possible with a pun-laden response. He

also employed other friends to do so. Thomas Sheridan, for instance, wrote under the pseudonym of Tom pun C.B., which is another multi-tongued pun to follow up on Swiss response because CB means for himself. Okay. So Tom puns for himself. Um, well, uh, the art of punning or the flower of languages in 79 rules for further improvement of conversation and help of memory by the labor and industry of Tom puns CB. Because like I said, you're just saying if you don't have a title that takes up two pages. So Swift got shared in to do this, shared in said, quote, punning of all arts and sciences is the most extraordinary for all others are circumscribed by certain bounds. But this alone is found to have no limits because to excel, therein requires a more extensive knowledge of all things.

A runner must be a man of the greatest natural abilities and of the best accomplishments. His wit must be poignant and fruitful. His, I'm sorry, a punter. His understanding, clear and distinct, his imagination, delicate and cheerful. So this man is telling the truth. This man is factually correct. And you know, interestingly enough, like one of the reasons that my pun show has worked for more than six years,

we've passed the six and a half year mark now. One of the reasons, oh, come to think of it, by the time this publishes, it might be seven years old. All right. But one of the reasons, oh, come to think of it, by the time this publishes, it might be seven years old. All right. But one of the reasons that it's worked so well is because specifically, local Sacramento comedian, Mark Berg, has been our host and referee the whole time. Mark Berg is not only kind of funny, but also wickedly smart. And so he's able to judge whether or not a pun works.

He has to have the breadth of knowledge that he has. And that's what makes that kind of stuff good. He also linked pan with puns from a dialectical point of view, apocryphal, to be sure. But fun. We're back to a share of Tom puns, CB. So yeah, he's linking Pan to puns from a dialectical point of view. This is apocryphal, but he's fun all the same when doing so. He says, quote,

pan being the God of universal nature and punting free of all languages, it is highly probable that it owes its first origin as well as name to this God. Punting pan, panning panning pan. Yeah. Okay. All right. Now, obviously, that's not true, but yeah, yeah. Sheridan as puns, CB wrote that there were two different kinds of puns, physical and moral puns. The physical puns goal is cheer and happiness of a person. Good health actually, literally, good puns will make you healthy. So again, you're welcome. Moral puns. So again, you're welcome. Moral puns.

Okay, moral puns. Moral puns are, quote, a virtue that most effectively promises the end of good fellowship, which is of course its own goddamn pun. Okay, say that again. A virtue that most effectively promotes the end of good fellowship.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So good fellowship. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So good fellowship as an end, or are you ending good fellowship? Now in these writings, Swift and Sheridan serve as the masters against funds. They're still codifying them though. So there's there's something going on here. There's there's a shift that's happening. They are still creating a world in which acceptable

and unacceptable categories are used to rule over puns. They're still buying into the idea that puns are somehow illegitimate by categories and what is legitimate. Okay. So in their defense, they are still a part of the problem. Okay. And this continues the steamrolling of puns into the world of the common man, not the noble and not the wealthy. It is therefore low-born humor. And by the mid 1700s, it was clear that

puns were not acceptable in salons. Elizabeth Carter proposed a 15 volume set to be written entirely by the women of letters, sarcastically saying that it should be, quote, the whole art and mystery of punning. So she's making a joke, right? No, okay. Women should write, and it's like a pedia set. Oh, what would it be on? Puns.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. Wow. Yeah. Now this of course brings us to as you were talking about the movement toward dictionaries, which is another blow against puns at that time. Okay. Dictionaries are a list of meanings of words, right? Yes. They are, in essence, a snapshot of a language. Yes, yeah, the problem with dictionary is people think that that is the end all be all instead of the start point. Well, depending on whether you view it from a descriptivist or a prescriptivist true, what if you true, you know, but most people when they use a dictionary, it's it's not let's find out what else that word means. It's let's make sure that word means what you think it means. Yeah. So it's an indexing of the whole English language, right? And it's another attempt to make scientific and precise the English language. To which I say what the actual fuck? Well, you know, I mean, a language that has made an existence out of, you know, mugging other languages for vocabulary and stealing

its grammar from three different sources. Like, you know, yeah, let's be scientific about it. No, this is a monstrous chimera of language we're dealing with. Like, yeah. It's proof that God exists because by the grace of God, we can understand each other. So I wish my angler students were old enough for me to be able to make that statement and have them understand, like, yeah, you know, yeah. So you, and you talked about it last time, Samuel Johnson, right? Well, you know what lines up almost perfectly with Samuel Johnson's efforts here is phrenology.

I don't know. We're back to fucking phrenology again. Yeah, we never left because this shit idea that what needs to be scientific is pseudo scientific at best. This is just categorizing. This is not even taxonomy. Um, the first dictionary he publishes is in 1755. One of the first manuals on for no.

A new came 20 years later. Or no, 20 years earlier, I'm sorry. So with spelling codified, or at least a momentum toward that codification, initiated by a dictionary, right at the time that the English Empire was heading toward its apex, and whiteness was also codifying, puns took a body blow to a cultural impetus toward weaponizing language against people across the world. Okay. Puns stood in the way of that plowing under of other peoples.

Puns, I'm not saying puns are what would have kept rebellions alive, but without puns you don't have as much criticism that is couched in a way that both sharpens and softens, right? Okay, yeah. As you mentioned last time. Samuel Johnson said of puns, quote, to trifle with the vocabulary, which is the vehicle of social intercourse, is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the national till without remorse. You know, there are any number of things

that I admire Johnson for. I gotta say, I'm disappointed to hear that this was his take on puns. That level of humorlessness. Yep. Well, and again, language as a tool of colonization. There's a standard way to use English, which we can use to other those who are defined as not white and puns go into that. Puns you for the other people. Puns are for the low born.

The ones we don't have to pay attention to. The ones who don't have the right to vote. Puns are for people who don't understand the language, who would employ rhetoric instead of precision. And precision is what you need for laws, where you can define where people can and cannot walk. This was a time when Shakespeare was also considered for the commons, not for the proper gentleman. Theater itself was similarly seen as for the comments, whereas musical performance, which was devoid of words, was also on the rise. Johnson had said of Shakespeare

that his puns were quibbles and that Shakespeare was overly fond of them. And I would say, Shakespeare is overly fond of them. But he says this to the point where he sounds really fucking stupid. Quote, Equibble, Horan Barron as it is, gave him such delight that he was this to the point where he sounds really fucking stupid. Quote, Equibble, Horan Barron as it is, gave him such delight that he was content to purchase it by the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth. It's like, have you read the plot to 12th night? None of that shit makes sense. Have you, have you read fucking Hamlet?

