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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

-Dave Barry

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I Also Saw A

Dave Barry

...

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

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The President, Apparently, Was So Totally Unaware Of Where His Foreign Policy Was That He Had To Appoint A Distinguished Commission To Help Him Locate It, And When The Commissioners Called Him In To Testify, He Told Them, Essentially, That He Couldn't Remember What It Looked Like. Now, If Richard Nixon Had Claimed Something Like That You Would At Least Have Had The Comfort Of Knowing He Was Lying. You Could Trust Nixon That Way. But With This President, You Have This Nagging Feeling That He's Telling The Truth.

A Long Memory Is The Most Subversive Idea In America. A Tautology Is A Thing Which Is Tautological. A Witty Saying Proves Nothing, But Saying Something Pointless Gets People's Attention. If Your Kids Look Like You, It's Hereditory. If They Look Like The Neighbor, It's The Environment. Although Golf Was Originally Restricted To Wealthy, Overweight Protestants, Today It's Open To Anybody Who Owns Hideous Clothing.

Some Archeologists Believe That Stonehenge - The Mysterious Arrangement Of Enormous Elongated Stones In England - Is Actually A Crude Effort By The Druids To Build A Computing Device.

Have You Noticed That Whatever Sport You're Trying To Learn, Some Earnest Person Is Always Telling You To Keep Your Knees Bent?

I Got A Lot Of Mail From Organizations Concerned With Bike Safety. Then I Got A Couple From People Who Wanted My Support For Mandatory Helmet Laws. I Can't Support That. If You Pass A Law Like That You'll Do More Harm Than Good, Because You'll Make People Think They've Done Something About The Problem When They Haven't.

Orangutan Are Very Weird Animals But They Look Very Soulful.

Classical Music Gradually Lost Popularity Because It Is Too Complicated: You Need Twenty-five Or Thirty Skilled Musicians Just To Hum It Properly. So People Began To Develop Regular Music.

Long, Long Ago, Before Eruptions Were Invented, The Molten Lava Had To Be Carried Down The Mountainside, Bucket By Bucket, And Poured Over The Sleeping Villagers. This Took Time.

It Is A Good Idea To 'shop Around' Before You Settle On A Doctor. Ask About The Condition Of His Mercedes. Ask About The Competence Of His Mechanic. Don't Be Shy! After All, You're Paying For It.

The Best Way To Understand This Whole Issue Is To Look At What The Government Does: It Takes Money From Some People, Keeps A Bunch Of It, And Gives The Rest To Other People.

In The Bowling Alley Of Tomorrow, There Will Even Be Machines That Wear Rental Shoes And Throw The Ball For You. Your Sole Function Will Be To Drink Beer.

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

Falling In Love

The Coyotes Made Too Much Noise Last Night And Kept Me Awake. Please Eradicate These Annoying Animals.

Hardware: This Is The Part Of The Computer That Stops Working When You Spill Beer On It.

Sign At A Tennessee Highway: When This Sign Is Under Water, This Road Is Impassable.

Nature Is Located Mainly In National Parks, Which Are Vast Tracts Of Wilderness That Have Been Set Aside By The United States Government So Citizens Will Always Have Someplace To Go Where They Can Be Attacked By Bears. And We're Not Talking About Ordinary Civilian Bears, Either: We're Talking About Federal Bears, Which Can Behave However They Want To Because They Are Protected By The Same Union As Postal Clerks.

Wood Heat Is Not New. It Dates Back To A Day Millions Of Years Ago, When A Group Of Cavemen Were Sitting Around, Watching Dinosaurs Rot. Suddenly, Lightning Struck A Nearby Log And Set It On Fire. One Of The Cavemen Stared At The Fire For A Few Minutes, Then Said: Hey! Wood Heat! The Other Cavemen, Who Did Not Understand English, Immediately Beat Him To Death With Stones. But The Key Discovery Had Been Made, And From That Day Forward, The Cavemen Had All The Heat They Needed, Although Their Insurance Rates Went Way Up.

I'm Reading "team Of Rivals'' I'll Probably Ending Up Reading A Bunch Of Books About The Civil War. But I Think My All-time Favorite Book About The War Is The Novel, "the Killer Angels'' By Michael Shaara.

Florida's Number Three Industry, Behind Tourism And Skin Cancer, Is Voter Fraud.

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

Because Of The Level Of My Chess Game, I Was Able - Even Against A Weak Opponent, Such As My Younger Brothers Or The Dog - To Get Myself Checkmated In Under Three Minutes. I Challenge Any Computer To Do It Faster.

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

The Other Major Kind Of Computer Is The "apple," Which I Do Not Recommend, Because It Is A Wuss-o-rama New-age Computer You Basically Just Plug In And Use.

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.

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.

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.

Never Trust Anything You Read In A Travel Article.

I Was A Young Person Once, Shortly After The Polar Ice Caps Retreated, And I Distinctly Recall Believing That Virtually All Adults Were Clueless Goobers.

