Example:
Person #1: Here, read this newspaper.
Person #2: I can’t. The font is too small.
Person #1: Hold it up to your head.
Person #2: Ah. Now it’s better.
Person #1: Why do you think they call them HEADLINES!
I have never before heard this pun in my life. Is my subconcious making a (crappy) attempt at being a comedian? Or is this just random neurons? What explains this?
::laughs:: Yeah, I get really lame puns in my dreams sometimes, too, so you’re not alone.
I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head, though.
The following story came from a dream. In the dream, I was sitting in the green room of some local talk show and telling this joke to the other guests; Robin Curtis and Parker Stevenson. I woke up laughing and wrote the story down before I could forget it:
MEMORANDA
The floor manager of Farnham’s Department Store’s floral department pored over the notes on his
desk in excruciating boredom. Most of the papers were interdepartmental memos, shuffled and reshuffled
until everyone knew the same tedious, useless facts. The manager, David Harken, read one from the
Sports Department on the sixth floor.
From:Sports Dept. Mgr.
To:All personnel
Re:In.Golf
And so it continued. The In.’, meaning in the store’s jargon an incident’, was a shoplifter who’d been caught trying to steal a putter by sliding it down his pants leg and stiffly walking out the door. The man had been picked up by Security and the store intended to make an example of him.
Granted, it was important; any report of shoplifting in Farnham’s merited attention. It was just that Harken was sick and tired of his job in this dreary old place. Even the floral department, normally a bright spot, had lost its appeal.
At any rate, it was six o’clock. The store was closing for the day and he wouldn’t have to think about it until opening tomorrow.
His secretary, Miss Brown, came timidly knocking at his door. “Mister Harken. I’m afraid we have a problem.”
Harken sighed to himself. Why did these things have to happen at closing? “What is it?”
“Two customers, sir. They refuse to leave the floor.”
With another sigh, Harken pushed himself out of his chair. “Where?”
“They’re in the carnation section. Security is asking if they should send up a few men.”
“Tell them never mind. I’ll take care of it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Harken knew the floral section like he knew the layout of his own apartment. He found the couple quickly enough, a man and woman. They were well-dressed and both in their late twenties, by the look of them.
Wearing his best manager’s smile, Harken walked up to them.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a syrupy tone of voice.
“No, we’re all right,” replied the man. He sniffed delicately at one of the myriad of carnations.
“Well,” said Harken uncertainly. “I’m afraid the store is closed.”
“Yes, we know,” said the woman. She looked at the moulding over the elevator. “Look, George, they haven’t changed since 1961.”
The man nodded. “So I see.”
Harken frowned. Neither of these two looked old enough to have even been born by '61. “I’m sorry, the store is closed.”
“Don’t worry,” said the man calmly. “We just wanted a second look, on the anniversary of the day we were killed here.”
That made Harken blink. “I beg your pardon.”
“On this day in 1961, a man and woman, my wife and I in our former lives, were shot accidentally during an attempted holdup.”
“I…see.” Harken’s mind was working furiously. The holdup, the only exciting moment in his early stockboy days, was a dim memory. “Well, haven’t you, ah, relived the moment enough?”
“Hmm? I guess so. Come along, Susan. We can’t keep the store open any longer.”
Wearing pleasant smiles, the two disappeared down an escalator. Harken was immensely relieved to see them go. He went back to his office.
The papers on his desk reminded him there was a necessary duty to perform. Even though he hated the idea of it, he would have to write a memo explaining why the closing had been delayed. Better to do it now and get it out of the way before tomorrow morning.
With his habitual sigh, Harken peeled a blank memo sheet off a pad on his desk and started to write:
From:Floral Dept. Mgr.
To:All personnel
Re:In.CarnationsI wish I had that sort of dream recollection.
I liked your stories–both of them. The thought of your subconscious intereting puns into your dreams just makes me giggle. Wish I had some to share of my own.
Much of what goes on in dreams are visual metaphors and kinds of puns. Freud wrote some good stuff about dreams over 100 years ago which talks about stuff like you describe.
Are you sure you guys aren’t sleeping with the tv on? Maybe these stories or jokes were being told by someone on television or the radio while you were sleeping and it became part of your dream. That has happend to me many times.