Right. Like, I'm sorry, um, the man you're saying is devoid of all of those qualities is the father of literary internal life. Yeah, yeah. That is what, yeah. Additionally, how many words in your fucking dictionary

were first penned by Shakespeare? Wow, I didn't realize that an episode of our podcast could actually change my opinion about a historical figure quite so emotionally as I'm feeling about Samuel Johnson right now. Yeah, and you're not even working tonight. No. Oh my God. Yeah. And it's this don't come for my boy bill like All right, yeah, and it's the same Samuel go fuck yourself Johnson who said puns are the last refuge of the witness Okay, yeah, humanless jerk wow yeah So as this delegitimization continued,

along with white supremacy and empire and empires, uh, puns were still big amongst the common folk, especially across the pond with another group steeped an imperial white supremacy, the American nation born a new Ben Franklin, punned at signing the Declaration of Independence. Remember, we should all hang together. Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Abelgale Adams complaining from France about puns that he'd heard were being deployed in Philadelphia during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which I have like long said that the only thing that Thomas Jefferson did that was good was he wrote really well. Thomas Jefferson did that was good, was he wrote really well. And this only serves to continue that.

This is just more proof. Yes. Yeah. I am intensely disappointed in this man in a very unreasonable way. And it's because he's the only red headed president we really ever had. And he happens to be like the shittiest person that we've ever had as president save for Maybe two or three. Okay. I like Andrew Jackson Donald Trump

And I mean I possibly will be Jay He did enough things that were kind of good for people Yeah, I'm just talking about as a person, a person who had massive jackass. Thomas Jeff, you can tell that we're both history teachers when we have this kind of pronounced opinions about like which president was the biggest asshole. But you know, it only makes sense that Jefferson

would would be complaining about puns like this because he totally was sniffing his own farts about what an enlightenment thinker and philosopher and everything else he has. Yeah. You know, so, so of course he's all, you know, on board with the, you know, You know, so so of course he's all you know on board with the you know precision of language and and all of this ambiguity is just it's disgusting and grotesque and you shouldn't do that stuff like Dude get get over yourself and remember he had taken Sally Hemings with him to France Yeah, and then basically kept her locked up because he was like oh shit She will go free if she walks around in Paris. Yeah. And then made promises to her about her family so that she wouldn't leave him like he

He's that asshole. Oh, he's a piece of shit. Yeah And he is taking time out of being this piece of shit to write to the wife of John Adams, 1787, bitching from France about puns he's hearing in that are coming from Philly. He said, quote, the most remarkable effect on this convention as yet is the number of puns and bond mods it has generated. This occasion, more than any other thing I have seen convinces me that this nation is incapable of any serious effort but under the word of command. The people at large view every object only as it may furnish puns and bond mods and I

pronounce that a good punster would disarm the whole nation where they ever so seriously disposed to revolt. Oh, okay. So he's literally, he's literally trying to argue that the use of puns proves that the American people are not sufficiently serious to be a republic. To be a republic. Yeah. Never mind the fact that the other stuff he was hearing out of the constitutional convention pointed in the direction of a strengthen federal government, which he was ideologically opposed to, which he distrusted and which as a member of the Jeffersonian, you know, planter class, which we've talked about before. Yeah. His whole, his whole ideal being, you know, the one, you know, opposed to Adams and Hamilton

and the idea of a strong federal state. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So of course, he's going to argue, well, you know, common rabble city folks, philadelphia and in particular, you know, we're not, are not sufficiently, they're not, they're not serious enough. They don't, they don't have. But he's not, he's not even talking about them.

He's talking about the people in the convention, the secret convention, yeah, to make the constitution. He's bitch. Oh, yeah. They're punning too much. Yeah. And he even, yeah, humorless prick. He even writes a letter to John Adams, who is in London at the time, to point out how smart everyone is, saying that it was an

assembly of demigods. So he's like really disappointed in all of these great men because they can't help but pun all the time. And to me, that's like their only saving grace. But like he's like, and he's saying essentially that like they could derail a whole country or a whole movement with just a couple puns. Well, okay. So there's several things I can see going on here. Number number one, he doesn't like what he's hearing about the direction the convention is going in. Right. So there's that.

Number two, this is very clearly going to be a very important thing and he's not there for it. So his ego is wounded, right? So he's diminishing, you know, on the one hand, he's saying, you know, what a powerhouse, what it would have, you know, an amazing stable of thinkers. This is, and then he's like, well, you know, oh my god, they're spending all their time writing these bonds. He's embittered that he's not part of that glitterati group.

And so he's, he's envious and bitter. And even if he was there, he'd have his nose stuck up so far in the air because like, you know, I'm obviously the smartest guy in this room. Like, you know, yeah, no, it's he's telling on himself. Yes. So hard. Oh, yes. So clearly. Yeah. Jesus. I mean, imagine if he was right, like, don't you wish that a pun or a string of

puns would have stopped shit a couple of January's ago? Yeah. You know, God, damn, if that was all it took. Um, and again, he's saying it from France. He's not there. He's bitching about the puns that he's heard I want to know who it is that's bitching out to members the convention It's got a fucking be Madison, right? Yeah, okay. Yeah. It's gotta be because like the those Virginia pricks. Yeah So another imperial reason imperial reason for puns being on the decline is still tied to the codification of language. When puns were big, it was when there was a bunch of cosmopolitanism

going on in an area. Remember, I talked about the coffee house thing going on in London. In the 1500s and 1600s, London has a whole bunch of cultures bouncing into each other with and London. Yeah. Yeah. But when England becomes an empire and starts empiring all over the place, a lot of poor folk get conscripted, get impressed and get volunteered out of desperation. And they left London and as such and they left a lot of other cosmopolitan areas. Yeah. And as such, the homeland becomes much more homogenized and the pores kind of get

swept out. And with that, my homogenization comes a codification and a belief that language was a serious thing that needed to be frozen in time. And fewer interactions with other languages means fewer chances at puns. Okay. One only has to read an Indian menu, Indian food menu, and find, oh, there are so many fun ways to go be punny. It's cure to see. Oh, gee. That last one was kind of a non-pun. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. Right? Your spirit start to sog. You know, and you look at me the way that Judah Ben Hurl looked at his former lover, and you're just like masala. lover and you're just like masala. I'm a need to take a break. Oh, there you go. Nice. Nice. Oh, yeah. Some of those were garam. See? Which is only kind of a half pun, but it's still fucking work. I'm still proud of you. I'm still.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I had matters to me. It allu matters to me. Not. Listen, doll. Oh, he's holding his heart.

