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Fishing Is Boring, Unless You Catch An Actual Fish, And Then It Is Disgusting.

-Dave Barry

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Fishing Is Boring, Unless

Dave Barry

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Fishing Is Boring, Unless You Catch An Actual Fish, And Then It Is Disgusting.

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There Are Two Kinds Of Solar-heat Systems: Passive Systems Collect The Sunlight That Hits Your Home, And Active Systems Collect The Sunlight That Hits Your Neighbors' Homes, Too.

Now, Once Again, We Find Ourselves Facing Rising Gas Prices, And The Question Is: This Time, Are We Going To Learn From The Past? Are We Finally Going To Get Serious About Energy Conservation? Of Course Not! We Have The Brains Of Mealworms! So We Need To Get More Oil Somehow. As Far As I Can Figure, There's Only One Practical Way To Do This. That's Right: We Need To Clone More Dinosaurs. We Have The Technology, As Was Shown In Two Blockbuster Scientific Movies, Jurassic Park And Jurassic Park Returns With Exactly The Same Plot. Once We Have The Dinosaurs, All We Need Is An Asteroid.

Dogs Love To Go For Rides. A Dog Will Happily Get Into Any Vehicle Going Anywhere.

The Problem Was That Panama Technically Belonged To Colombia, Which Refused To Sign A Treaty Leasing It To The United States. So Roosevelt Sent A Gunboat Filled With Marines Down To Panama, Just On The Off Chance That A Revolution Might Suddenly Break Out, And Darned If One Didn't, Two Days Later. Not Only That, But The Leaders Of The New Nation Of Panama-talk About Lucky Breaks!-were Absolutely Thrilled To Have The United States Build A Canal There. 'really, It's Our Pleasure,' They Told The Marines, Adding, 'don't Shoot.'

Whatever The Needs Of The Public Are, The Government Responds To Those Needs By Getting Larger.

This Ball Was So Crowded That It Took Me - A Trained Professional Journalist With Vast Experience In This Area - Forty Five Minutes To Get A Beer.

Today, You're 50. Now We Can Round Your Age Up To 100! Happy 50th Birthday!

If Mozart Had Power Tools, There's No Telling How Great His Music Might Have Been.

I Realize That I'm Generalizing Here, But As Is Often The Case When I Generalize, I Don't Care.

The Question Is, Why Are Politicians So Eager To Be President? What Is It About The Job That Makes It Worth Revealing, On National Television, That You Have The Ethical Standards Of A Slime-coated Piece Of Industrial Waste?

Ethical Standards

I Always Wanted To Write When I Was A Kid; It Just Never Occurred To Me That You Could Have A Job That Didn't Involve Any Actual Work.... I Felt It Would Be Fun To Have A Job Like That Where You Could Make Stuff Up And Be Irresponsible And Get Paid For It.

People Are Afraid To Own Their Own Homes. People Are Afraid Their Own Government Will Catch Them Fixing Their Houses.

Your Friends Love You Anyway.

To An Adolescent, There Is Nothing In The World More Embarrassing Than A Parent.

But That's Kind Of An Easy Stance To Be If You're A Humor Columnist, Because You're Tending To Make Fun Of The Government And The Powerful. I'm Sort Of A Soft-core Libertarian In That My Compass Is Generally Pointing Away From 'let's Let The Government Do This' Does It Matter To Me That It's Democrats Who Think We Need More Elaborate Programs That Involve Shifting Money From One Group To Another Group Or It's Republicans Saying We Need To Take A Harder Look At What Kinds Of Things People Are Watching On Cable Tv? Neither One Of Those Things Strikes Me As A Good Idea.

Gravity Is A Contributing Factor In Nearly 73 Percent Of All Accidents Involving Falling Objects.

Falling In Love

After The War, Prohibition Was Passed, And With Liquor No Longer Legally Available The Nation Plunged Headlong Into The Great Depression.

I Hope I Don't Sound Like An Old-fashioned Stick-in-the-mud, But When I Hear About People Making Vast Fortunes Without Doing Any Productive Work Or Contributing Anything To Society, My Reaction Is: “how Can I Get In On That?

Productive Work

When Doctors Describe Pain As Experiencing "discomfort," It's Like Saying Hiroshima Experienced "urban Renewal".

Kids Have *_____ Never* Taken Guidance From Their Parents. If You Could Travel Back In Time And Observe The Original Primate Family In The Original Tree, You Would See The Primate Parents Yelling At The Primate Teenager For Sitting Around And Sulking All Day Instead Of Hunting For Grubs And Berries Like Dad Primate. Then You'd See The Primate Teenager Stomp Up To His Branch And Slam The Leaves.

9 Saw The First Direct-dialed Long-distance Telephone Call, Between New York And San Francisco. Of Course, Back In That Primitive Era The Parties Had To Speak To Each Other Manually; Today One Or Both Ends Of The Conversation Would Be Carried On By A Machine.

You Can Say Any Fool Thing To A Dog And The Dog Will Just Give You This Look That Says, 'my Gosh, You're Right! I Never Would've Thought Of That!

We Decide To Start With The Best-known Sight Of All, The One That, More Than Any Other, Exemplifies What The Big Apple Is All About: The Islip Garbage Barge.

He's A Boating Enthusiast, Although That Phrase Seems Too Weak To Describe The Level Of His Interest, Kind Of Like Describing Someone As A Heroin Fancier.

