Where can I find a collection of puns?

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The SPT (The Shaggy Pun Test)
by Dan Judd

It happens to all of us.  You are sitting with a group of friends and
all of a sudden you are overwhelmed by the urge to tell a long somewhat
improbable story that ends with a pun.  Loud groans are made and you
are pelted with pillows, cushions, paper, garbage and anything else that
comes to hand.  Why does this happen, and why do certain people seem to
be more likely to be stricken with this dread disease?  Dubbed SPS
(Shaggy Pun Syndrome) by prominent psychologists, this illness has
baffled scientists.  What causes it - love of groaning sounds,
subconscious desires to be hit with loose objects in the room, or some
deeper cause such as becoming fixated at the silly phase?  Whatever the
cause, SPS can become a serious mental illness, and if unchecked in its
early phases, can result in minor injury (from beatings), major injury
(from worse beatings), and even death (from still worse beatings).

Don't despair, treatment is becoming available, ranging from oral
counseling, to gags, to tongue removal.  As an early warning device, the
SPT (Shaggy Pun Test) has been developed.  Based on the idea that
retention of puns can lead to SPS, the SPT is a collection of "punch
lines" from said stories.  Recognition of over a critical number can
indicate serious potential for SPS.  If caught early enough it is hoped
that the puns may be removed by surgical means.

To take the SPT merely make an x beside each punch line that you either
remember the story that goes with it, or that you can easily build a
story to fit.  Remember, a score of 100% is not necessarily desirable.

__ 1. The squire on the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the other
      two squires.
__ 2. two obese Patties, special Ross, Lester Cheese picking bunions on
      a Sesame Street bus!
__ 3. Moral: Let your pages do the walking through the yellow fingers.
__ 4. Moral: People who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones.
__ 5. Moral: Don't hatchet your counts before they chicken.
__ 6. Moral: If the foo shits, wear it.
__ 7. Super California Mystic Expert Halitosis
__ 8. I wouldn't send a knight out on a dog like this.
__ 9. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an
      open foyer.
__10. I left my harp in Sam Frank's Disco.
__11. Moral: A niche in time saves Stein.
__12. SOW ROPE, NATEY-O!
__13. Well, there's something about an aqua volvo, man...
__14. Moral: A washed pot never oils.
__15. Transporting mynas over sedate lions for immortal porpoises.
      [Other version of the punch line:]
      [Carrying gulls across a staid lion for immortal porpoises.]
__16. It's a long way to tip a Raree.
__17. Rudolph, the Red, knows rain, dear
__18. For making an obscene clone fall.
__19. Doctor, the thong is ended, but the malady lingers on!
__20. Where were you when the fit hit the Shan?
__21.  ...  They had left no tern unstoned.
__22.  ... abscess make the fart go HONDA!
__23. Silly Rabbi, kicks are for Trids!
__24. These are the 'times' that dry men's soles.
      [Alternate: These are the soles that time men's tries]
__25. and he thus became the first chicken to catch a tory.
__26. The next day, the headline in the paper read "Peter Viper wrecks a
      truck of pickled Steppers".
__27. Ike's Aunt gets nose hat is fact, son
__28. Dee, who flaps last, flaps left
__29. That's the beer that made Mel Famie walk us.
__30. the first time a reign was called on account of the game.
__31. Opporknockity tunes but once.
      [Alternate: O'Pernokkety tunes but once.]
__32. Came the reply, "That was no laser--that was my knife!"
__33. Hugh, and only Hugh, can prevent florist friars!
__34. Stop right where you are, boyfoot bear with teak of Chan!
__35. A gritty pearl is Michael, LLD.
__36. Which just goes to show that, a Benny shaved is a Benny urned.
__37. Pardon me Roy, is that the cat who chewed your new shoes?
__38. We have come to seize your berries, not to appraise them.
__39. When you're out of slits, you're out of pier!
__40. We can't have archaic and edict, too.
__41. Contributing to the delinquency of a miner!
__42. I'm booking over that 4 clove leaver, though I've overcooked
      before!
__43. Knick Knack, Patty Wack.  Give the frog a loan.
__44. Another case where the spirit was willing but the flush was weak.
__45. Time's fun when your having flies
__46. A fiery 'stead with the spite of Leed, A clout of dust, And a
      hearty 'Buy old Silver'
__47. It's a rambling rack from George the Turk with an elephant
      engineer!
__48. All of Hing's courses and all of Ming's ken couldn't get gum tea
      to feather a hen.
__49. MORAL: Let a swine be your gorilla in a grainy, grainy bay.  And
      if your Swede decries, just tell her that a swine will always
      pay...
__50. ... stilling two birds with one's cone.
__51. General Minh prefer bronze.
__52. With fronds like these, who needs anemones?
__53. Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!
__54. Better Nate than lever.
__55. The hills are alive with the hounds of Munich.
__56. He who has a Tate's is lost.
__57. Arti chokes 3 for a dollar at local market.
__58. MORAL: A stolen roan gathers no moose
__59. ... but actually mah hammered alley is really cashews clay.
__60. but of course, the Czech is always in the male.
__61. the star mangled spanner.
__62. See! even adders can multiply on a log table
__63. MORAL: You can't have your kayak and heat it too.
__64. You fools! we have ways to make you tock!
__65. I don't know, but his face sure rings a bell
__66. No, I'm a frayed knot.
__67. Because Herman the German was used to hard ships.
__68. I don't know, but he's a dead ringer for his brother.
__69. You're thor!!! I can't even thit!!
__70. She is just suffering from pre-minstrel tension.
__71. Yeast is yeast, and nest is next and never the Maine shall tweet.

