Memetime's Return

[eric_the_right]

Okay consider yourself warned:

The teen-aged son of a local pharmicist was arrested after neighbors reported
him wandering down the beach, throwing large quantities of psychotropic pills
into the air at the birds. When taken into custody, his only comment was that he
wanted to "leave no tern unstoned."

I wonder how long this will take...

Comments

[crusherdisciple]

But the penguins are alright, right?

[bald_ruminant]

That's soooo old...I've been using that one since I was 6. Think I learned it from my dad.

Try this one on:

Patricia Wax works as a loan officer in a bank. One day, a frog comes in and says he wants to apply for a home improvement loan to add an addition onto his lilypad. Ms. Wax, operating on automatic, asks what he has for collateral. The frog puts a doodad on the desk. She has no idea what this thing is, and decides to consult her manager. The manager looks at the thingamabob and tells her, "It's a knick-knack, Pattie Wax. Give the frog a loan."

[eric_the_right]

Seriously, Kevin, when is the earliest that you can remember ever hearing my terrible pun?

I'm doing some VERY subjective research on this after finishing "Cryptonomicon" and coming across the reference to "F2F" protocol...a phrase that a couple of _THOUGHT_ we'd come up with about 10 years ago...

[bald_ruminant]

My father told the joke to my uncle (mother's kid brother) in 1978. I happened to be in the room, but understood it despite my youth. I may have heard it before that, same source, but that's the earliest concrete memory I have of it.

The joke was worded a little differently, but the punchline was identical: "Did you hear about the team of scientists who were conducting research on the effects of marijuana on nesting arctic sea birds? They did a very thorough job. They left no tern unstoned."

Now, try this one:
There was a king on a small tropical island in the Pacific. After contact with European travelers, he became obsessed with thrones, and started a collection of them. Eventually, his home became so full of them that there was no room for anything else to be added. He tried to shove his latest acquisition in through the door, but wound up causing the whole wall on the other side to collapse, bringing down his royal grass hut. The moral of the story, of course, is that people who live in grass houses should not stow thrones.

[eric_the_right]

Bingo!

In 1974, four of us were sitting around, in a organically-induced semi-altered state of consciousness watching the end of the Nixon Regime on TV, playing word games.

I don't recall ever hearing the punchline before, but the version I cited is the one we came up with that day. When I googled the punchline recently, most of the versions that came back were a number of varitions on one that went like this:

"Some bathers were watching some sea birds that were littering up the beach. So they picked up some rocks and chased them away. They left no tern unstoned." One of the variations includes a watch being taken by the seabirds.

and this one, which I'm still trying to confirm:

"I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at sea-birds I leave no tern unstoned" -OGDEN NASH This just might be the "urtext", as we like to say.

I did find this longer variation of my version:
There was a biology student who was studying equilibrium in sea birds with a specific focus on terns. He proposed that giving measured doses of THC (from

[bald_ruminant]

In order to find the point at which this joke turned into drug humor, you need to find out when "stoned" became common slang for being in a drug-altered state.

I for one, miss the good old days when getting stoned left you dead or badly bruised.

[captain_ice]

Prolly would be before we were born....

I'd say late 60's or early 70's.

As for the rest????

*groan*