Humor Is An Escape, Because You Cannot Think About Your Problems When You Are Trying To Be Funny; So, In Essence, "being A Humorist" Gives You A Valid Excuse To Hide From Your Pain.

By Today's Beauty Standards, Of Course, Marilyn Monroe Was An Oil Tanker.

Technically, Windows Is An "operating System," Which Means That It Supplies Your Computer With The Basic Commands That It Needs To Suddenly, With No Warning Whatsoever, Stop Operating.

If You Want To Give A Man Something Practical, Consider Tires. More Than Once, I Would Have Gladly Traded All The Gifts I Got For A New Set Of Tires.

Don't Emphasise Money If You Don't Have Much; Be Happy

Reflectors Need To Be Placed On Trees Every 50 Feet So People Can Hike At Night With Flashlights.

I Called A Company And Asked To Speak To Bob. The Person Who Answered Said, "bob Is On Vacation. Would You Like To Hold?

If You're Like Most Members Of The Baby Boom Generation, You Decided Somewhere Along The Line, Probably After About Four Margaritas, To Have Children. This Was Inevitable. Mother Nature, In Her Infinite Wisdom, Has Instilled Within Each Of Us A Powerful Biological Instinct To Reproduce; This Is Her Way Of Assuring That The Human Race, Come What May, Will Never Have Any Disposable Income.

Smee! Raise The Ladies!

What Was Life Like In The Colonies? Probably The Best Word To Describe It Would Be "colonial".

There's Only One Way Kids Will Wear Helmets, And That's If Their Parents Are Nagging Them To. They Will Never Wear Helmets Because Some State Passes A Law Requiring It.

Most Of The Presidential Candidates' Economic Packages Involve 'tax Breaks,' Which Is When The Government, Amid Great Fanfare, Generously Decides Not To Take Quite So Much Of Your Income. In Other Words, These Candidates Are Trying To Buy Your Votes With Your Own Money.

As A Child, I Was More Afraid Of Tetanus Shots Than, For Example, Dracula.

Cigarette Sales Would Drop To Zero Overnight If The Warning Said "cigarettes Contain Fat.

A Secret Society Within A Secret Society.

I'm Always Writing New Books So I Don't Dwell On The Ones I've Already Done. I Think That's A Habit From Being A Newspaper Guy Because You're Always Writing Columns And You Can't Reflect On The Ones You've Already Done.

The Internet "browser"... Is The Piece Of Software That Puts A Message On Your Computer Screen Informing You That The Internet Is Currently Busy And You Should Try Again Later.

Most Guys Believe That They're Supposed To Know How To Fix Things. This Is A Responsibility That Guys Have Historically Taken Upon Themselves To Compensate For The Fact That They Never Clean The Bathroom. A Guy Can Walk Into A Bathroom Containing A Colony Of Commode Fungus So Advanced That It Is Registered To Vote, But The Guy Would Never Dream Of Cleaning It, Because He Has To Keep Himself Rested In Case A Mechanical Emergency Breaks Out.

I Read "remembrance Of Things Past" In The Original French. I Never Start The Day Without Reading Me Some [marcel] Proust.

What A Crock. I Could Easily Overemphasize The Importance Of Good Grammar. For Example, I Could Say: Bad Grammar Is The Leading Cause Of Slow, Painful Death In North America, Or Without Good Grammar, The United States Would Have Lost World War Ii.

There Are Two Kinds Of People In This World, And I Am One Of Them.

Dna Is An Abbreviation For Deoxyribonucleicantidisestablishmentarianism, A Complex String Of Syllables.

It's Income Tax Time Again, Americans: Time To Gather Up Those Receipts, Get Out Those Tax Forms, Sharpen Up That Pencil, And Stab Yourself In The Aorta

Magnetism, As You Recall From Physics Class, Is A Powerful Force That Causes Certain Items To Be Attracted To Refrigerators.

With A Novel, You Have The Reader With You A Lot Longer, And You Owe Him A Lot More. Obviously You Have To Have A Plot - I Say "obviously," Although I Think A Lot Of Fiction Doesn't, And Nothing Seems To Happen. But To Me, There Should Be Something That Happens, And It Should Be At Least Vaguely Plausible. And Because The Readers Are Going To Be With These Characters For A Long Time, You Have To Get To Know Them And Like Them And Want To Know What Happens To Them.

The Way This Country Deals With Drugs Is Just Not Funny. What A Waste Of Everyone's Time And Effort. What A Waste Of A Lot Of People's Lives.

I Can Win An Argument On Any Topic, Against Any Opponent. People Know This, And Steer Clear Of Me At Parties. Often, As A Sign Of Their Great Respect, They Don't Even Invite Me.

Funny Inspirational

I Read Warren Zevon's Bizarre Biography, "i'll Sleep When I'm Dead." His Wife, Crystal Zevon, Posthumously Published A Journal He Wrote And Some Interviews With Ex-band Members. Like [keith] Richards's Book "life," It's Brutally Honest.

For 41 Years I Have Gone With A Very Natural Hair "look" That Was Originally Popularized By Coconuts.

The Planes Are Crowded And Noisy And Late, And Everybody Hates Everybody. If Armed Terrorists Had Tried To Hijack Any Of The Flights I've Been On Lately, We Passengers Would Have Swiftly Beaten Them To Death With Those Hard Rolls You Get With Your In-flight Meals.

