I know, I know, you all probably thought Wordplay Wednesday was dead and gone, a relic of a bygone era (last month.) But alas, if you did, you were wrong. 

For this Wednesday, our date with clever diction will be kept! 

Well, on this Welcome-back Wordplay Wednesday, I thought it would be fun to highlight a common canvas of cleverness: The Witty Tee. (Or if you prefer, Wit-Tee-Shirt  works, too.) 

Plenty of online shops have popped up in recent years to cater to our inherent desire to wear t-shirts that make people think we think we're funny. But who has time to go through all those designs and find the best, most punny shirts?

Well, luckily for you, apparently I do.

That's right, just for you, I've scoured through some of the most popular tee-shirt shops online, looking for designs that in some way used wordplay to elicit the requisite chuckles (or groans.)  In the interest of keeping it G-rated, I also filtered out quite a few models (including a few entire sites that were decidedly NSFW.) 

The fruits of my labour? They're all organized nice-like in the slideshow below, complete with my own not-nearly-as-funny-as-the-shirt commentary. Enjoy! 

[By the way, if you're reading this in a feed reader, you'll most likely have to click through to the site to see the slideshow. Sorry! But it'll be worth it, I promise.]

[All the shirts in this show can be bought from Busted Tees (the vast majority), Threadless and CafePress. None of the above are affiliate links. The show itself was made using the very cool Slide.com.]

Also, Jon Jackson left a comment below with a link to his own little t-shirt boutique called Crossty.com.

There are some excellent punny shirts on his site, so check it out! Twitter fans might also like this one.  

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So, dear readers, what did you think? Good ones or groaners? Let us know in the comments. 

Or do you have a favourite funny tee shirt that I didn't come across? If so, drop a link in the comments and let us join in on the fun!

Oh and here's another fun game we can play, as well: If you were going to design your own hilarious tee, what would it say?

I would probably go with: "Treehuggers are Sappy."  (Busted Tees, call me.)

Ok, your turn.

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UPDATE JUL 31/08:

I've been testing out Plurk today and so far, the discussion has been really lively. There have been some great witty tee shirt suggestions from fellow plurkers on the threads about this post over there, too. You can check them out here and here.

On Sunday, the world lost one of its greatest comedians and one of the few who truly made a name for himself with his clever, witty humour: George Carlin passed away at the age of 71. 

Sure, the man's routines may have been crass and even obscene at times, but alongside all the shock-and-awe, he also demonstrated an unparalleled love for the English language in his monologues. In fact, George loved words so much that he recently described himself as a writer who performed his own material, instead of the other way around. (Hat tip to Copyblogger for linking to that great final interview.)

Truly a master of brevity and wit, if George had graced our recent TwitWit contest with an entry, you can bet he would have been a top contender. As a matter of fact, one of the twin double entendres in Dave's winning entry was famously uttered by Carlin, who once asked if there was another word for synonym. 

For this edition of Wordplay Wednesday, I would like to honour the memory of this departed comedic great by sharing some of his all-time cleverest barbs, according to yours truly. (The one in the title wasn't a bad place to start, either.)

So without further ado, here are my 25 favourite Carlin quips, in alphabetical order (for order's sake):

1.  "I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence? 
   
   


2.  Atheism is a non-prophet organization. 
   
   


3.  Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. 
   
   


4.  Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
   
   


5.  George Washington’s brother, Lawrence, was the Uncle of Our Country. 
   
   


6. Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car."
   
   


7. Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.
   
   


8. How is it possible to have a civil war?
   
   


9. I knew a transsexual guy whose only ambition is to eat, drink, and be Mary.
   
   


10. I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?
    
    


11. If a deaf person swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?
    
    


12. If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?
    
    


13. If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?
    
    


14. If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown, too?
    
    


15. If the "black box" flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn't the whole airplane made out of that stuff?
    
    


16. If the #2 pencil is the most popular, why is it still #2? 
    
    


17. Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice"?
    
    


18. One can never know for sure what a deserted area looks like. 
    
    


19. So far, this is the oldest I’ve been.
    
    


20. What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
    
    


21. What was the best thing before sliced bread?
    
    


22. When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say?
    
    


23. Why do croutons come in airtight packages? It's just stale bread to begin with.
    
    


24. Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?
    
    


25. Why is there an expiration date on sour cream?
    
    

Which one is your favourite? Or did I leave out your Carlin-ism of choice? Let me know in the comments.

By the way, I've tried to the best of my ability to verify that these are all truly things George said, although that is quite a difficult task. If you spot an error, please let me know. Imagine that- to be so famous that people just start ascribing witty sayings to you that you never even said...

Rest in Peace George and thanks for all the laughs. 

Well it is 7PM EST and that means that our Twitter Wit Contest is officially over. A big thank you to all those who entered, donated prizes and promoted the contest over the past two weeks.



I know this is going to be a difficult decision for our brave judges to make. We will announce the winner of the $350 prize package on Friday. If you don't want to miss the announcement, you can get free updates by email or RSS just by clicking here.

If you're in the market for a bad pun tee shirt with attitude (who isn't?), you can buy this one on Threadless. 