Huh. Yeah. But I think this just absolutely proves my point, though. Yeah. Like when you have other languages bouncing into each other, they're not abrating. They're bouncing and it's fun. Yeah.

And you get different phonemes and it's just fun. Yeah. The frontiers of both the American nation and the English Empire and the Roman Empire, if you go back far enough, you're going to find puns because at the frontiers, you've got multiple language at the frontiers. You've got less stodginess. You've got more diversity and you've got a flattening of the wealth curve out there, too. You have that wealthy prick who owns a bunch of land, but then you got the rest of us

who have to work it. Okay. Yeah. Also, like I said, multiple languages colliding, uh, witness in Boston in the 1830s. It's already a city for more than a century. And it's a hub of smart smartiness, right? Tradition hierarchy, despite the fact that it's a port. Um, and you see this conflict between the traditionalist and the frontier. It's a port city. So you have a lot of cosmopolitan culture.

And yet you've got these smart smarties, right? So in the daily evening transcript, which was a nascent newspaper that had only started in July of 1830. It decried in an editorial quote, the language is in danger of being stub-twisted. The original significant signification of words will soon be lost. If a sanitary committee be not appointed to the to report the punsters and disinfect them forthwith. Wow. Yeah. Now holy crap. The weird thing is they're using extended metaphor there, which is word play unto itself, but they're saying this by doing that, this is okay. Rest you all are wrong. Further down, the editorial also says that boys should be prevented from punning and smoking.

Really? Yeah. And that's in July of 1830. And note that the language is treating it like it's an epidemic. Boston had already been through its shares of epidemics by then. So this is a really effective version of imagery that they're using on a number of levels. Okay, so I have a question. Sure. And this is going to take us backward a little bit chronologically. But we've moved into the 1800s at this point, but in the late 1700s, at this point, but in the in the late 1700s, we have obviously in the in the Anglo phone world with Jefferson and all these guys and Locke and everybody, you know, yeah, shooting on puns. Right. Humorless slavers. Yeah. Yes. I can't

argue that part out. Notice I didn't say John Adams wrote this letter. Yeah. Yeah. So what I find interesting, fairness, I bet you, John Adams probably enjoyed a word jumble more than he enjoyed upon it. Yeah, probably. That kind of mind. He would have laughed at Marma Duke, you know? Yeah. You know, I feel like you're taking a day at him. A little bit.

But anyway, but anyway, and so this is very, very heavily anglophone that we're talking about here. What I find interesting is my understanding of the court, of the French court shortly before the court, of the French court, shortly before the revolution. The part of the currency amongst the nobles in that court was wit, was verbal, you know, interplay and punning being a part of that. Sure. And it was intensely cutting and deeply cruel. Yes. Because of the social stakes involved and everybody, you know, it being used as a weapon. Yes.

But I find it interesting that we have all this, we have this thing, this angle of phone thing, that we have all this, we have this thing, this anglophone thing, you know, decrying the corruption of the language that's involved and it separates us from God. Whereas in the in the court of the Francophone world, it based on my limited knowledge, it sounds like it was a very different thing. Did you have any opportunity to look into that side of things? Not terribly much. I find most of my stuff to English and Latin, given the home field of manager I have on those. Now, that said, I would point out a few very distinct things that might help shed some light on that.

Number one, the powers that were in France were not the Huguenots, and they were not the counter-reformationists. Okay. all right. I see what you had access to wine. Okay. And I think those three things may well have combined. Okay. And the weather was nicer. So you could see tits. And I really think that those four things combined compared to England where the Puritans chopped off the King's head and then decided 10 years later, we need kings again. And they put on trial the corpse of their former leader like, you know, they, yeah, and name their alcohol that brought them joy and frivolity. You cannot.

And I, I would say, you know, like the way that the English drank compared to the way that the French drank in court. And I would also say that when you do take a look at when they restored the monarchy, the first guy they got back was Charles James Charles Charles, yeah, Charles II, who was all about like fucking an orgies and theater. And then they immediately had like a playout break and a fire. So like they just never got their feet under them for enjoying

shit. And so by the time you get to, you know, your Jeffersonian shit in America, you've got Mad King George. I mean, you just have a bunch of humorless shit heads. And that's the culture. All right. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Now, I mean, don't get me wrong. France certainly had its whole beheading phase with the terror, which was a reaction to the if feet right head and the clatter aristocrats who were doing all of the punting right. So I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, no. Okay. Yeah. All right. I just it had yeah, hop down my head. And I was like, I, if I don't ask this, I'm gonna regret it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, but in America, yeah, you, you've got that happening in Boston where they're comparing it to the plagues that they fucking had. Yeah. And as the Civil War drew closer and we go further west before Kansas was actually bleeding puns were weaponized in an increasingly hostile Congress

former presidential candidate and Senator Lewis Cass was arguing for popular sovereignty in 1850 Okay, where is man stood firmly against it and I forget where Horace man was from but he was an abolitionist and He possibly was seeing into the future what the debacle would befall Kansas. Cass made an obvious pun on Mann's name in his attack to which Mann responded. Okay, so his name's Horace Mann, right? So, yeah. Okay, you're not a real man, you know, that kind of thing.

So Mann responded, quote, as a general rule, I condemn punning as a malignant attack upon any gentleman for the accident of his name, it is wholly unpardonable. It is, but barely justifiable as a retort to warn the general of the dangers he encounters by indulging his love of punning. I will venture to subjoin a specimen or two of what might be easily an identity and definitely extended. So abolitionists were not known for their humor either. And notice they were fighting a very righteous fight. Yeah. But he's basically calling out the dumbness of the guy who pundered on his name. He then launched into a litany of puns jokes insults rhymes in sundry against the senator from Michigan, ending with the plea to stop punning.

Nice. Yeah. So if Senator Cass was quote, now disposed to say quits on the score of punning, I am and will draw no more upon the ass and I or Casinine associations, which his name suggests, which points for petty points for using puns to criticize the guy who puns. Really, in a lot of ways, it feels like, okay, you want the smoke, here comes the fire. Like, you decided to pun in my name. It honestly, it reads like, so, you know, I skipped a bunch, but it reads like that scene in Roxanne, where he's like, you know, 20 insults. Yeah.