This Was Years Ago, I Think During The Early [ronald] Reagan Years. I Came Up With A Plan That Everybody Just Pay $8.95 In Taxes. Cheating Would Be Allowed. But The Incentive To Cheat Wouldn't Be Nearly As Great If You Only Had To Pay The $8.95. There Were A Few People Who Would Have To Pay Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars Under This Plan. I Think It Was Mark Goodson And Bill Todman, The Guys Who Do The Quiz Shows. But Almost Everybody Else Would Be Off Really Cheap.

Cats Are Independent, By Which I Mean Smart.

We Have Been Flooded With Postal Cards From All Over The United States And Several Parallel Universes. Just A Quick Glance Though These Cards Is Enough To Remind You Why This Great Nation, Despite All The Talk Of Decline, Still Leads The World In Tranquilizer Consumption.

When Trouble Arises And Things Look Bad, There Is Always One Individual Who Perceives A Solution And Is Willing To Take Command. Very Often, That Individual Is Crazy.

One Popular New Plastic Surgery Technique Is Called Lip Grafting, Or 'fat Recycling,' Wherein Fat Cells Are Removed From One Part Of Your Body That Is Too Large, Such As Your Buttocks, And Injected Into Your Lips. People Will Then Be Literally Kissing Ass.

I Do Not Mean To Be The Slightest Bit Critical Of Tv Newspeople, Who Do A Superb Job, Considering That They Operate Under Severe Time Constraints And Have The Intellectual Depth Of Hamsters. But Tv News Can Only Present The "bare Bones" Of A Story; It Takes A Newspaper, With Its Capability To Present Vast Amounts Of Information, To Render The Story Truly Boring.

The Only Kind Of Seafood I Trust Is The Fish Stick, A Totally Featureless Fish That Doesn't Have Eyeballs Or Fins.

Your Modern Teenager Is Not About To Listen To Advice From An Old Person, Defined As A Person Who Remembers When There Was No Velcro.

Proper Turkey Preparation Is Critical. According To The U.s. Department Of Agriculture, More Americans Die Every Year From Eating Improperly Cooked Turkey Than Were Killed In The Entire Peloponnesian War. This Is Because Turkey Can Contain Salmonella, Which Are Tiny Bacteria That, If They Get In Your Bloodstream, Develop Into Full-grown Salmon, Which Could Come Leaping Out Of Your Mouth During An Important Business Presentation.

Funny Thanksgiving

Never Assume That The Guy Understands That You And He Have A Relationship.

I, Alone, Could Never Have Produced This Book. I Say This Mainly In Case There Are Lawsuits.

The Internet Is The Most Important Single Development In The History Of Human Communication Since The Invention Of Call Waiting.

The Question Is: What Can We, As Citizens, Do To Reform Our Tax System? As You Know, Under Our Three-branch System Of Government, The Tax Laws Are Created By: Satan. But He Works Through The Congress, So That's Where We Must Focus Our Efforts.

Because Of Some Defect In My Motor Skill, I Can Never Completely Wrap [gifts]....if I Had Been An Ancient Egyptian In The Field Of Mummies, The Lower Half Of The Pharaoh's Body Would Be Covered Only By Scotch Tape.

Maybe Somebody Finally Shot The Dog.

We're Wild Horses. We're Going To Eat Your Food, Knock Down Your Tent And Poop On Your Shoes. We're Protected By Federal Law, Just Like Richard Nixon.

Technology Is Constantly Improving Our Lives. Look At The Cellular Telephone. Just Ten Years Ago, Virtually Nobody Was Able To Get Into A Car Crash Caused By Trying To Steer And Dial At The Same Time; Today, People Do This All The Time.

If Congress Were To Pass A 'flat' Tax, You'd Simply Pay A Fixed Percentage Of Your Income, And You Wouldn't Have To Fill Out Any Complicated Forms, And There Would Be No Loopholes For Politically Connected Groups, And Normal People Would Actually Understand The Tax Laws, And Giant Talking Broccoli Stalks Would Come Around And Mow Your Lawn For Free, Because Congress Is Not Going To Pass A Flat Tax, You Pathetic Fool.

There Are Terrific Tv Shows Now. This Is A Golden Age For Tv Humor, I Think. There's An Actual Market There. Of Course, I Have No Idea How You'd Break In, But There Must Be A Way. They Have All These Shows And They Need Jokes And Somebody Is Writing Them.

Let's Talk About How To Fill Out Your 1984 Tax Return. Here's An Often Overlooked Accounting Technique That Can Save You Thousands Of Dollars: For Several Days Before You Put It In The Mail, Carry Your Tax Return Around Under Your Armpit. No Irs Agent Is Going To Want To Spend Hours Poring Over A Sweat-stained Document. So Even If You Owe Money, You Can Put In For An Enormous Refund And The Agent Will Probably Give It To You, Just To Avoid An Audit. What Does He Care? It's Not His Money.

Someone Was Tapping On The Window.

I Guess Libertarianism Is Always Considered So Weird And Fringe That People Assume That You're In The Closet If You Don't Go Around Talking About It.

