The secret was to bang the rocks together, guys.
You aren’t alone
The meaning of that particuilar pun dawned on me as I was walking to class my first year in college. At lunch, I mentioned my delayed comprehension to a dormmate, but his glazed, nodding look on his nodding face made me suspect that he still didn’t get it. He insisted he did, but refused to dispel my doubts by explaining the joke. Instead, he called another dormmate over to hear the joke, and mocking him for not getting it (according to the ill-explained logic of “don’t get its” everywhere, one obviously can’t mock what one doesn’t understand. Nope, nope, nope. That never happens.)
Within an hour, there were 18 people at the table (actually, we’d moved to a larger table by then) – all claiming to get it, all refusing to explain it, and all striving futily to call over more people to be mocked.
Years later, at a dorm reunion, they all still insisted they got it – but this time, one of them was actually able to explain it. I knew I’d always liked her,
I’m a big Larry Niven fan, and his short story, bordered in black, had a pun in it. But I didn’t know it was a pun until last year.
I’m 30. I started really reading Niven when I was 14. I have probably read Bordered in Black 20 times.
The name of the new and experimental Hyperdrive ship is the Oversee (although it might be spelled Overcee).
Over.
C.
Faster than light.
I’m a moron.
Hmmm I always thought the obvious play on words for that title referred to thrift store shopping. Going hunting in a Good Will store is looking for treasures amongst other people’s junk. So on the Harvard University campus you have that professor who found a treasure in an unexpected place, the janitor. Will Hunting’s background of child abuse and abandonment made him a cast off but his talents and intelligence let him stand out.
I still don’t get this one. Is it a fire making tip, or some bizarre sexual thing?
Along the same lines: I only figured out what pearl jam is about ten seconds ago.
The answer is . . .
a firing making tip
Thanks for explaining the old Chicken joke. I always thought it was dim. Of course one crosses the road to get to the opposite side, I mean"DUH!" Which is the gist of many of the derivitive jokes with a macabre tint (the OTHER Side) now making more sense.
On that note, I am reminded to one of my express road trips to Carrolton, GA to sit by the side of my ill grandmother. I am driving like a bat out of hell (75mph) up I-75 and some where southof Atlanta I began noticing smushed chickens in the road. So after the first one and the recital of the standard joke to my husband (the penny do not drop :smack: ) I noticed two more. Then the answer to why we were seeing dead chickens on the highway----a truck packed with chicken crates full of chickens. He & I began a little improv riff about unlucky escaping chickens that was extremely hiralious even if I say so myself. (I think this was before the movie “Chicken Run”) But, due to the stress and worry about Grandma I cannot remember any of the lines.
Fire-making. A fuller version of the same quote:
Did the brick have a slice of lemon wrapped around it?
Atomic fission reaction, I think.
Regarding the chicken joke… it’s a kids joke. I’m of the opinion that since it’s a joke you want there to be a ‘funny’ answer, but the funny is in the obviousness of the answer. (is obviousness a word?) It’s like the joke “Why to firemen wear red suspenders?” To hold their pants up! You automatically key in on the word ‘red’, and don’t think of the obvious answer of why people wear suspenders. If you want a more macabre meaning to that joke, I’d say go with Spatial Rift 4’s version about the séance.
My first thought was that to duck means to get down, as in to duck under something.
I like lokij’s explanation of Good Will Hunting.
HUH?
Remind me to never read anything by Larry Niven–I already don’t get it.
I think the chicken joke is the most obvious one, but like the undertones the more macabre interp gives it.
This is only tangentially related, but for most of my life, I would watch locomotives go by and not understand why they had more than one engine. I was a Lil Engine That Could kid, and it seemed to me(even in my 20s) that another engine was really heavy and would just be dead weight. I mean, the boxcars could be empty, but even full they weighed less than a diesel locomotive…I finally asked my then fiance why the RR wasted energy by putting 2 or 3 engines in one train.
He still laughs about that.
I know I have had wordplay or language use incomprehensions, but time and memory are merciful right now.
c is scientific shorthand for the speed of light, as in E=mc^2.
Yeah, but he said “over C”. What’s that when it’s at home, eh?
A gold brick with a lemon wrapped around it?
I’m lost with just these allusions in the thread.
Off to tie my shoelaces together or something as producive and intelligent…
A Doper not intimately familiar with the works of Douglas Adams? Egads! 
Who he?
enlighten me,please.
I think it was the third or fourth time I was reading Harry Potter that Knockturn Alley hit me as ‘nocturnally.’ Neuron two fired soon after and I saw ‘diagonally.’