Sorry to say our neighborhood Office Despot has closed. They were good for emergency computer cables.
The NUFFNI-DON is close enough to NUFFIN-DOIN to work as an utterance.
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Comics I Don't Understand 
The “trying not to swear” method happily reminded me of the time I heard Douglas Adams explain at a book signing how he used that method to construct the character name “Slartibartfast.” He wanted a name that sounded like swearing but wasn’t, so he strung a bunch of naughty words together and then fiddled them about until they were not technically naughty. He said, and I thank God I got to hear this uncensored in his educated English accent, “I believe his original name was ‘F*rtyf**ka**’.”
Several geeks in the audience required resuscitation.
“Age of Asparagus?
Hair makes good compost.
This is the dawning of the age of aquarius
“Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars…
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation” (from Hair)
The headlines in the last few years fail to reflect this :(
I like to go into a hardware store and say, “Do you prefer metric units like meters or regular units like feet and inches?” If they say “Regular units of course! This is America!” I say, “OK, I need a zero point 134 horsepower light bulb.”
Regarding drug names, if there wasn’t one named Dammitol, there should have been.
In Buster Keaton’s The Boat, the boat is named Damfino.
The packaging on new-fangled CFL and LED light bulbs now tends to give output ratings on several systems. Don’t think I have seen hp; and have to wonder what the correct unit would be from the furlongs-fortnight system.
Showing Lumens (or I suppose foot-candles!) strikes me as the most honest and useful innovation — just it will take some getting used to so it becomes intuitive. But it gives what we are ultimately asking — how much light does this bulb provide. However, they often include actual electricity consumption, in Watts, which is maybe useful for comparing different sizes of the same type and style — but does NOT correspond to the brightness of a traditional incandescent of the named wattage. But that last one is also shown often — and sometimes is the most prominent! So when Mark in Boston goes looking for his 100 Watt bulb he could actually get the CFL with equivalent brightness, without having to calculate any conversion.
Have you ever seen it given in Candelas?
Lumens would seem best, except the ratings are often quite bogus. I don’t remember incandescents varying across brands as dramatically!
Back in the day, The Family Circus Sunday strips had a section called “The Sideshow”. These were little punny drawings. One of they showed some asparagus stalks arranged with one across the middle of two parallel ones. It was titled “This is the Drawing of the H of Asparagus”. Another I recall was, “Boyfoot Bear With Teak of Chan”.
I remember “Boyfoot bear with teak of Chan”, not from the Family Circus feature in particular, but from the general pool of pun-punchline story-jokes [often specifically spoonerisms] people liked to tell. My problem with that one was that I had no acquaintance at all with the purported original, “Barefoot boy with cheek of tan “. Even when someone would track down and announce a literary source, it was something none of us had reason to be acquainted with. This was in contrast to, say, “If the shoe fits, wear it” or even “Transporting girls across state lines for immoral purposes “.
You shouldn’t stow thrones in grass houses.
I believe the Sideshow bits were sent in by readers, then Keane would illustrate. So lots of old ones I’m sure.
The pun in the top photograph is very nice, but those plants are definitely not asparagus. It’s difficul to be sure, but my best guess would be tomatoes.
phsii: Incandescent bulbs all used exactly the same technology, at least internally. But even then, you would find different lumen ratings depending on the type of coating the glass had — clear, translucent, or specialized for different color temperatures.
LED bulbs, on the other hand, vary widely depending on how the electronics are wired, how many diodes (and in what colors) are included, how the 120 volt power is transformed, how the bulb glass distributes the light, etc.
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I’m not aware of any product called “Dammitol” but it’s a common joke, to the point where I was once taken in by an early Energizer Bunny ad for “Darnitol”: https://youtu.be/XFalJ-DS3FA?si=RE6q7aW0O2uKAHuu
If you haven’t seen Buster Keaton’s silent short “The Boat” mentioned by Mitch4 you really should look it up. It has lots of good visual puns. The boat gets in trouble in a storm, so he uses the radio to call for rescue. The operator says “Who and where are you?” He replies with the boat’s name, “Damfino.” “Well if you don’t know, I don’t know either!” is the response.
Spoiler: At the very end, when they are hopelessly lost, the wife asks “Where are we?” There is no title for Buster’s response but you don’t have to be very good at lip reading to figure out what he says.
Did you mean to type Office Despot following their pun of Home Depot? Does the same despot rule over both stores?
All I can confirm is that it wasn’t a typo!
Padrig - When the book “Starship Titanic” came out Robert and I went to a signing for it at a local Barnes and Nobles or Borders (forget which). Terry Jones was there also. It was a wonderful evening. They were both so friendly and nice – we have met other authors at book signings which were not.