Scoring:
   0 - 10  No danger (healthy)
  11 - 25  Minor SPS (recommend therapy)
  26 - 40  Moderate SPS (recommend gag)
  41 - 52  Punster -- major SPS (recommend tongue removal)
  53 - 71  Paronomasiac [Editor: spelled "Paronomisiac" in the original]
           -- extreme SPS (recommend lobotomy)

-- Dan Judd, forwarded by Rebecca Jordan <rjj@theory.lcs.mit.edu> to
   the npl-folk list, January 1999

[ Editor: a "Keats and Chapman" story (a shaggy-dog story ending in a
pun), which its author found in his _Parergon Papers_ 2 (1977): ]

Keats and Chapman attended a seminar in Adelaide on intergalactic frogs,
and having nothing better to do when the auction of first-edition toads
and cruddy tadzines came on, accepted an invitation to go for a drive
through the hills with Rotsler and the Bangsunds.  There was a lot of
good-natured banter about the dullness of the seminar and the
incompetence of its organizers, about waiting around for hours for the
elevators (or lifts, as these Australians called them) and then finding
that the hotel didn't even have any, about skinny-dipping in the pond
with those luscious femfraugleins ('I don't know what you see in us,'
said Sally, coyly, reminding the men that she was still there and had
fantasies of her own), about the lecturer in applied amphibiology with
no apparent sense of humour who seemed to speak only in webbed-footnotes
- and about all the pleasant and mildly irritating things that go on at
any such gathering.

It was a mild, slightly overcast sort of day, with the chance of snow or
fog at Stirling, but there is always that chance at Stirling, even in
high summer, and this day was in mid-winter, the seminar organizers
having gone to some trouble to arrange this.

'If you look back,' said Bangsund, 'you can see the Mile End railway
yards and other beauties of Adelaide.'

'You watch your bloody driving!' said Sally, then blushed, but Keats was
pretending to be asleep and Chapman was apparently absorbed in the fine
detail of the Renault's interior appointments, and Rotsler kindly
assumed the look of a man who is used to bad language and heard
everything.

'I never look back,' Rotsler said.

Assuming the look of a man who can easily concentrate on driving and
talking at the same time, Bangsund said, 'This little place up ahead is
called Eagle On The Hill, and I've never been able to find out why.'  He
then lurched into a prepared speech, which Sally had heard before, about
the possibility that it had something to do with the Latin word for
church - ecclesia - ('Greek,' murmured Chapman), which was often
corrupted in English place-names to 'eagles'.