Although It Was Constructed In 1536, The New York Subway System Boasts An Annual Maintenance Budget Of Nearly $8, Currently Stolen, And It Does A Remarkable Job Of Getting New Yorkers From Point A To An Indeterminate Location Somewhere In The Tunnel Leading To Point B.

But My Point Is That Competitive Eating Is A Real Sport, And I Considered Taking It Up. But When I Thought About What This Would Mean Sitting Around For Hours, Stuffing My Face With Unhealthy Food I Realized It Was Basically The Same Thing As Journalism.

The Irs Wants You To Use This Form Because It Gets To Keep Most Of Your Money. So Unless You Have Pond Silt For Brains, You Want The Long Form.

The Older I Get And The More Fiction I Write, The More I Outline, The More I Think About Plot Before I Dive In And Plunge Too Far.

There's A Test They Can Do To Determine A Baby's Gender Ahead Of Time; I Think They Insert A Tiny Photo Of Leonardo Dicaprio Into The Uterus, And If The Baby Punches It, It's A Boy.

They Have A Lot Of Trouble With Pronunciation, Because They Can't Move Their Jaw Muscles, Because Of Malnutrition Caused By Wisely Refusing To Eat English Food, Much Of Which Was Designed And Manufactured In Medieval Times During The Reign Of King Walter The Mildly Disturbed.

Granted, This System Is Insane, But We Must Not Let Sanity Stand In The Way Of Airport Security.

I Had No Shoes And I Pitied Myself. Then I Met A Man Who Had No Feet, So I Took His Shoes.

The Method (of Learning Japanese) Recommended By Experts Is To Be Born As A Japanese Baby And Raised By A Japanese Family, In Japan. And Even Then It's Not Easy.

To Better Understand Why You Need A Personal Computer, Let's Take A Look At The Pathetic Mess You Call Your Life.

Japan Has A Low Crime Rate, Unless You Count The Fact That Approximately Every Fifteen Minutes The Entire Cabinet Gets Indicted For Taking Bribes.

Elsewhere In Italy Is The Lovely City Of Venice, Which Each Year Attracts Millions Of Visitors Despite The Fact That It Is Basically An Enormous Open Sewer.

Babies Are Equipped At Birth With A Number Of Instinctive Reflexes And Behavior Patterns That Cause Them To Spend Their First Several Years Trying To Kill Themselves. If Your Home Contains A Sharp, Toxic Object, Your Baby Will Locate It; If Your Home Contains No Such Object, Your Baby Will Try To Obtain One Via Mail Order.

The Japanese, Implementing A Complex, Long-term, And Ultimately Successful Strategy To Dominate The U S Consumer-electronics Market, Attacked Pearl Harbor.

We Kids Feared Many Things In Those Days - Werewolves, Dentists, North Koreans, Sunday School - But They All Paled In Comparison With Brussels Sprouts.

Some [soccer] Players Suffer Four Or Five Fatal Injuries Per Game. That's How Tough They Are.

A Gene Can Be Either Dominant Or Recessive, Depending On Which Type Of Gene It Is.

To Defend Western Europe We Have To Let The Pentagon Buy All These Tanks And Guns And Things, And The Pentagon Is Unable To Buy Any Object That That Costs Less Than A Condominium In Vail. If The Pentagon Needs, Say, Fruit, It Will Argue That It Must Have Fruit That Can Withstand The Rigors Of Combat Conditions, And It Will Wind Up Purchasing The Fx-700 Seedless Tactical Grape, Which Will Cost $160,000 Per Bunch, And Will Have An 83 Percent Failure Rate.

In Foreign Countries Such As Italy, The Government Puts Strict-looking Speed Limit Signs Everywhere, But Nobody Ever Sees Them Because Light Does Not Travel Fast Enough To Catch The Italian Drivers.

If You Asked Me To Name The Three Scariest Threats Facing The Human Race, I Would Give The Same Answer That Most People Would: Nuclear War, Global Warming And Windows.

But If I Hadn't Shoved You Off The Boat Back There,you'd Be Lost At Sea Now,wouldn't You? We'd All Be Lost! So Thanks To Me You're All Standing On Land." (pirates, Its A Good Thing They're Idiots)

One Night In Tokyo We Watched Two Japanese Businessmen Saying Good-night To Each Other After What Had Clearly Been A Long Night Of Drinking, A Major Participant Sport In Japan. These Men Were Totally Snockered, Having Reached The Stage Of Inebriation Wherein Every Air Molecule That Struck Caused Them To Wobble Slightly, But They Still Managed To Behave More Formally Than Americans Do At Funerals.

When I Heated My Home With Oil, I Used An Average Of 800 Gallons A Year. I Have Found That I Can Keep Comfortably Warm For An Entire Winter With Slightly Over Half That Quantity Of Beer.

A Critical Function That We Journalists Perform At Political Conventions Is To Try To Get Into Parties That We Have Not Been Invited To. There Are Dozens Of These Parties, Sponsored By Large Corporations With A Sincere Public-spirited Desire To Become Larger.

Toaster: A Gift That Every Member Of The Family Appreciates. Automatically Burns Toast.

When Your Super Bowl Guests Arrive, They Should Find A Mound Of Potato Chips Large Enough To Conceal A Pony Sitting In Front Of The Television. For Nutritional Balance, You Should Also Put Out A Bowl Of Carrot Sticks. If You Have No Carrot Sticks, You Can Use Pinecones, Or Used Electrical Fuses, Because Nobody Will Eat Them Anyway. This Is No Time For Nutritional Balance: This Is The Super Bowl, For God's Sake.

