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Tomás Bjartur's avatar

How did I kindle the attention of my beloved, whom I met on a facebook group for seafood appreciators? I gave her quite the poke.

Shankar Sivarajan's avatar

Is that a quadruple? Or is there a fifth I'm missing?

Linch's avatar

I only see three (FB poke, the dish, the innuendo)

Shankar Sivarajan's avatar

I believe the comment originally said "lighting a fire in the heart of my beloved," (or something like that; this is from memory since I can't read it anymore) which I interpreted to be phrased like that to evoke food poisoning – or at least severe indigestion – from bad fish.

Linch's avatar

sure but it doesn't let you double up on "poke"

Shankar Sivarajan's avatar

Explanations:

1. "my way or the high way": Idiomatic, literal (the I-90), and "high" meaning intoxicated.

2. "pointless": prohibition of the gesture, without keeping score, devoid of purpose, and peculiar design of the swords.

3. "priors": Bayesian term-of-art for beliefs before observing any new data, criminal record of past convictions, and head of some kind of monastery.

Linch's avatar
1dEdited

2 and 3 are perfect,

#1 is nearly there but should keep in mind that the homeless shelter part isn't incidental to the joke.

Also part of the humor is that "high way" in the intoxicated sense wasn't just supposed to be a "lol pun" but more like "way" as in a way of life.

Shankar Sivarajan's avatar

Yes, I got that, but once you read "high" as "intoxicated," I think that's the natural reading of "way" so not worth emphasizing.

Is the part I'm missing that there are often homeless encampments on the sides of freeways? I would have thought that encompassed by the "literal" reading.

EDIT: Oh! is there a particular such encampment on the I-90 that is well-known?

Linch's avatar
1dEdited

No not a specific encampment, I was thinking a generic one, so the command is read "it's my way or you gotta sleep under the high way" or alternatively "it's my way or the high way", treating it as just a legitimate way of life as any other/the "high road"

Shankar Sivarajan's avatar

You might enjoy "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear."

> And he said as he hastened to put out the cat, the wine, his cigar, and the lamps...

> She lowered her standards by raising her glass, her courage, her eyes and his hopes...

> When he asked 'What in heaven?' she made no reply, up her mind, and a dash for the door."

Not quite the same thing, but I like the zeugma.

Linch's avatar

Thanks! Reminds me of one of my favorite jokes from high school, that went something like:

"I see," said the blind man to his deaf wife, who picked up the hammer and saw.

Tomás Bjartur's avatar

Let me get this straight. Your meathead son (who's too young to be a Zoomer) is being crushed on by a fundamentalist Christian fanfic writer who makes a living buying oil futures from people who can't take custody - and has a side hustle of prospecting for uranium ore and another where she writes for a well-known counter-cultural financial website and still another: computer programming - as she's finishing the first, probably unstable, version of an otome game based on one of her fanfics?

"Yes. But she also loves looking for the brightest star in a constellation, inducing particular brain states by composing music with binaural beats, and trying to recover the first section of her torn Greek dictionary."

"What's her favourite of those activities?"

"Seeking Alpha"

Anonymous Dude's avatar

Dang some of these are good.

Tomás Bjartur's avatar

I attempted to sell my functional-sailboat microbrewery in 1965. The prospective buyer (a young author) got cold feet, on account of a disagreeable draft.

Michael Plymouth's avatar

Why didn’t you bet that the horse would smile?

Because his face was too long

Did I do it? Triple entendre?

Paulin's avatar

I remembered something about Ulysses and checked with Claude

"Mètis" means nobody but it also means "smart"

Shankar Sivarajan's avatar

That's "Outis," not "Metis".

Paulin's avatar

Here's Claude's full answer

Yes, there’s a second, more subtle pun in ancient Greek.

Odysseus says his name is Οὖτις (Outis = “Nobody”). But in Greek, when you shift to certain grammatical constructions (conditional, subjunctive), the negative form changes: οὔτις becomes μήτις.

Now, μῆτις (mêtis) means “cunning, practical intelligence” — and this is precisely Odysseus’s defining trait. He’s often called πολύμητις (polymetis, “of many wiles”).

So when Polyphemus screams to the other Cyclopes something like “μήτις blinded me by trickery!”, they hear “nobody blinded me,” but to the Greek audience there’s also the echo of “it’s cunning that blinded me” — which is literally true.

It’s a two-layered pun:

1. Narrative level: the Cyclopes don’t come to help

2. Thematic level: Homer underscores that it’s Odysseus’s μῆτις, his cunning, that triumphs over the Cyclops’s brute strength​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Shankar Sivarajan's avatar

Huh, that IS cool. Thanks!

Anonymous Dude's avatar

I knew they'd stick an extra pun in there! You're an oral poet, how can you not?

Shankar Sivarajan's avatar

The weary captain collapsed under the weight of his final charge.

(Needs a little more work, but I think that's four.)

Anonymous Dude's avatar

I think it would be OK among rationalists to explain your jokes.

Also, it makes sense rap would have a lot of wordplay, it's just the words after all; other forms of music have instruments and so on to worry about.

So I was trying to think of triple entendres myself for a while, and in my life only ever came out with one, which was next to useless as it required some background knowledge.

So in the 1967 British TV show 'The Prisoner', Patrick McGoohan (the former Secret Agent Man) tries to resign but is abducted to a strange place called the Village, where everyone is referred to by a number (he's No. 6) and ruled over (apparently) by No. 2, with the identity of No. 1 being a mystery.

Anyway, in the finale (which is hallucinatory and weird and feels like it was written by Grant Morrison), in the process of trying to escape, he comes face-to-face with No. 1 and pulls of the mask, only to reveal...it's his face.

So he's looking out for No. 1: in terms of looking out for his interests to escape, in terms of looking for the mysterious master of the Village, and... turns out he *is* #1 in some weird sense, so the last two senses are the same. Sort of.

Doubled double entendre? I dunno.

As for romance...on that of which I cannot speak, I must remain silent.

tup99's avatar

The album “12 Inches of Snow” by Snow

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Shankar Sivarajan's avatar

Swimmer might be better than pugilist.