So like, well, if we're going to pun and then, right? Cool. At the same time time though, he is still codifying in dissing punks. So, yeah, you know, very Jonathan Swift, I like it for the Moxie, I like it for the petty. I like it because, you know, in many ways, it's a friend of mine used to do rap battles. And she did a battle where she talked about like, because she's, she's a transgender individual. Somebody made some sort of joke about about that or something else. And she says, wow, you know, and and it's all, she's all, she's just like restyling here and it's, it's all rhyming. But the gist of it was wow, your insult was really mean.

I don't mean mean as in like you were mean to me. I mean mean as in it was barely average and that she just goes in on them about how mediocre he was. Oh wow. Yeah, you know, and it's nicely done. Yeah, and then she's like, but I'm above that, you know, which is above the mean, which is like, oh, I love you. Yeah.

But so he does this, right? But he still is, I mean, it's in the congressional record, criticizing puns and then using a bunch and then using a really good one at the end. Like, oh, by the way, we can make fun of names. Okay, it would be like a Anthony Weiner attack somebody about their name. Yeah. You know, it's, yeah. Oh, yeah. So in 1856, a magazine in Boston called Putnam's Monthly pointed out that despite the Hoi Polois objection and scorn of punning, most folks still like puns. Quote, our puns are protests against the trite

and the proletes and a wholesome recognition of the popular taste. So suck it, windbags. Like. So. Yeah. Did they actually use the term ho Hoi Poloi in that manner? No, no.

Okay. Although it was used to refer to those folk. Really? Yeah, the Hoi Poloi is actually a mention of the upper class in Boston. Really? Mm-hmm. Because every time I've ever heard it used, it's talking about those peasants out there, the Huyploi, is the way I've

always heard it used. So interesting. Yeah. As far as I were kind of like Nimrod. It started out meaning one thing and sarcastic use turned it into something else. Oh, right, right, right. That's my guess. I don't know. Anyway, sorry. So I might have reversed it. That's entirely possible. Because yeah, now that you said like, you know, it's essentially referring to the plebs, yeah, the grade unwashed. Yeah, I, you know what? I, I might be misattributing it because of an episode of mash. Oh, okay. Yeah. But anyway, so in any event, so they they came out basically saying, you know what, all you snooty types can suck it because people like puns. Right. Okay.

Now that's 1850. So I'm seeing a shift, right? Now that we don't have powdered wig gas holes. And now that abolitionists are being like, yo, slavery's fucked up. This is not cool. And it's not like you don't see empires expanding a shit ton. They are. But now it's obvious that they're doing it through violence. They're not just doing it through legalism.

I think it was probably obvious prior to that, but it was like acceptable violence, whereas now it's like there's a moral reckoning that seems to be happening We're the beginnings of one forming. Yeah, okay, so an English teacher named William Matthews in Chicago author to book in 1888 and it was called wit and humor their use and abuse and well, in 1888, and it was called wit and humor, their use and abuse. And he still brought into question the delegitimization that we saw in England by Mr. Sheridan, right? But he does ask a central question, which local Sacramento comic Ed Meena has also brought up.

Matthew said, quote, why it should provide such hostility when legitimately employed is an enigma hard to explain. There are a few persons who do not betray, if they do not avow, a keep relish for this species of jest when it is used sparingly and it is really extemporary. Okay. Put it more succinctly, Edmina said at a show that I was at because he's also

he's also he said quote why would you get mad at a pun? It takes intelligence to understand a pun. You're mad because you're smart. Okay. So we do see in Matthews a rejection of the Enlightenment Self-Grandisement. Okay. And see, this is where it gets really dicey for me because how do you reject the Enlightenment Self-Grandisement but you keep the values that came about from the Enlightenment? How do you reject people taking themselves too seriously but keep the value on intelligence.

How do you reject intellectuals for being pricks without being anti-intellectual? It is a hard line to block. It's a very, very fine line. It is. Yes. You know? Yeah. How do you criticize the enslaver and colonizer mentality of John Locke without

also throwing out with the bathwater, his ideas of life liberty and property, like, you know, a favor of despotism. Like, yeah, it's really easy to find the wrong people on your side. Yeah. So we do see in Matthew's that rejection of enlightenment, self-grandizement, and he sought to make the world a better place by means of a greater understanding of language, not a more restrictive approach. Well, words are often not only the vehicle of thought, but the very mirror in which we see our ideas and be hold the beauty or ugliness of our inner selves. Okay. Which is really not that far from what Edmina said. Yeah. And I really appreciate that because in the 1850s, we start to see it opening up again where is not, language and science are more inquisitive and more of a start point. Not a, this is how we're going to shut

everything down and take advantage of it. Okay. Now, as we grew toward a more urbanized society, which I think is vital, one in which immigrants came over, literally by the boatload, in America there's an inescapable reality. White supremacy is more and more reactionary, and languages are bumping into each other more and more. And no group, perhaps more than European Jewish immigrants, suffered from the bullshit eugenicist arguments, who also had a richer linguistic tradition of puns. There's other groups that come close, but the otherness seemed to wear off for those groups more permanently as time

wore on. Because one of the chief concerns that eugenicists had was the weakening of whiteness through people who looked white, but weren't. But yeah, right? So you're getting a lot of needles there. And that was specifically targeting Jewish immigrants. Mm-hmm. From 1880 and, and I, and Italian immigrants to. Yes. From 1880 and 1920, more than 24 million immigrants came to the United States.

50% of all European Jewish people who came over in that period settled in New York. The other 50% spread throughout the rest of the country. So fully half of the Jewish immigrants who came from 1880 to 1920, they settled in New York. And New York's population rose from 1.2 million in 1880 to 5.6 million in 1920. Holy shit. Yes. Now, as I said in last episode, in the New Testament, we saw Jesus punning. But Job also puns in the book of Job too. The word for his name, Eob and Oyeb, are one letter different different apparently. And this is my very limited understanding

and frankly I'm thinking from other sources. But Yiddish is somewhat comprehensible to German, which is a cousin of English. And since Yiddish theater had grown from nothing in 1900, the hosting is many as 30 shows a night by 1914. PUNS and Theater were a natural marriage again, just as it was with Shakespeare. And this combined with the popularity and popularism of Vaudaville, the performance of which got into early films when Tauke's got going.

