There are times when I am listening to someone speak and they will interject a parenthetical “pardon the pun” and go on. For my part, sometimes I mentally smack my forehead when I realize I had not caught it. Ever now and then, I will be reading and there will be a real parenthetical “pardon the pun” and I will usually go on because there is no reason to stop reading. However, sometimes the phrase surprises me because I am not aware of a pun. I will go back and it I still don’t get it, I will have to force myself to not linger forever trying to identify that pun.

Here’s one in a recent blog post: Digital downloads cost $8.99 on Amazon (free from Limewire or a friend), CDs average $10.50, but vinyl LPs sell for a whopping $14.00 a pop (pardon the pun).

So, where is the pun? I don’t get it. Is my mind a plodding one, wandering in a blogging world?

UPDATE: Okay, I’ve got it.  After someone remarked that he could not see a pun either,  I thought some more about it and considered perhaps the pop referred to pop music – or maybe a paternal parent was forking over the cash. I went back to the post from which this came and in the paragraph above was a reference to a 15-year-old’s remark that music  “sound(s) better on vinyl, even with the crackles and pops and hisses.”

On the pun scale, I give it a “hiss”.