The Term Sat Is A Set Of Initials, Or Autonym, Standing For Scholastic Attitude Treaty Organization.

Reporters Aren't Stupid. We Were Standing Around Talking About Which Of The 900 Health-care Proposals That Nobody's Going To Accept Is That Day's Hot News. They Know How Silly That Is. But That's What They Do.

Sat Tests Are Designed By Huge Panels Of Experts In Education And Psychology Who Work For Years To Design Tests In Which Not One Single Question Measures Any Bit Of Knowledge That Anyone Might Actually Need In The Real World. We Should Applaud Kids For Getting Lower Scores.

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 Liked Making People Laugh, And I Decided I Was An Atheist Early On. My Dad Was All Right With That. We Argued About It All The Time, But It Was Good-natured. He Was The Most Open-minded Human Being I've Ever Known.

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

The Best Baby-sitters, Of Course, Are The Baby’s Grandparents. You Feel Completely Comfortable Entrusting Your Baby To Them For Long Periods, Which Is Why Most Grandparents Flee To Florida.

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.

We Constantly See Surveys That Reveal This Ignorance, Especially Among Our High School Students,78 Percent Of Whom, In A Recent Nationwide Multiple-choice Test, Identified Abraham Lincoln As 'a Kind Of Lobster.' That's Right: More Than Three Quarters Of Our Nation's Youth Could Not Correctly Identify The Man Who Invented The Telephone.

... Once You're Safely In The Mall, You Should Tie Your Children To You With Ropes So The Other Shoppers Won't Try To Buy Them. Holiday Shoppers Have Been Whipped Into A Frenzy By Months Of Holiday Advertisements, And They Will Buy Anything Small Enough To Stuff Into A Shopping Bag. If Your Children Object To Being Tied, Threaten To Take Them To See Santa Claus; That Ought To Shut Them Up.

She Wanted To Cry, But She Did Not Want Peter To See Her Cry, And She Especially Did Not Want Teacher, With Her Flowing Hair, To See Her Cry.

Once Again We Find Ourselves Enmeshed In The Holiday Season, That Very Special Time Of Year When We Join With Our Loved Ones In Sharing Centuries-old Traditions Such As Trying To Find A Parking Space At The Mall. We Traditionally Do This In My Family By Driving Around The Parking Lot Until We See A Shopper Emerge From The Mall, Then We Follow Her, In Very Much The Same Spirit As The Three Wise Men, Who 2,000 Years Ago Followed A Star, Week After Week, Until It Led Them To A Parking Space.

For People Who Like Peace And Quiet: A Phoneless Cord.

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.

I Can Snap Your Spine Like A Toothpick.

If There Really Is A God Who Created The Entire Universe With All Of Its Glories, And He Decides To Deliver A Message To Humanity, He Will Not Use, As His Messenger, A Person On Cable Tv With A Bad Hairstyle.

In Modern America, Food Is Abundant Everywhere Except Aboard Commercial Airplanes.

It Was You Readers Who Really Came Through, Proving Once Again That When The American People Decide To "get Involved" In A Problem, It Is Best Not To Let Them Have Any Sharp Implements.

So When I Open The Door On Halloween, I Am Confronted By Three Or Four Imaginary Heroes, Such As G.i. Joe, Conan The Barbarian And Oliver North, Who Would Look Very Terrifying Except That They Are Three Feet Tall And Facing In Random Directions. They Stand There Silently For Several Seconds Before An Adult Voice Hisses From The Darkness Behind Them: "say 'trick Or Treat!

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.

Another Important Rule Of Affair-having: Never Be Discreet At The Office.

Never Be Afraid To Try Something New. Remember That A Lone Amateur Built The Ark. A Large Group Of Professionals Built The Titanic.

How Do These Celebrities Stay So Impossibly Thin? Simple: They Have Full-time Personal Trainers, Who Advise Them On Nutrition, Give Them Pep Talks, And Shoot Them With Tranquilizer Darts Whenever They Try To Crawl, On Hunger-weakened Limbs, Toward The Packet Of Rice Cakes That Constitutes The Entire Food Supply In Their 37,000-square-foot Mansions. For Most Celebrities, The Biggest Meal Of The Day Is Toothpaste (they Use Reduced-fat Crest).

Albert Einstein, Who Discovered That A Tiny Amount Of Mass Is Equal To A Huge Amount Of Energy, Which Explains Why, As Einstein Himself So Eloquently Put It In A Famous 1939 Speech To The Physics Department At Princeton, 'you Have To Exercise For A Week To Work Off The Thigh Fat From A Single Snickers.'

He Could Even Think About How Fast He Was Thinking About Things.

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.