When Prince Charles Speaks, Everybody Pretends To Be Fascinated, Even Though He Has Never Said Anything Interesting Except In That Intercepted Telephone Conversation Wherein He Expressed The Desire To Be A Feminine Hygeine Product.

The Scrub Sink...is The Place Where Doctors Wash Their Hands After They Operate So That They Won't Get Flecks Of Your Vital Organs On Their Lexus Upholstery.

To Enter Europe, You Must Have A Valid Passport With A Photograph Of Yourself In Which You Look Like You Are Being Booked On Charges Of Soliciting Sheep.

It Is Inhumane, In My Opinion, To Force People Who Have A Genuine Medical Need For Coffee To Wait In Line Behind People Who Apparently View It As Some Kind Of Recreational Activity.

The Most Powerful Force In The Universe Is Gossip.

Look, In Particular, At The People Who, Like You, Are Making Average Incomes For Doing Average Jobs- Bank Vice Presidents, Insurance Salesmen, Auditors, Secretaries Of Defense- And You'll Realie They All Dress The Same Way, Essentially The Way The Mannequins In The Sears Menswear Department Dress. Now Look At The Real Successes, The People Who Make A Lot More Money Than You- Elton John, Captain Kangaroo, Anybody From Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, And So On. They All Dress Funny- And They All Succeed.

Motto Of The U.s. Airline Industry - "we're Hoping To Have A Motto Announcement In About An Hour."

It May Be Meaningless, But At Least It's A Gesture.

Sometimes You Panic And Find Yourself Emitting Remarks So Profoundly Inane That You Would Be Embarrassed To Say Them To Your Dog. Your Dog Would Look At You And Think To Itself, 'i May Lick Myself In Public, But I'd Never Say Anything As Stupid As That.'

You Men Out There Probably Think You Already Know How To Dress For Success. You Know, For Example, That You Should Not Wear Leisure Suits Or White Plastic Belts And Shoes, Unless You Are Going To A Costume Party Disguised As A Pig Farmer Vacationing At Disney World.

The Trouble Is, You Cannot Grow Just One Zucchini. Minutes After You Plant A Single Seed, Hundreds Of Zucchini Will Barge Out Of The Ground And Sprawl Around The Garden, Menacing The Other Vegetables. At Night, You Will Be Able To Hear The Ground Quake As More And More Zucchinis Erupt.

The Problem With Writing About Religion Is That You Run The Risk Of Offending Sincerely Religious People, And Then They Come After You With Machetes.

Think, For A Moment, Of The Countless Happy Childhood Hours You Spent With This Amazing Device: Drawing Perfect Horizontals, Drawing Perfect Verticals, Drawing Really Spastic Diagonals, Trying To Scrape Away The Silver Powder From The Window So You Could Look Inside.

Every Year I Write A Tax Advice Column And I Used To Always Make Fun Of That. One Year, One Of My Favorite Irs Commissioners, I Think His Name Was Roscoe Somebody, Wrote That One Of The Most Often-asked Questions By Taxpayers Was, "how Can I Contribute More?" Well, I Tell Ya, Ol' Roscoe's Really Been Doing Situps Under Parked Cars Again. I've Heard A Lot Of People Ask A Lot Of Questions About Taxes, But I Never Heard Anybody Say, "how Can I, The Ordinary Person, Send More Money For No Reason?"

Modern Cyberspace Is A Deadly Festering Swamp, Teeming With Dangerous Programs Such As 'viruses,' 'worms,' 'trojan Horses' And 'licensed Microsoft Software' That Can Take Over Your Computer And Render It Useless.

I Report As A Machine; I Write As A Person. That Clear Dichotomy Softens The Transition.

My Problem With Chess Was That All My Pieces Wanted To End The Game As Soon As Possible.

English History Consists Largely Of Royal People Getting Their Heads Chopped Off...needless To Say, This Brand Of History Was A Hit With Our Son.

Puns Are Little "plays On Words" That A Certain Breed Of Person Loves To Spring On You And Then Look At You In A Certain Self-satisfied Way To Indicate That He Thinks That You Must Think That He Is By Far The Cleverest Person On Earth Now That Benjamin Franklin Is Dead, When In Fact What You Are Thinking Is That If This Person Ever Ends Up In A Lifeboat, The Other Passengers Will Hurl Him Overboard By The End Of The First Day Even If They Have Plenty Of Food And Water.

I Have Always Dressed According To Certain Basic Guy Fashion Rules,including: Both Of Your Socks Should Always Be The Same Color, Or They Should At Least Both Be Fairly Dark.

The Democrats Seem To Be Basically Nicer People, But They Have Demonstrated Time And Again That They Have The Management Skills Of Celery.

I Love The Olympics, Because They Enable People From All Over The World To Come Together And--regardless Of Their Political Or Cultural Differences--accuse Each Other Of Cheating.

Many Things Have Been Written, Including By Me, Linking Humor And Pain. Mostly, In My Case, The Humor Part Keeps Me Sane. If I Spent All My Hours Writing Things Like "fatal Distraction," I'd Become A Brooding, Erratic Melancholic. I'd Be Raskolnikov.

Any Parent That Relies On Any Law To Help Him Parent Is An Idiot.