And you see a clear line from Yiddish humor to puns in movies to puns being a popular cultural artifact all over again regardless of what Hoi-Di-toi-Di society people tried to say. The people had spoken and the wheel bespoke was rolling. Now if you take a look at comedy and the Borscht belt circuit in the first half of the 20th century's comedians, specifically the ones that were steeped in Yiddish comedy and Jewish comedy sensibilities, Henny Youngman, Milner Burl, Ray C. Allen, George Burns, Jack Benny, and of course, my beloved Marx brothers. And of course, their success commercially meant that other

non-Jewish comedians would take it up as well. Laurel and Hardy three stooages, Charlie Chaplin when he did talkies, but also his visual puns, right? Abbott and Castello. Huns were a pillar of comedy in the early days of radio and cinema because those early days were the waning days of Vaudville, which had been a safe house for puns in ethnic hamlet theaters in the ethnic hamlet theater circuits. Okay. Yeah. This makes sense.

Yeah. All right. So we have urbanized right by 1900. You have 50, 50 urbanized to rural. You start to have traveling shows. Those traveling shows are the same acts going from town to town. So now you've got a diffusion of that culture, those jokes, those puns, those sensibilities.

And as you have seen an increase in specifically in others, non-white, but not for white, but piss off the eugenicist white, comedians and acts, you start to, I mean, you see all these things kind of happening at once. And then the World War hits, and then the depression hits, but during the depression, prices went down, performances went up. People traveled

further and further, further performances. So puns are getting all over the place. And then World War Two hits. And you've got a mass mobilization, you've got all kinds of people drafted together, conscription, things like that. And you have in the same way that professional wrestling came out of the diffused version of wrestling that was at one time regional and then became nationalized, you see the same thing. So post-World War II, society frankly is exhausted and starts to constrict again. Huns were once again demeaned as unfunny, predictable and unclever.

And part of this is due to the fact that comedy had changed to become more overtly countercultural. And thus the monologists elbowed out the routine guys. So that happened. Okay. Routines are no longer the thing. You get stuff like Lenny Bruce. Still a Jewish comedian, I might add. Yeah.

But he's deliberately pulling away from those old ways. And he's iconoclastic as hell. He's pushing humor norms into new places, like overtly criticizing and challenging the dominant culture. He got arrested for obscenity for doing so, of course, but puns really didn't have the same punch that he was looking for. Yeah. And a whole new breed of comics came up with him as the exemplar. So by the time George Carlin was getting arrested and Milwaukee for obscenity for challenging the dominant culture, puns were again pushed into the margins. Yeah, right. Except they show up with a very popular TV show.

And I genuinely think that if it were not for Alan Alda, they might have stayed in the margins a lot more. But because Alan Alda brought so many puns to mash and because mash was such a hit and Hawkeye Pierce's character was Zani as hell, and he was used as this Arlo Guthrie-like challenge to an authority that ran counter to common sense. Punds were the lint on the sweater of the American living rooms throughout the 1970s.

Okay. Wow. So here's a question. Yeah, go ahead. When you specifically mentioned Hawkeye Pierce, could it be that the writers who were creating his ethos, could it be that on some level,

his using all of those puns was a signal of his status in terms of, you know, he's, he's him being in, in opposition to Winchester. For example, you know, as as starts in season seven, season six, seven. That's true. Yeah, it is very late. So you've got Frank Burns prior to that. Okay. Well, we can also, I mean, you know, burns and burns and pierce being kind of, you know, oppositional or, or yeah, being oppositional figures. Yes. You know, and, and so the fact that Hawkeye is making all these puns is like, oh my God, this guy. And there's a shitty, and these shitty jokes like, you know, things going on there. Okay. So burns absolutely stands in for Frank Burns stands in for the authority as opposed

to common sense. Like nothing. He says makes sense. He is in charge. However, or he is a major, you know, he cares more about the authority. He is ridiculous, right? Hawkeye Pierce is coded as Jewish. He is coded as the Marx brothers. Okay. There were several episodes where he comes in looking like Groucho. Yeah. You know, so he's coded in that way.

And I think if you take a look at the writers, they're all older men. And they're all older men who had a lot of experience in the comedy circuits. And you probably could look pretty closely. And you would probably see that a lot of them were either Jewish comedians or people who had come up with Jewish comedians. Jewish comedians or people who had come up with Jewish comedians. Okay. Interestingly enough, also, you don't just have that kind of verbal humor. You also have Maxwell Q. Klinger and Klinger is dressing in drag.

And he is actually doing what Lenny Bruce did to get out of the war. Lenny Bruce would dress as a whack or a wave, I forget which one it was, to try to get released from military service during World War II. No kidding. Yes. Oh, well. So there's and and the Larry Gilbert, okay. Yeah. And again, I did not research a Larry Gilbert and and some of the other writers for this particular thing, but I do remember seeing them in several different documentaries about Jewish comedy and things like this. But Larry Gilbert straight up said, yeah, Lenny Bruce trying to get out was the inspiration

of cleaner. Okay. Yeah. So, but yeah, Hawkeye Pierce absolutely because it's kind of got that Neil Simon vibe to it too. Quick rapid fire, lots of jokes, flood the channel, and that means lots of puns. And it is a lot of villain. Hawkeye Pierce is a Vod Villian character in a lot of ways. And he thickens up in so many other ways. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there is that definite element there.

And he drives his foils crazy with his word play. Yeah. You know, he just, and he does it in so many different ways. Yeah. Because his word play is, as protean as it just, and he does it in so many different ways. Yeah, because because his word play is as protean as it is, there's no way you can't make an attack. Right. Without risking him taking that and flinging it back at you. Mm-hmm.

It's verbal jeet kundou. It's the style of no style. Yeah, he pisses off, you know, he gets around any rules and regs. He pisses off hula hand and burns later on. It's him and then it becomes him and BJ honey cut hosting and sparring with, as you mentioned, Winchester. Yeah. And honestly, Winchester holds his own. Yeah.

Like, he is smarter than both of them. And he's written as such. Yeah. And he's from Boston. And he's all in Boston. Yeah. So there's a lot going on there. Yeah, there really is.

But if it wasn't for mash, I think puns would have stayed on the margins. But since mash brought them out there, laugh in and the Carol Burnett show and the smothers brothers and he haw were deploying them as well. Um, and I do think that without mash, you would not have seen that as much in those variety shows. Now, they weren't used as a challenge to authority necessarily, but there were more as a reference to the counter culture. Puns were not as effective, but they were winks to the audience in the same way that the Wilhelm screen was in the 90s and the 2000s.

