Monday, August 12, 2013

Snarktor resnarktus



Wipe the smirk from your face, dear reader, stifle the groan in your throat … yes, we are punning today and the punnee is a legal suit and the punnor is a gentleman’s suit, size 42.

Of course, you already know that puns are the bittersweet linguistic memory of that long-ago time when any word meant anything, and some of ‘em meant as much as six different things before breakfast.

In those prelapsarian times when language was first evolving from the sonic ooze of grunts and snorts into more upright, ambulatory fricatives and uvular trills, the assignment of one particular sound to one particular object was a slapdash, fritter-my-wig sort of business. In truth, we might say that once upon a time all words were puns and Nonsense reigned upon the land.

All of this came to a sticky end with the invention of reeling and writhing, as I’m sure you’ve heard before. Equipped with such skills, even circus and theater folk could interpret the written marx of contract law and stymie the Pig and his legal Snark, all by invoking the Sanity Clause.

What’s this, the Judge sputters! Sanity Clause? You can’t fool me, there ain’t no Sanity Clause! Exactly, milord, 'tis the perfect Christmas Alibi, the Snark replies!

6 comments:

  1. I tried a whole lot of puns to see if any of them would make anybody laugh - but no pun in ten did!

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  2. Yow! Good one, Doug. There are those sourpusses who look down their noses at puns, because THEY CANNOT MAKE THEM.

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  3. I'll second that! Doug is the Indispensable Snark Hunter. And I believe he's from Guildford, which is the Snarkic Omphalos.

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  4. Impressive … no wonder that proto-hipster Lewis Carroll doug Guildford so …

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