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Every office has a Charlie. Our office's Charlie happened to named Charlie (Garman). The thing about Charlies is that they make puns which are merely phonemic and not morphemic, even when the terms have been explained to them. The other thing is that the puns are typically so forgettable that one is hard-pressed to come up with examples even if one lacks a good repressery.
One day, before 'the new Multics editor' had yet been given a name, I stuck my head into Charlie's cage and said
I know. We'll call your new editor Perry_White. [pron. "Perry underscore White", of course]
Huh?
Well, he WAS the Editor of the Daily Planet.
Huh?
You know. Clark Kent's boss.
Huh?
Come on, Charlie. I know you spent your deformative years outside the country, but surely you've heard of the Superman comics, or at least the television show.
Oh. I thought you said periWIG.
Now, there, Charlie, is the perfect example of your preference for the merely phonemic over the morphemic, at last: What you just said was full of sound, and furry, signifying nothing.
(It is in the Annals as the Pun of the Year for 1967, but who knows, it might have been '66 or '68 [though probably not the latter, since I THINK that was the year of Karolyn's Going-Away Party].)
Karolyn Martin was the second Lord Mountbatten of Multics, since she succeeded Glenda Schroeder as leader of the commands group and hence was the next Commando-in-Chief. (A little WW II humour, for the young.) She was quite well regarded, and her Going Away Luncheon at the Faculty Club lasted quite a while. Finally, the waitress (as they were called in 1968, when this took place as I recall, although now she'd be the meal attendant) came by and said 'Very last pot of coffee. Anybody want ANOTHER cup?' I did, and asked if there were by any chance any cream left. She said there wasn't. 'Perhaps some milk, then?' 'Not even any milk,' she answered, 'it's late, you know.' 'Ah, well,' I replied, 'that WOULD have been something to cheer about: cafe' ole'.'
(There are those who contend it wasn't truly tri-lingual. I think it was ... although the PotY for '93 WAS even less in question as to its triune nature.)
We (several senior members of the then-Internet Research Group, including Jon Postel, Steve Kent, and others, plus at least one junior member) were in a, or perhaps the, Chinese restaurant in Great Malvern, England. The waiter had difficulty grasping our desire for n instances of menu item m, and k instances of item j. When he left the table, the, or perhaps a, junior member expressed surprise that with the waiter's ethnic background he would have trouble with mathematics. I opined that it was in fact our own fault, since we hadn't given it to him in Abacus Normal Form.
The ingrates at the table all went stony-faced, but even though the overt applause of the 86 and 92 PotYs was more gratifying, that was clearly it for 1984.
I was asked to give a talk at Edinburgh University, since I was going to be in the neighborhood to do field work in my real area of research interest, what we call single malt Scotch and what they call malt whisky. Having mentioned why I was around at the start of the talk, I was delighted to be invited to take a dram afterwards by a rather senior- looking gent, up in his office, which turned out to be quite a posh one, making me assume he was quite senior. Since he had an appointment in a few minutes and I was supposed to go off to the pub with my local cohorts, we didn't even take time to sit, just exchanged a few pleasantries about our respective books and a thought or two about the particular malt whisky he'd happened to have in his desk. At the pub, I mentioned the incident to the gang and was informed that my host had been their new Professor of Computer Science, which, I might not know, was a relatively more distinguished rank there than in the States. I replied that I had known that, but was pleased with the information anyway since it would make the event all the more memorable. Then I added that I had just realized I'd have had to remember it forever anyway, since it was, after all, the first talk I'd ever given that had received a standing libation.
Promptly acclaimed Pun of the Year for 1986, and Leading Contender for Pun of the Decade.
-- Old Louis Martini used to complain that a 10 year-old Zinfandel tasted too much like claret.
-- In civilized communities, I'd think that would be a good thing to do.
-- Well, you know Californians take their wine very young.
-- Aha. Statutory grape.
(Billy and Mike at the WoW.)
-- Don't encourage him!
(Billy, during the ensuing applause.)
Heh, heh.