Okay. You can listen to that in episode 137. Yes. Yeah. What were you gonna say? Just, you know, you're saying that puns weren't being used as subversive devices in the same way that they had previously. I find it interesting that you say that in the context of moments before that,

having mentioned the Smothers Brothers, who got themselves in. They got a lot of trouble on that. Right. Like the screen went black. Yeah. Yeah. But interesting dress their jokes on some others brothers were were overtly political. Yeah, puns were used. It wasn't the punchline of the point. Okay. It was tags. It was little okay. Like I remember specifically they had a woman cooking a souffle. She's like, you don't want it to get too high like I am. Um, and so it was passing references to counter cultural stuff. They were counter cultural texts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah. And I totally saw what you were saying there in regard to like laugh in. What really struck me with that though was I hadn't realized that. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

struck me with that though was I hadn't realized that yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. What I hadn't realized was the chronology involved. I hadn't realized that that match predated laughing. I had always thought of laughing as being an earlier. I don't think it predated laughing. I'm saying that it's use of puns. Okay. Open the, you the, you know, and I didn't want, I did not do a quantifiable study. Okay. But I noticed that laugh in later seasons. Mm. It's certain that. It involves more of that.

Yeah. Okay. All right. That makes sense. And it could be that I just noticed it more in the in the same air as, you know, like once you once you smell something burning, now you smell all the things that are burning. Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing. So, like a laughing laughing predated mesh. Okay. Yeah. Now late night talk shows also did their part also using puns for double entendre and innuendo so

They're using puns in a very specific way a variety shows deployed them as a wink to drug culture usually Johnny Carson deployed them as wings to the sexual revolution Okay, Karnak the Magnific magnificent regular does this. Oh, yeah. Right. Oh, yeah, some of those skits were like, you know, it almost doesn't count as a double entendre. Like that's almost a single entendre.

Yeah. Yeah. The, the blatantness, the blatantness of that is yeah quite a thing But you know, but no yeah, right the cover of the pun for The body right, so it like kind of softens Yeah, this actual part of it, but that's about it But you know at the end of the day, these are the margins for puns still. So despite them being popular on on the TV, they are still in the margins. They're they're relegated

to certain subjects. They're not a broad topic, right? They're not broad category. Yeah, public discourse still abhorred them, but laughed at them for 30 minutes at a set time every night. That was it. It stayed as low humor through the end of the century, as Henry Fowler had said in 1926, though, quote, puns are good, bad, and indifferent. Puns are good, bad, and indifferent.

And only those who lack the wit to make them are unaware of the fact. Okay. So you remember how I'd mention that white supremacy grew as puns got pushed to the sides? Yeah. Well, as white supremacy and imperialism grew, as codified acceptable English usage and spelling grew. The margins were where most of the world who were not of the dominant culture by virtue of their remoteness to whiteness, their accents, their cosmopolitanism were also regulated, relegated rather. Okay.

And puns and those communities have actually had a long history of interacting within those communities in almost any community that's pushed to the side by the dominant culture in the region. Okay, in other words, like when you have marginalized communities, you're gonna have puns coming out of those communities. Okay.

There are tons of Yiddish puns, not only because that shit's fun, but because Jewish folks and the Roma folks in Europe and the Mediterranean at different times were not allowed equitable access to the public square in terms of commerce, language, acceptability, etc. The same things true in England for people of Jamaican, Pakistani, Indian at all descent. The same in Australia for people of Maori descent. I could go on, but you can kind of see the same dynamic here in America, indigenous communities, immigrant communities, and stolen from other places' communities.

All have a rich history of punting off of the English language. And just as in the 1920s, jazz employees employed puns, and the 1950s rock employed puns, as the 1970s gave way to hip hop, yet another type of music started by black folks started employing puns very early on. Country music did it too, by the way, but in the 1920s and 30s was also the music of the dispossessed and the move was. In 1980, Curtis Blow came out with the song Those Are the Breaks. Here are the lyrics. I'm not going to even try to do it with the backbeat, but breaks on a bus, breaks on a car,

breaks to make you a superstar, breaks to win and breaks to lose, but these here breaks will rock your shoes and these are the brakes break it up break it up break it up break it up. All right. So those are the brakes is the R E a K S, but then he started immediately to talk about the brakes on a bus and a brakes on a car. And then what kind of brake to make you a superstar, right? So he is punning in 1980. And by no means was he the first and by no means was he the only one he, but there there's plenty of others. And the cleverness of the puns interwoven through and around plenty of artists lyrics. In 1994, the notorious B.I.G. showed his cleverness through the puns in the song Big Papa. Now check it, I got more Mac than Craig and in the bed. Believe me, sweetie, I got enough to feed the need players. So what's he got a lot of what's he got more more Mac than right and and in the bed believe me sweetie. I got enough to feed the needy right so I'm going to feed you I can feed the needy now no need to be greedy.

I got mad friends with benzes C notes by the layers true fucking players, right? So he's punning. In 2004, Jay-Z released 99 problems. The whole second verse is his interaction with a police officer who pulls him over. At the end, the officer says, well, we'll see how smart you are when the canines come. So he's pulled him over. He's like, you have a weapon, you know, and all that. And Jay-Z is like, look, my trunk is locked. You know, he's like, you know, if I search around your car, he's like, you don't need to search anything.

My trunk is locked. My glove compartment's locked. I know the laws. You're going to leave me. And he says, well, we'll see, we'll see how smart you are when the canine comes to which Jay-Z responds with the pun. I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one.

You okay? The K9 won't find anything. Yeah, right? Eminem also regularly employs puns often multiple layers with recursive features. Shorty you're fine, but you sort of remind me of a 49er because you've been a gold digger since you were a minor. Hmm. So. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, yeah, or, or then one of my favorites. Now you get to watch her leave out the window. Guess that's why they call it window pain. All right. And so on and so on. Yeah. So what's of note is, is that we are going to see a pattern here. Number one, puns are popular.

Number two, the dominant culture denigrates puns at the same time as it tries to narrow who gets to be a part of the dominant culture based in part on the codification of language, but ultimately in a reaction in a white supremacist way. Okay. Three puns get pushed to the margins. And this is sequential. Four, marginalized people develop wickedly clever puns and then express them in their own art media. Whether it is Vaudville, movies, radio plays, radio, comedy records, you know, country music, rock and roll, rockabilly, hip hop does not matter. Five, that art medium gains the attention and the appeal of the dominant culture. And then six puns are popularly accepted again until we repeat two through five again. Okay, so based on that, as we struggle, collectively, to move toward a society that tries to dismantle

a society that tries to dismantle white supremacy. Do you think the cycle will stop in a position where puns hold a more respected position in discourse? Or if we eliminate the shitty part of that cycle, what do you think happens there? Do you remember when we did our punk rock episode where he said in a perfect world punk rock would not exist? Yeah, in a perfect world, you don't think we'd have that many puns? I don't think you would have really good ones. Maybe. Okay.