When The Boomers Started To Have Kids Reach Adolescence, There Was Suddenly This Feeling That They Needed To Protect Their Kids From All The Same Things They Did When They Were Kids. Which I Guess Is A Natural Tendency, But It Makes For A Less Fun Society.

The Easiest Way To Make A Fruitcake Is To Buy A Darkish Cake, Then Pound Some Old, Hard Fruit Into It With A Mallet. Be Sure To Wear Safety Glasses.

I Also Saw A Huge Expansion Of The Internet, With Many Major Corporations, Afraid Of Being Left Behind, Spending Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars To Develop World Wide Web Sites In A Frantic Scramble To Reach The Vast New Consumer Market Of Web Use

The Great Thing About Golf - And This Is The Reason Why A Lot Of Health Experts Like Me Recommend It - You Can Drink Beer And Ride In A Cart While You Play.

All Other Nations Are Drinking Ray Charles Beer And We Are Drinking Barry Manilow.

Roy Blount, Who Is The Funniest Person I Know, Journeys Deep Into The Dark Heart Of Humor And Brings Back A Wonderfully Insightful, Superbly Crafted Song Of The Soul That Had Me Laughing And Crying Too

The Internet Is A Giant International Network Of Intelligent, Informed Computer Enthusiasts, By Which I Mean, "people Without Lives." We Don't Care. We Have Each Other.

As A Taxpayer, You Are Required To Be Fully In Compliance With The United States Tax Code, Which Is Currently The Size And Weight Of The Budweiser Clydesdales.

Flying From The United States To Tokyo Takes Approximately As Long As Law School.

I Don't Like Anything Unsigned In A Newspaper That Purports To Be The Opinion Of Some Group If We Don't Know Who The Group Is. It's Laughable To Say That The Miami Herald's Editorials Or Any Newspaper's Editorials Represent Any Views Other Than Those Of The People Writing Them, So Why Don't We Tell Everybody Who They Are?

Imagine What Will Happen To This Nation If Large Numbers Of American Women Start Using The Wonderbra. It Will Be Catastrophic. The Male Half Of The Population Will Be Nothing But Mindless Drooling Zombies Of Lust. Granted, This Is Also True Now, But It Will Be Even Worse.

Never Under Any Circumstances Take A Sleeping Pill And A Laxative On The Same Night.

Childbirth, As A Strictly Physical Phenomenon, Is Comparable To Driving A United Parcel Truck Through An Inner Tube.

What I Want To Know Is: Why Is It Important To Have Visible Stomach Muscles? I Grew Up In An Era (the Paleolithic) When People Kept Their Stomach Muscles Discreetly Out Of Sight.

There's Tremendous Pressure, If You're In That [goverment] System, To Be Involved And Be Interested And To Care About It. There's No Room To Say, "this Is Stupid."

Can We Move This Conversation Along, I'm Getting Frightfully Tired Of 'hoa'.

When I Say "dogs", I'm Talking About Dogs, Which Are Large, Bounding, Salivating Animals, Usually With Bad Breath. I Am Not Talking About Those Little Squeaky Things You Can Hold On Your Lap And Carry Around. Zoologically Speaking, These Are Not Dogs At All; They Are Members Of The Pillow Family.

If You Tell Most People What Libertarians Think, They Immediately Assume That You Cannot Mean It All The Way, That You're Really Just Taking A Position For Argument's Sake.

I Hate Rap Music, Which To Me Sounds Like A Bunch Of Angry Men Shouting, Possibly Because The Person Who Was Supposed To Provide Them With A Melody Never Showed Up.

I've Been Checking With People Back In South Florida To See If Hurricane Dennis Is Going To Whack My House, And The Consensus Of The Experts Seems To Be: No, It Will Not, Unless It Does, In Which Case, Yes. So I'm Feeling Really Calm Over Here In London.

What Gets Me Is, I Waited In Line For An Hour To Do This. I Could Have Experienced Essentially The Same Level Of Enjoyment Merely By Sticking My Finger Down My Throat.

Not All Chemicals Are Bad. Without Chemicals Such As Hydrogen And Oxygen, For Example, There Would Be No Way To Make Water, A Vital Ingredient In Beer.

Experts Agree That The Best Type Of Computer For Your Individual Needs Is One That Comes On The Market About Two Days After You Actually Purchase Some Other Computer.

With A Novel, You Have To Have A Story. It's Much More Important To Have It Matter To The Reader What Happens To People, And It Has To Make Sense And End In A Way That Is Satisfying. So I Spend A Lot More Time Thinking About That. Then The Writing Itself Usually Is Easier For Me, Because I Know Where It's Going.

I Have Been A Gigantic Rolling Stones Fan Since Approximately The Spanish-american War.

How Can You Be Afraid Of Women?” “those Ain’t Normal Women.

Palestinian And Israeli Leaders Finally Recover The Road Map To Peace, Only To Discover That, While They Were Looking For It, The Lug Nuts Of Mutual Interest Came Off The Front Left Wheel Of Accommodation, Causing The Sport Utility Vehicle Of Progress To Crash Into The Ditch Of Despair.