[WoW = Wine of the Week, an ISI Friday evening custom of long standing]
{ ISI = ISI.edu, the USC.edu's School of Engineering's Information Sciences Institute, one of several key Internet research organizations, now homed in ISI's Postel Center for Experimental Networking postel.org named for longtime ISI ARPA/Internet organizer Jon Postel. ISI is not on USC main campus but down in Marina del Rey, about 3 miles from Mike's house in Westchester, LA County, so very convenient for end of week schmoozing with other Old Network Boys there. - Ed. }
So there was Our Billy on the futon in the shack out back of Tommy's house, several sheets to the wind but still disputing Pete's description of the 'aspects' ( ~ tenses) of the Hopi language. Moral: he's ALWAYS prone to argue.
So there I was, replying to a msg about the Multics protection rings by agreeing that they weren't a panacea and going on to point out that in the earliest design documents I'd tried to point that out myself, when it occurred to me to conjecture that perhaps the reason so many people thought rings were 'magical' had to do with the widespread popularity of Tolkien. And while proofreading, I had the Irresistable Afterthought that all I'd said went to prove that while others might have overpraised rings, I never got into the hobbit. But the writer of the original msg somewhat missed my point, so I had answer him, by the end of which I realized that I should repeat my original assurance that I hadn't had the pun-chline in mind when I sat down to type, thus making it a clear case of Art True Vay.
Later still, I realized that I had finally commited another tri-lingual pun.
During a cookout at Billy's place, Pete the Spy mentioned to a newcomer that it was a shame Billy hadn't had time to get salad fixings since his dressings were quite extraordinary, being typically pH 2. "That's true," I observed, "there's nothing half-acid about Our Billy's salad dressings."
I went to a talk the other day about 'networking' an orchestra. As might be expected, synchronization is the major problem, and there are several schools of thought as to how to achieve it, each with fairly fervent, rather "religious" adherants. Much of the talk, then, amounted to views of various aural sects' acts.
[hey, there were some during the intervening yrs., but i managed to forget 'em]
We went to Bruno's Restaurant Friday night, for a "Last Supper", since it's closing at the end of next week and had been a long-time favorite dining spot. It'd actually already been closed for a couple of years after its founder died, but then one of the children/heirs decided to re-open it; unfortunately, after only a couple or three years of being re-opened, he got an offer that was too good to turn down from a "non-denominational Christian church" of some sort (per our waiter, when asked for the party line on the re-closing), which apparently liked both the location and the building to a rather expensive extent. Somebody mentioned that he'd heard that the only change which would be made in converting to a church was to take out the 50' bar. I was disappointed when nobody picked up on my comment that they wouldn't even have to do that if they were Fosterites. After the apparently obscure literary reference (which I'd naively expected 8 or 9 of the 12 at the table to recognize) had been glossed, somebody else observed that maybe they should leave the bar in place after all and perhaps make enough money off it to eliminate the need for collection plates. So naturally I pointed out that that would give a whole new shade of meaning to the notion of a no-Host bar....
Old friend Bill had sent me a bit of e-humor about who reads various newspapers (WSJ is read by the people who run the country, NYT by people who think they ought to run the country, etc.) which reminded me of my old corollary to
Time is for people who can't think
Life is for people who can't read
which was that
Fortune is for people who can afford not to do either
His reply included
Life is for people who can't read
Then who was LOOK for?
to which I immediately rejoined
People who weren't Luce-id.
{ Confession: This "Bill" refers to your humble editor and executor for The Literary Estate; the other Billy references are someone on the West Coast. -- wdr, Ed. }
When the Boston Celtics' franchise-record losing streak reached 15 games, I e-asked a friend who still lives back in the Real World whether there had been any local clamor for (General Manager) Danny Ainge's head, perhaps suppressed by the national "media" for fear the locals would take it literally, or if it was the case that everybody there realized nanosurgical techniques hadn't yet evolved to the point of removing such an item.
He replied "I assumed they couldn't call for his head to be removed because, in severe cases of cranorectal impaction, the colonscope's path is blocked by the shoulders."
To which I of course replied "Shouldn't be that. Chainsaw from armpit to armpit would do the trick. Egad! I've invented oxterschism."
{ "Real World" meaning Boston/Cambridge after MAP's return to "Lotosland" or "Californicatia". - Ed. }
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© M A Padlipsky 1967-2009; © Literary Estate of M A Padlipsky 2011, 2021