He who laughs last thinks slowest, or so we are told.

This column is not a pun by any stretch. It’s also not an attempt to duplicate The Onion, America’s finest news source. However, we read The Onion, whose current lead story states: Congress allocates $2 trillion to bail out struggling bailout industry.” (We believe every word)

Due to the current State of the Union, The Icon invites viewers to submit jokes, puns, funny stories and anything else that offers a five-second chuckle.

We especially encourage material from Derek Dukes, Roger Edwards, Harvey Moritz, Bill Watkins and Dick Boehr.

Dick’s latest story concerns how to prune fruit trees. His story involves cats and, well, ask him for the punchline.

What we don’t want
• No long, we've-heard-this before rambling urban-legend-internet-type attempts at humor – non-thinkers can look those up themselves. 

What we want
Short jokes, puns, funny stories from viewers. We will post these until viewers scream, “Stop, we’ve had enough,” or should viewership dwindle to a trickle due to this new feature, or until the cows come home.

Think of it this way
It’s sort of like the elephant who said, “Every man for himself, as he danced among the chickens.”

Incidentally we tested this column on Bob Suter with a chemistry joke, but we got no reaction.

And, Ray Raeburn sent us this email: A mean crook going down stairs is really a condescending con, descending, but we didn’t understand it, so we won’t use it.

You get the idea
Okay, we believe that we all need a good laugh. But remember, keep it simple, stupid, because it's hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs ­– they always take things literally.

Your turn: Send material to: [email protected].

No, we won’t return your manuscripts.