by Joseph Bugbee, staff writer

Bad jokes like fine cheeses stink worse with age, and ever since man first thought himself to be clever, puns have been making people wince. But its not easy being cheesy and puns deserve some looking into.

Not to be confused with funny jokes, puns are a form of word play by slow painful torture.

The great writers of our time such as Shakespeare, have been aweing audiences with their wit for years. Shakespeare was known to have over 3,000 puns in his plays. I actually attempted to copy these famous writers and put on a theatrical performance of puns, but it just turned out to be a play on words.

Modern humans weren’t the first to use bad jokes, as the ancient civilizations in Egypt, Iraq, China and Japan have all been found to have lost their sense of humor long before us. But time flies like an arrow making the pun a fairly common occurrence today, whereas fruit flies like a banana.

Over the years people with too much time on their hands found something to do by classifying the pun. They also gave puns a ridiculously long name “paronomasia.”

Speaking of which, the fear of long words is hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia. I was going to buy a book on phobias, but I was afraid it wouldn’t help me with this column.

In our daily lives, puns are the bread of bad comedians, the wine of witty critics and the bane of tired newspaper editors.

Often headlines appear such as this one: “Hole in nudist colony wall found, police are looking into it.” Or “Iraqi head seeks arms” escapes their attention leaving a few weary laughs for those who catch them.

Of all types of puns, the most common are pick-up lines. This comic gold is well known for its high probability of success and proof of natural selection.

Some fine examples includes, “You’re so hot, when I look at you I get a tan.” Or “I want to bag you like some groceries.” It’s fairly clear by these examples why in some places the cost of funerals has gone up 50 percent, even though most experts blame it on increases in the cost of living.

This article has at least 16 puns, making it the punniest column in the history of The Californian.