Good grief, Brian. What a memory you have!
About once every two or three weeks I’ll wake up in the middle of the night just cracking up. I will have told myself a joke and laugh so hard that my wife wakes up too. She just turns to me, giggles, and says “tell me.” I will and she busts up too. It’s just way too strange. I’m retarded with Ups Syndrome.
My of the time, I want to :rolleyes: at all of the New Age gibberish that some folks like to spew about “untapped potential” and the “unused portion of your brain”. However, I have had several similar dream experiences recently that lead me to believe that there is stuff going on up there that we normally can’t access.
In one dream, I opened a novel and read it just like any other book. I really loved the story. Turns out, that was because my brain was writing the book as I was reading it. If I could only remember it now.
The other night, I dreamed I opened an old phone book and started looking at the phone numbers. Problem was, the phone numbers were all people I knew in junior high school (15+ years ago) and I would never come close to remembering those old numbers if I was awake. I remembered a couple of them well enough to check after I woke up and they were indeed correct (Their parents still had that number and I looked it up on the web).
I started keeping a notepad by the bed because I have found that it almost impossible to remember dreams more than a few minutes after I wake up.
This is something that bugs me. I can read in my dreams. But, I keep seeing shows where someone realizes that their dreaming/in psychic suspended animation etc due to the fact that all writing is gibberish because ‘you can’t read in your dreams.’
Either, this is yet another ‘fact’ with no basis in reality or Shag and I are mutants.
Re-puns
Yep, bad puns, sight gags, etc. The problem is that a lot of these involve dream logic and make no sense when I examine the joke after waking.
EG I am befriended by a walking, talking book. He wants a name. I call him “Tomey”-both as a joke on the name Tommy and on the word Tome. Being a book with a smiley face arms, and legs, he looks very book-like: book-like=tome-y. It was hillarious in the dream. Awake, that pun isn’t even worth a groan.
I once dreamt that my brother was frustrated: he was trying to copy music files onto his computer, but it was a very old, pre-windows machine, and copying the files was really difficult.
I looked at him sympathetically and told him, “'Tis better to have dubbed in DOS than never to have dubbed at all.”
I have no idea where that came from.
Daniel
Brilliant.
Like Shagnasty, I also create in my dreams. But usually I’m writing music. Somehow I can dictate music really well in my dreams, much better than in real life.
I’m fairly sure that it’s accurate, because a couple of times I’ve woken up in the middle of the dream and written out the music that I saw. I’ll later check it, and the melody is what I was dreaming.
Also when I was studying French, I used to dream in French.
I’ve had a couple of instances where I’ll think of a really clever joke and wake up laughing, but I can’t remember the specifics now. But damn, am I funny! :wally
I’m sure I would have forgotten the above joke if I hadn’t waken up the instant the joke was over and dashed to my computer to type it out.
To be fair, some things that seem hysterical or brilliant in dreams don’t hold up in reality. I can (vaguely) remember being woken up suddenly by my mother and, still halfway in dream mode, asking her in a serious tone “But the stereo’s going to fly, isn’t it?” or something equally nonsensical.
You’re worried about Puns?
Try having a Tex Avery animated short porno going on in your head while you are sleeping!
The following is very very weird…and gross… and totally f-ed UP!
Highlights included: A boy needing to escape from the island (the main location of the dream) grabs a duck, proceeds to engage in doggystyle with the dcuk causing the duck to try to get away by flapping its wings and flying. The boy continues to hump the duck in order to keep it airborn. While flying over the ocean an octupus sees the boy and wants to eat it. It leaps out of the water with its vagina dentata gaping wide but misses the the boy and the fucked duck and plunges back into the water. It swooshes down to the bottom of the ocean where a whale is sleeping. The octupus’ mouth lands right on the whales penis. So of course the octupus starts sucking. The whale gets an erection which you can see pressing against the back of the octupus’ head.
A porky-pig style narrator pops up and says, “I guess that’s why they call him the 8th Wonder of the World!” Fade out.
I wake up!
It’s my HEAD!
Whoa… I killed that one didn’t I?
I’m printing out this thread and showing to everyone I know.
DaLovin’ Dj