I don't know. I have a hard time believing that puns would ever disappear, but now that I'm looking back through history, they're almost always coming from the margins. So if you have a society that does away with marginalization, then there's less need for that. Yeah. Well, part of the answer there is that because of our fundamentally flawed nature as humans,

if you get rid of race as a mechanism for marginalizing people, there'll be some other reason why people get marginalized. True. I mean, before you always be in and out of whiteness, you still have poverty. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that was where my brain went with that. Yeah, it was like, okay, so we have this cycle. What happens when we eliminate the crummy part of it? Yeah. As long as there's marginalization, there's punting. Yeah. Okay. Now puns have been on the upticks since 2016. They obviously existed prior, but witness that Punderdome had started in 2011 as a live show in New York. Witness the Oh Henry pun competition that has been existence for 45 years now. Okay. But pun shows as those are the outliers because pun shows as a popular

thing by and large didn't start to grow until 2016, 2017. buy and large didn't start to grow until 2016, 2017. And when the pandemic sent us all home in 2020, a whole spate of pun shows got started around the world digitally. I know, because I've been on a lot of them. As several comedians are built largely now due to their puns. In the Edinburgh Fringe Fest, there's a bigger space for puns now, same with sketchfest in San Francisco. I know because I've been on both. I've been at the Edinburgh's fringe fest digitally. I've been to sketchfest a couple times sold out. It was awesome. But now the dominant culture is really starting to embrace puns again, and I can see the elitism creeping in again. As recently as December 3rd, apology I have been written for puns in

two different British publications. They're using science to explain it better and it's that same damn to peel for legitimacy that we've seen multiple times in history. Hmm. Shit, there's even an article in the August Mensa Bulletin about puns. I know because I know because my show is featured in it. Okay, well, all right, cool. It's still mostly certainly appealing to the elite for legitimacy, and that leads us right back to step three. Puns are pushed to the margins. Again, still, and it's as though we're being punished for our humor. You know, I wondered how long it would be before that one showed up. Whole thing is just a big set up for that. Yeah, at two episodes, just to get to that.

Just to get to that. I put a few other tags in there, you know? Yeah, you know, I think I wouldn't go in there, but yeah, no, I knew I know I knew that was gonna happen. Now in case you wondered is there a tie between puns and resisting resisting Nazis? Hmm. Yes. I found one told in Germany at the time and there were these things called whisper jokes. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've heard of the concept of the whisper jokes. Yeah, and at least one person was executed in 1944 for this. Jesus. Now, this is a different one than the one that got him killed, but here's the joke.

Which city has the most warehouses? Which one? Berlin. Wherever you look, there were houses. In the center of Berlin, more than 50% of the apartments had been destroyed or severely damaged by the end of the war. So this is a pun with two German words, Warren, which means goods or wares, and Warren, which means there or they were.

All right. So nice. There were languages. Yeah, I like that. Warren Hosses. Warren Hosses. Now, if you that. Varan Haasus. Varan Haasus. If you're also filling out your bingo card at home, here's the wrestling pun. There was a wrestler named Mike Rotunda. He was a phenomenal technical wrestler.

He was part of the US Express with Barry Wyndham in 1984, won the tech championship, lost it to the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkov or no one it won it from them. Yeah, won it from them actually. Okay. Take it back. Okay. And then lost it to the dream team. That's what it was. All right. But he played a, so after that, he went away and came back. He comes back as a tax lawyer named Irwin R Shister. He wrestled in suspenders and a tie. He would wear cheater glasses to the ring. He'd take them off. He'd come with a briefcase and you talk about wherever he was, about how many tax cheats there were in that town. If you look at his initials, Irwin. I R S. Yes. And if you, yeah, there's also Triple H's original ring name. So Triple H hunter hurts Helmsley.

He was supposed to be this a feet blue blood hunter herst her Helmsley. Yeah, triple H, right? Yeah. His original wrestling name Tara Ryzen. I don't know what to do with that. Although Montoya, who was a wrestler in WWF, it never really took off, left and went to ECW, became just incredible. Because of course he did.

There's also a professional wrestler. Oh God, what was his name? Scotty DeMore, who wrestled under the moniker, Hugh Morris. Okay, props to that one. Yeah, finishing move. Yeah, is called no laughing matter. props to that one. Yeah, finishing move. Yeah, it was called no laughing matter. They're like, okay, all right, there's there's layers there. That's, that's, that's, that's an onion. There were, there was a tag team. Uh-huh.

Hog farmers from Arkansas. Oh, no. Um, and, uh, Phineas, I, Godwin, and Henry, oh, Godwin. Again, look at their initials. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. There's another guy who was a jobber to the stars.

His name was Matt Striker. Okay. Because he got knocked down a lot. He would strike. That's Striker. Oh, God. Okay. See, this whole, this whole sequence here has felt to me very much like, he has a wife, you know,

would you like to hear what her name is? Yeah. Inconz, then to your botters. was actually what her name is. Yeah. Inconsynentia buttocks. So there was a team, a tag team called the Dudley boys. And the whole thing was like they all had the same father, but different mom. So there was a black Dudley boy. There was a white Dudley boy. There was all kinds of different Dudley boys.

And then the smallest Dudley boy named little Spike Dudley, whose finishing move was called the acid drop and look at his initials Mm-hmm and Then ultimately my favorite yeah, Mick Foley his character Mankind Yeah allowed itself all kinds of puns. Yeah. What a blow to mankind. Mankind will never recover from this. Yeah, okay. Mankind is a mentored and strange.

Okay, okay, that last one is unintentionally fucking deep. Yes. Like. Wow. Okay. Like. Wow. Yep. Okay. So. Yeah. And interestingly, all of those are coming out of wrestling, which is the opera, well,

it's Vodvilleian and it's the opera of the common classes. Absolutely. You know, so. Yep so it only makes sense. Oh, of course. Wow. So there you go. Okay. That's it. All right.

That's... I really... I really, the codification of the cycle is really powerful. And there's the historical cycle that we see going on there. And I think on another level, I think this isn't what we tend to focus on with our particular paradigm. But I think it would be interesting to look into the deeper psychology on an individual level of the attraction to the ambiguity and the flash of the flash of intuitive cleverness as opposed to, you know, cut the butter square rationality, right? That's that's involved in a good pun. And how that relates to it being a a form of wordplay, a form of of humor, social capital, whatever you want to call it, that's that's that we see in marginalized communities and marginalized circumstances.