You didn't think I forgot about your favourite weekly theme post, did you? Well of course I didn't - how could I let such a pundamental segment slip my mind?



WORDPLAY WEDNESDAY NUMBER 2



This week, it is a reader contribution three-fer, plus a bonus fourth gem I came across in my web travels.



The first reader-suggested pun , you've already read! That genius bit in the title there, I wish I could take credit for, but I can't. It is loosely adapted from this very clever and apropos comment Jacqueline left on last week's post:

It's unfortunate you are only gracing your blog with puns on Wednesdays. As the saying goes "seven days without puns makes one weak." [See the original comment page here.]

Kudos and thanks for sharing!



Another reader, Sarah Jo Austin (her blog here) suggested a couple other nuggets, one an original real-life quip and the other a well-crafted pun, some variation of which I have seen on the web before, but that is still good. Both are worth a mention here. To paraphrase her contributions:

1) At a Bible study, my friend Paul was complaining that he hated shaving and wished there was a way to shave once and never shave again, to which I promptly replied, "You mean, like, once shaved, always shaved?"

[Editor's note, if you didn't get that one, see my comment on the comments page for an explanation.]

2) A group of monks in Los Angeles started selling flowers in upper-class neighborhoods to raise money for the poor. They knocked on the door of Hugh Hefner, who did not appreciate the canvassing in his neighborhood, regardless of their agenda. So he called his lawyer, who went to city hall and the council soon passed a law against selling flowers door to door. The moral of the story: only Hugh can prevent florist friars. 

And, as promised, a bonus fourth one for you. Gadget blog Gizmodo ran a story last Friday about so-called grass photography. From the post:

By placing a "canvas" of grass in a darkroom and shining light on it that first passes through a film negative, artist/scientists have been able to tweak the chlorophyll levels of blades of grass and create living photographs. [Ed note: you can see examples of the phenomenon over on the Giz post.]

And witty commenter Bosskev (whose group blog about Mac film-making is here) chimed in with our bonus pun of the week:

So, adapting photosynthesis for, um, photo synthesis? [Skip right to the comment with this link.]

And th-th-th-that's all for this week folks - thank you to the readers who submitted their best material, and thanks to Bosskev for giving me permission to quote his quip here, too.









Now just like last week, if you have a great piece of word play that you're just dying to share, let's hear it in the comments and you may get included in next week's segment. (The honour, I know!)

As far as I am concerned, there are few things in life better than a clever pun. Some may call it cheesy humour (especially the above cartoon, which I came across here) and some may groan in disgust at the best plays on words, but for me, the mixture of intelligence and wit that produces a truly good pun simply can't be beaten.

And so it is with great excitement that I introduce to you a new weekly segment on Smithereens: Wordplay Wednesdays (well it was either that or Monday Pun Day...) Be sure to tune in every humpday to read the best examples of humourous word wizardry that I can track down. 

Or if you're a party pooper who calls all puns "bad jokes" (the irreverence!), then you may want to just ignore my blog midweek. 

WORDPLAY WEDNESDAY NUMBER 1

The best puns, in my opinion, are the spur-of-the-moment clever quips that take advantage of real life circumstances and consider the context in which they are  being spoken. By definition these can't be forced or overdone - they are just the right words, said at the right time, in the right tone of voice. 

To demonstrate what I mean; I personally received the perfect setup for a context-relevant zinger just a week or so ago. At a meeting of the Young Construction Executives Club (a subcommittee of the Ottawa Construction Association), we were discussing a possible volunteering opportunity for our members with the local Habitat for Humanity Chapter. 

"They are going to be holding a Women's Build this summer," the chairman said, "and will require a few industry professionals on each site to show the volunteers how to do things like install drywall."

"So what you're saying," I replied, "Is that they are on the lookout for strapping young men?"

Now if you knew that nailing a piece of wood across two studs to support a drywall slab is called "strapping", you would hopefully appreciate the double entendre, and given the context of that meeting, everyone in the room did. 

Of course, if you didn't know that, or if you simply hate puns, you probably just rolled your eyes so far back into your head that they may be gone for good. (And if it's the latter, I have to ask, why are you still reading... a sucker for pun-ishment?)

Of course, not every good pun is blurted out in real-time (and many bad ones are!), there are many clever lines that people presumably just thought of and wrote down, and then told someone who liked it, who told someone else... and so on and so forth until they trickled down to the lowly writer of Smithereens. 

So I guess today is a Bonus Wordplay Wednesday, because I'm going to give you a second pun (well, fourth really, if you count the mice and the sucker-punch.)It is one of the latter types and is probably my favourite of all time. I don't know who made it up or where I first read it, but whoever did should be given a Medal of Honour for Brave Wit.

A writer hears about a contest to find the Best Pun in the World. He really wanted to win, so he painfully crafted not just one, but ten separate puns, and submitted them all to increase his odds. He thought for sure that with so many entries, at least one of his would win, but alas, in the end, no pun in ten did.  (Cue rimshot)

What about you - Think you've got  a better groaner than that? Well let me know in the comments! The best submission (ie: the one that makes me laugh the hardest) will make it into next week's segment. Until then!