Mutual Interest

What, Exactly, Is The Internet? Basically It Is A Global Network Exchanging Digitized Data In Such A Way That Any Computer, Anywhere, That Is Equipped With A Device Called A 'modem', Can Make A Noise Like A Duck Choking On A Kazoo

Mousse Was A Labrador Retriever, Which Is A Large Enthusiastic Bulletproof Species Of Dog Made Entirely From Synthetic Materials. This Is The Kind Of Dog That, If It Takes An Interest In Your Personal Regions (which Of Course It Does) You Cannot Fend It Off With A Blowtorch.

Beneath Their Surface Differences, There Are A Lot Of Deep, Underlying Differences.

I'm Afraid That, In This Chapter We Must Talk About Sex In A Very Explicit Manner, Because We Want To Expand The Frontiers Of Human Understanding And Also We Want To Sell As Many Books As Possible To Adolescent Boys.

The Best Time To Go To Disney World, If You Want To Avoid Huge Crowds, Is 1962.

Hardware: Where The People In Your Company's Software Section Will Tell You The Problem Is. Software: Where The People In Your Company's Hardware Section Will Tell You The Problem Is.

Warning: This Is Assuming Your Spouse's Name Is Margaret.

Without Question, The Greatest Invention In The History Of Mankind Is Beer. Oh, I Grant You That The Wheel Was Also A Fine Invention, But The Wheel Does Not Go Nearly As Well With Pizza.

In Spain, Attempting To Obtain A Chicken Salad Sandwich, You Wind Up With A Dish Whose Name, When You Look It Up In Your Spanish-english Dictionary, Turns Out To Mean: Eel With Big Abcess.

And To You Taxpayers Out There, Let Me Say This: Make Sure You File Your Tax Return On Time! And Remember That, Even Though Income Taxes Can Be A 'pain In The Neck,' The Folks At The Irs Are Regular People Just Like You, Except That They Can Destroy Your Life

Seriously? You Won’t Help Me?” “help Yourself Get Killed? No, I Won’t.

When I Was A Kid, I Thought History Was The Most Boring Subject Of All. I Shouldn't Blame My Teachers; I Should Blame Me, But I'll Blame Them.

The Internet Is A Giant International Network Of Intelligent, Informed Computer Enthusiasts, By Which I Mean, "people Without Lives." We Don't Care. We Have Each Other.... While You Are Destroying Your Mind Watching The Worthless, Brain-rotting Drivel On Tv, We On The Internet Are Exchanging, Freely And Openly, The Most Settings, Uninhibited, Intimate And, Yes, Shocking Details About Our "config.sys."

There Are A Number Of People Without Whom I Could Not Have Written This Book, But I Hope You Don't Hold That Against Them. They Are All Fine People, And They Had No Idea How It Would Turn Out.

Meetings Are An Addictive, Highly Self-indulgent Activity That Corporations And Other Large Organizations Habitually Engage In Only Because They Cannot Actually Masturbate.

Earnest Is Our Dog. She Senses Instantly That Something Is Wrong, And Guided By That Timeless And Unerring Nurturing Instinct That All Female Dogs Have, She Tries To Lick My Ears Off.

Line Printer Paper Is Strongest At The Perforations.

You Must Prepare Yourselves, Young People, Because Uncle Dave's Generation Is Getting Old. We Are Almost Ready To Go To The Retirement Home To Spend The Rest Of Our Days Tapping Our Bedpans Rhythmically In Time To "easy Listening" Rock 'n' Roll. We Must Pass The Torch On To You, And You Must Grasp It, Ideally By The End That Is Not On Fire.

Dating Means Doing A Lot Of Fun Things You Will Never Do Again If You Get Married. The Fun Stops With Marriage Because You're Trying To Save Money For When You Split Up Your Property.

Meetings Are Places Where Dead Ideas Rise From Their Graves And Eat The Brains Of The Living.

At The Time, We Were Mad At Moammar Gadhafi, Which Resulted In Us Bombing All Over Libya And Killing A Bunch Of People, But Not Him. Then Ronald Reagan Gets Up And Says We're Not Trying To Kill Him, We're Just Dropping Bombs. You Can Kill All The Libyans You Want, But Legally You Can't Try To Kill The Leader.

Without Good Grammar, The United States Would Have Lost World War Ii.

The Old System Of Having A Baby Was Much Better Than The New System, The Old System Being Characterized By The Fact That The Man Didn't Have To Watch.

When My Generation Was Your Age, We Took Crazy Risks. The Wildest Thing Was - Prepare To Be Shocked - We Deliberately Ingested Carbohydrates!

Never Trust Anything You Read In A Travel Article. Travel Articles Appear In Publications That Sell Large, Expensive Advertisements To Tourism-related Industries, And These Industries Do Not Wish To See Articles With Headlines Like: Uruguay: Don't Bother.

Nobody In The United States Knows What Either A "meter" Or A "kilogram" Is. The Whole Reason Why We Fought The Cold War Was So We Wouldn't Have To Learn The Metric System.

The Beer Sold Here In The United States Is Sweet And Watery And Lacking In Taste And Overcarbonated And Just Generally The Lamest, Wimpiest Beer In The Entire Known World. All The Other Nations Are Drinking Ray Charles Beer, And We Are Drinking Barry Manilow.

That Is The Wasp, Yes. But It Was Captured By Black Stache, And He’s Coming For This Ship Now.” “and How Do You Know That?” Asked Slank. “did A Seagull Tell You?” This Brought Chuckles From The Crew. Something Like That, Thought Peter.