'Actually,' said Rotsler, 'it really does have something to do with an
eagle on a hill.  Back in 1843 when Tom (later Sir Thomas) Fitch was
opening up this area, laying the foundations for his ruthless rise to
power as absolute dictator of the timber trade - and eventually, as you
well know, Premier of South Australia five times, but that was after he
had got into shipping and banking, of course, and thereby become
respectable in the eyes of the Buffalo crowd (who had only arrived here
three years before him - but, my! they were the First Settlers, and they
really thought they were something special!) - one day, probably a day
much like this, since it was about this time of year and there was fog
and snow just over the hill, Fitch was out blazing a bit of a track with
his friend Jack Norton (actually the Honourable John Eardley-Norton,
though Fitch did not know that at the time, later Lord Thornbury), and
suddenly Fitch caught sight of something, and he stopped what he was
doing, and he said "Damn my eyes, Jack! if that's not an eagle over
there on that hill!"  Norton suggested that it might be nothing more
than a trick of the light - perhaps a bird-shaped rock or something like
that - but Fitch was insistent.  "It's an eagle, dammit!" he said.  By a
pretty natural process that place became known as "Fitch's Eagle On The
Hill", and that's all there is to it!'

For a moment there was silence, except for the well-mannered ticking of
the Renault's clock, then Bangsund said 'You just made that up Bill.'
'Why sure I did!' said Rotsler, and chuckled.  The three passengers in
the back seat joined in the laughter, and from that moment on all five
set about constructing an alternate ('Alternative,' murmured Keats)
history of South Australia, largely based on the exploits and dirty
deals of Fitch, Norton and a shadowy figure named Lord Garth.  When they
reached Hahndorf, they all adopted German accents and told anecdotes of
the much revered and entirely fictitious Pastor Nitschke, who by faith
alone almost succeeded in having South Australia annexed as a colony by
Prussia.  At Marble Hill, surveying the ruins of the old Governors'
summer residence, their imagination soared as they vied with each other
in explaining the origin of this strange and beautiful place.

'It's just too much!' said Bangsund, chuckling despite his urgent need
for a gentlemen's toilet as the party headed back down the freeway.  'I
never thought this seminar - what's it called again? -'  'A-Con,' said
Sally.  '- would turn out to be such fun!'  'Your turn, I think,' said
Keats to Chapman, and Chapman said, 'From little A-Cons great hoaxes
grow!' and wet his pants laughing, again.

Later comment on the above:

Some readers have taken me to task for an apparent
spatio-chronological inaccuracy in the second issue of these papers,
namely my account of a visit by John Keats and George Chapman to
Adelaide.  Keats (I am told) died fifteen years before the colony of
South Australia lurched into existence, and Chapman died 161 years
before Keats was born.  There is just no accounting for the
literal-mindedness of some people, and there are times when I wonder
whether they've ever read science fiction or Ben Jonson in their lives.
Ben Jonson?  Yes, sir, immortal author of Timber: or, Discoveries, in
which (as most of my readers will not need reminding) he said: 'For to
many things a man should owe but a temporary beliefe, and a suspension
of his owne Judgement, not an absolute resignation of himselfe, or a
perpetuall captivity.'  A wise saying, that, and one engraved on the
hearts of politicians and sf readers everywhere.

But as it happens, I have good authority for Keats's being in Adelaide,
so there!

    . . . the view over the plains, with Adelaide in the
    middle-distance, and the Gulf in the background, is, according to
    the poet Keats, "a joy for ever".
    - Cyclopedia of South Australia (1907), vol.1, p.498

Besides, Rotsler was with us at the time.  Frankly, I find it harder to
believe that Bill Rotsler ever visited Adelaide.  Probably he does, too.

-- John Bangsund <bangsund@g130.aone.net.au>, Wordplay-L, December 1996