You know, because we focus really heavily, we tend to get very pointed about the macro, but I think there's also an interesting level, the forces acting on the people who create the culture that the stuff comes out of, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. You know, and yeah, the idea of puns being protean. And I think there we had there was there was the idea that why are you getting angry because you're smart? Yeah, I had me. Yeah, yeah, it mean it's it mean his idea about that. I kind of I kind of have a response to that because what it what it comes down to as somebody who has that. Oh my god. why the fuck are you doing this to me?

You know, kind of reaction. Is because when you get a pun, you can't not get the pun. Like you feel like part of your own brain has been used against you. It's like, oh my God, I wish I didn't get God damn it. You've been tricked into enjoying something. Yeah, there's the feeling of having been tricked. And as much as on a logical level, it should be, oh, hey, oh,

I see what you did there, you know, for for a lot of people, there's this level of, oh, you fucking, you, you got me with you, how dare you, you know, you're regularly like, how did I not see that coming? Yeah, about, yeah. Yeah, you know, like in any time you mentioned Himalor, how did I not see that coming? I'm not saying, yeah. Because I have to make that one, I, it's a compulsion.

I don't mind, I got, I garble them up. Fuck. See, I don't mind. I got, I, I curable them up. Fuck. See, see right there, right there. Like, damn it. Um, and, and I, and I think that's, it's the, it's the, it's the intuitive, like if you have a speech center and you understand the language that the pun is being made or language is plural that the pun relies on when it gets presented to you. Yeah, it's almost it's almost like a booby trap that you

step on. You know, like sure. you know, you yeah. And so that's my response to why are you getting angry because you're smart. I'm getting angry because I feel like you've tricked me. I don't feel smart in that moment. I feel like, oh, what? Oh, you know, I feel ambushed because there's no way there's no way to get out of it, you know. So yeah.

And for the record, as much as I bitch in moan, I fully recognize the cleverness and the the true wit as opposed to false wit, which again, just like what the fuck. Maybe, little Johnson can just fuck it. Oh my God, I, you know, I'm gonna have to go back and figure out where I had the inflated idea of him like I had, because he sounds like such a jackass. Maybe he stood up to somebody who is even shittier

or something. I mean, it could be. Because that's usually where I end up admiring people and then I'm like, oh, oh, like Dorothy Thompson. I was like, dude, she's fucking rad, man. She interview Hitler and showed him for the shit bag that he is. She got her as kicked out of Germany.

Yeah. And then like I read the shit that she says about black voters in America. I'm like, oh, dude, what are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. Why must you what are you doing? Yeah. Why must you disappoint me like this? Yeah. Yeah.

And I think it was a quotation of Johnson by Boswell, that I think is part of it, is they encountered, you know, they're on the streets of London and they encountered a child of an urchin, you know, they're on the streets of London, and they encountered a child of an urchin, you know, begging in the street. And Johnson, you know, threw the kid some money. And Boswell said, you know, why are you, why are you giving him money when you know he's just going to go use it to buy gin? And Johnson's response was, why should I deny him the only pleasure he might have? And I think, I think rising that the dad from happy days would be that against charity, that, that uptight and selfish. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Thanks. But, uh, uh, and I think it's, I think

it's that quote that I can probably hold responsible for my holding him in this level of esteem. Sure. And yeah, no, he sounds like just such a jerk. Ah, oh well. Yeah. Never historically researched your hero's kids. That's, that's the lesson. I mean, heroes. Yes it might be might be better. So yeah, so it's a yeah, that's that's everything I've Okay, hey, can out of that cool. Cool. What are you gonna recommend to people to read? Well, I'm certainly not going to recommend the life of Johnson by Boswell. I Johnson by Boswell. I don't have anything written to recommend, but I am going to say anybody who is behind the times, like I am, I do really, really, really, really, really, really, really strongly recommend and or if you have access to Disney Plus, it is a very well-acted, very tightly written series so far. I'm

seven episodes in because I'm way behind because my wife is not interested in so many of these things. So my my window for watching stuff is limited. Sure. But it is, it is really, really well done. And I think it's a really great example of what can be done within the Star Wars universe. be done within the Star Wars universe when you are willing to play with what genre of story you're telling in the universe. Oh yeah. And so as an exercise in that, I highly recommend it. And everybody on the cast, like there's there's not a clinker performance anywhere to be found. It's awesome. So, yeah. So much good tension in that show.

Oh, yeah. No, it's amazing. So that's my recommendation for this episode. What about you? I'm going to recommend two things. Here's a book for you. The pun also rises. The humble pun revolutionized language,

changed history and made word play more than some antics by John Pollock. You might remember I recommended this back when we were doing one of the episodes on the dark crystal. So this is where I got some of the source material for what I was talking about. And this pointed me in the direction of a bunch of other stuff. The other thing I'm going to recommend is actually a mockumentary on Netflix called

the link on Earth, Kunk on Earth. Okay. To NK on Earth. Look, you're going to have you personally are going to have five days without your, uh, beloved next to you. Yeah. Watch one episode and, and, and tell me that you can stop. It's like potato chips.

It is so good. And really, you're going to fucking love it. Oh my god. Okay. It is hilarious. Um, so yeah, just,, just watch the first episode and then let me know when you're done with it all because that'll be that same night. Okay. But you're gonna check that out. But also the pun also rises. So okay. But yeah. All right.

Well, where do people find you if you want to be found? Well, let's see. I can be found at Mr. underscore bla-lock on tic-toc. I can be found as catfactor on Twitter for as long as Twitter doesn't emulate itself in a ball of blue feathery flame. And we collectively can be found on our website, www.geekhistorytime.com and on Twitter at Geek History Time. And of course, you have found us because you're listening to us right now. So whatever podcast service you have found us on, please take a moment to hit the subscribe button and give us the five star review that we have clearly earned

Yeah, so that's how but where can you be found sir? You could find me at the harmony one on Tiktok I do a lot of puns on there Let's you can find find me in West Sacramento, or not West Sacramento, Jesus Christ, like that town even exists. You can find me in Sacramento on March 3, April 7th and May 5th at Capitol Punishment,

Dolling Out puns with our crew at Luna's in Sacramento. So come check that out, bring your proof of vacs, bring some money by some merch, get some food, it's good times, and a lot of good puns. So that's where you can find me. All right. For Geek History of Time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock, and until next time, keep rolling 20s. Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock, and until next time, keep rolling 20s.