John (The Pun Also Rises) Pollack was a guest on NPR's Radio Times this morning, and I emailed a fellow punster out of courtesy. Along with thanks, I received some snark:
I notice the author was a speechwriter for Clinton, so I'm sure he's a master of fiction and fantasy.
My reply, after listening to the interview, began innocuously enough:
I liked the Samuel Johnson quote that was mentioned, but couldn't find an authoritative attribution; here it is anyway, just in case you liked it too:
"If I had hung my head for every pun I shed there would not be a puny shed in which I had not hung my punished head."
[I did find a variant in Get Thee to a Punnery]
Then I ventured forth with a few puns:
The callers to Radio Times have probably been hounded by their friends and family (doggedly so, I would imagine) for being far too tame when confronted with such a renowned punster, but I suspect that they would liken [lycan] the experience to being thrown to the wolves.
I couldn't let the obsession with Clinton slide unnoticed, and I contemplated listing a few WH speechwriters who penned some truly pernicious prevarications--Tony Blankley, Pat Buchanan, David Frum, Michael Gerson, Peggy Noonan, John Podhoretz, Tony Snow, and Ben Stein came to mind most readily--but I decided to try a less inflammatory tactic:
Your remark about Clinton seemed intended to start a flame war; I had originally planned to come out with puns blazing, but instead decided to temper my remarks. I don't want this to become a trial by ire between us, but I'll still give you a little morsel to stew over: I'm glad to see any speechwriter who is primarily a writer and only secondarily a partisan hack [too many to list]. I consume an unhealthy amount of half-baked punditry (little of which is well-done) and find the confluence of style and factual content to be quite rare.
update (5/12):
This fabulous Parthenon of punnery (h/t: Jim Culleny at 3 Quarks Daily) arrived in my RSS feed this morning:
The Agamemnon Rag
.
Atlas, you're Homer. I am so glad you're Hera.
Thera so many things to tell you. I went on that
minotaur of the museum. The new display centaurs
on how you can contract Sisyphus if you don't use
a Trojan on your Dictys. It was all Greek to me, see.
When I was Roman around,
I rubbed Midas against someone. "Medea, you look like a Goddess,"
he said. The Minerva him! I told him to
Frigg off, oracle the cops. "Loki here," I said.
"In Odin times men had better manners." It's best to try
and nymph that sort of thing in the bud. He said he knew
Athena two about women like me, then tried to Bacchus
into a corner. Dryads I could, he wouldn't stop.
"Don't Troy with my affections," he said.
"I'm already going to Helen a hand basket."
I pretended to be completely Apollo by his behavior.
If something like that Mars your day, it Styx with you
forever. "I'm not Bragi," he said. "But Idon better."
Some people will never Lerna. Juno what I did?
Valhalla for help. I knew the police would
Pegasus to the wall. The Sirens went off.
Are you or Argonaut guilty, they asked.
He told the cops he was Iliad bad clams.
He said he accidentally Electra Cupid himself
trying to adjust a lamp shade. This job has its
pluses and Minos. The cops figured he was Fulla it.
He nearly Runic for me. I'm telling you,
it was quite an Odyssey, but I knew things would
Pan out. And oh, by the way, here's all his gold.
I was able to Fleece him before the museum closed.
.
(Jack Conway, from the July/August 2005 issue of Poetry)
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