The First Animals To Be Successfully Domesticated Were Dogs, Which Were A Big Help Because They Would Bark All Night And Fetch Thrown Sticks, Thereby Freeing Humans From Having To Perform These Tedious Yet Vital Tasks.

Just Get On Any Major Highway, And Eventually It Will Dead-end In A Disney Parking Area Large Enough To Have Its Own Climate, Populated By Large Nomadic Families Who Have Been Trying To Find Their Cars Since The Carter Administration.

You Can Use The Internet To Find Out, From Anywhere On The Planet: Exactly How Much Coffee Is In A Certain Coffee Machine At Cambridge University In England; Exactly How Many Sodas Are Available In Certain Vending Machines At Certain Major Universities; And Much, Much More.

Cambridge University

Without Computers, The Government Would Be Unable To Function At The Level Of Effectiveness And Efficiency That We Have Come To Expect. . . . Today's Government Uses Computers Which Are Capable Of Cranking Out Millions Of Documents Per Day Without Any Regard Whatsoever For Their Content, Thereby Freeing Government Employees For More Important Responsibilities, Such As Not Answering Their Phones.

All These People Helped Make This Book Possible. But Let Me Make One Thing Clear: If There Are Any Errors Or Omissions In This Book, These People Are Not Responsible. In The End, There Is Only One Person Responsible For What I Write, And That Person, Of Course, Is: Donald Trump.

Don't You Wish You Had A Job Like Mine? All You Have To Do Is Think Up A Certain Number Of Words! Plus, You Can Repeat Words! And They Don't Even Have To Be True!

Millions Of Americans Own Dogs, Because They Are Good-natured, Simple, And Easily Amused. I Am Referring Here To The Americans. The Dogs Are Not Exactly Mensa Members Either, But They Definitely Make Better Pets Than Tropical Fish.

Dear Hotel People: We Don't Need A Cheeseball Clock-radio. We Need Places To Plug Stuff In. Thank You.

I Am Absolutely Sick Unto Death Of Hearing People Say - They All Say This; It Must Be Item One On The Curriculum In Trend College - "i Just Hate To Talk To A Machine!" They Say This As Though It Is A Major Philosophical Position, As Opposed To A Description Of A Minor Neurosis. My Feeling Is, If You Have A Problem Like This, You Shouldn't Go Around Trumpeting It; You Should Stay Home And Practice Talking To A Machine You Can Feel Comfortable With, Such As Your Water Pik, Until You Are Ready To Assume Your Place In Modern Society.

The Information Encoded In Your Dna Determines Your Unique Biological Characteristics, Such As Sex, Eye Color, Age And Social Security Number.

Scientists Now Believe That The Primary Biological Function Of Breasts Is To Make Males Stupid.

As Far As Outlining Is Concerned, I Don't Outline Humor. I Might Right Down A Word Or Two To Remind Myself Of A Punch Line I Thought Of, But The Actual Structure Of A Piece I Really Don't. I Don't Think It Would Really Help Me Because For Me The Process Is Joke, Joke, Joke, Joke.

I Think Superman Should Go On The Larry King Show And Announce That He Would Come Back To Life If People In All 50 States Wanted Him To.

We Are Talking About Mutated Women, The Result Of Cruel Genetic Experiments Performed By Fashion Designers So Lacking In Any Sense Of Human Decency That They Think Nothing Of Putting Their Initials On Your Eyeglass Lenses. The Leading Cause Of Death Among Fashion Models Is Falling Through Street Grates. If A Normal Woman Puts On Clothing Designed For These Unfortunate People, She Is Quite Naturally Going To Look Like Revenge Of The Pork Person.

We Americans Live In A Nation Where The Medical-care System Is Second To None In The World, Unless You Count Maybe 25 Or 30 Little Scuzzball Countries Like Scotland That We Could Vaporize In Seconds If We Felt Like It.

Europeans, Like Some Americans, Drive On The Right Side Of The Road, Except In England, Where They Drive On Both Sides Of The Road; Italy, Where They Drive On The Sidewalk; And France, Where If Necessary They Will Follow You Right Into The Hotel Lobby.

I Did All This Stuff That Was Illegal When I Was A Kid. I Drank Beer When I Was 15. I Smoked Cigarettes When I Was 13. I Drove To New York City When I Was 14 - Don't Tell My Son. Those Things Were Against The Law, But I Did Them Anyway. I Didn't Become A Heroin Addict, Although I Probably Could Have Gotten Heroin Somehow. I Don't Think My Son Would Buy Heroin At Any Price. He Knows What It Is, And He Knows How Stupid It Is.

Professional Marriage Counselors Agree That The Most Productive And Mature Way To Deal With Marital Anger Is To Stomp Dramatically From The Room. You Want To Make Your Move Before The Opponent Does, Because The First Person To Stomp From The Room Receives Valuable Argument Points That Can Be Redeemed For Exciting Merchandise At The Marital Prize Redemption Center.

I Am Not One To Generalize, But Cartoonists, As A Group, Exhibit A Level Of Social Sophistication Generally Associated With Pie Fights. In High School, When The Future Lawyers Were Campaigning For Class President, The Future Cartoonists Were Painstakingly Altering Illustrations In Their History Books So That Robert E. Lee Appeared To Be Performing An Illegal Act With His Horse.

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