U.s. News Organizations Observe The Anniversary Of September 11 With Investigations About The Nation's Continuing Vulnerability To Terrorism. First, The New York Daily News Reports That Two Of Its Reporters Carried Box Cutters, Razor Kinves, And Pepper Spray On Fourteen Commerical Flights Without Getting Caught. Then Abc News Reports That It Smuggled Fifteen Pounds Of Uranium Into New York City. Then Fox News Reports That It Flew Osama Bin Laden To Washington, D.c., And Videotaped Him Touring The White House.

Spiders So Large They Appear To Be Wearing The Pelts Of Small Mammals.

I'm Not Saying That Women Don't Think About Sex Also. I'm Saying That Women Are Capable, For At Least Brief Periods Of Time, Of Not Thinking About Sex, And That Most Guys Are Not.

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.

You Can Be The Smartest Person In The World - Which Bill Clinton Is, And If He's Not, His Wife Is - And Care More Than Anybody Else In The World - Which He Does, I Don't Doubt That For A Minute. And You Can Care So Much That You're Willing To Be Dishonest - You Can Tell People One Thing But Do Another Because You Really Know It's For Their Own Good. And You'll Still Screw It All Up. Because The Whole Premise Of What You're Doing Is Wrong!

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

I've Never Been Struck By Lightning As Far As I Know, So The Higher Power Is Treating Me As Well As Even Those People Who Love Him Very Much.

Why Do We Shave? It Doesn't Seem Like A Natural Activity. There Are No Examples Of Shaving In Nature. The Only Creature That Comes Close Is The Male South Pacific Groping Beetle, Which Sometimes, Just Before Mating, Will Slap On A Little Aqua Velva. But We Think This Resulted From Atomic Testing.

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

One I'm Deeply Into Is Doris Kearns Goodwin's "team Of Rivals." I Was The Only Person In The Us Who Hadn't Read It.

The Places Where Trails Do Not Exist Are Not Well Marked.

If It Weren't For Marriage, Men And Women Would Have To Fight With Total Strangers.

A Printer Consists Of Three Main Parts: The Case, The Jammed Paper Tray And The Blinking Red Light.

I Bet That If You Actually Read The Entire Vastness Of The U.s. Tax Code, You'd Find At Least One Sex Scene . . .

You Might Have Mentioned This To Me Molly,” Said Leonard. “the Fact That There Are Hostile Natives On The Island.” “i Forgot,” Said Molly. “you Forgot?” Said Leonard. “there’s Been A Lot Happening,” Said Molly.

A Sense Of Humor Is A Measurement Of The Extent To Which We Realize That We Are Trapped In A World Almost Totally Devoid Of Reason. Laughter Is How We Express The Anxiety We Feel At This Knowledge.

We're Trying To Make Our Current House Look Domestic So That Somebody Will Want To Buy It. We're Making A Lot Of Simple, Obvious Improvements That Never Would Have Occurred To Us To Make While We Actually Lived Here, Because, Tragically, We Both Happen To Be Domestically Impaired. If We Were Birds, Our Nest Would Consist Of A Single Twig With The Eggs Attached Via Scotch Tape.

I Played Lead Guitar In A Band Called The Federal Duck, Which Is The Kind Of Name That Was Popular In The '60s As A Result Of Controlled Substances Being In Widespread Use. Back Then, There Were No Restrictions, In Terms Of Talent, On Who Could Make An Album, So We Made One, And It Sounds Like A Group Of People Who Have Been Given Powerful But Unfamiliar Instruments As A Therapy For A Degenerative Nerve Disease.

The Real Threat To Whales Is Whaling, Which Has Endangered Many Whale Species.

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.

Chair Lifts Need To Be In Some Places So That We Can Get To Wonderful Views Without Having To Hike To Them.

Note That Both Of These Papers [the New York Post And The New York Daily News] Are Big Sellers In A City Whose Residents Like To Go Around Saying They'd Never Live Anyplace Else On Account Of They'd Miss The Opera.

Avoid The Traffic By Using One Of The Park's Shuttle Buses And View The Elk Rut With A Park Ranger.

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.

I’ve Noticed That One Thing About Parents Is That No Matter What Stage Your Child Is In, The Parents Who Have Older Children Always Tell You The Next Stage Is Worse.

The Central Point Of This Final Chapter Is That - Follow My Logic Carefully Here - Unless You Die, You Will Continue To Get Older. (it's Insights Like This That Separate The Professional Book Author From The Person With A Real Job.)

The Primary Function Of The Government Is - And Here I Am Quoting Directly From The U.s. Constitution - 'to Spew Out Paper.'

I Would Not Know How I Am Supposed To Feel About Many Stories If Not For The Fact That The Tv News Personalities Make Sad Faces For Sad Stories And Happy Faces For Happy Stories.

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.

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

If He (the New York Taxi Driver) Talked To Me, He Might Lose His Concentration, Which Would Be Very Bad Because The Taxi Has Some Kind Of Problem With The Steering, Probably Dead Pedestrians Lodged In The Mechanism, The Result Being That There Is A Delay Of 8 To 10 Seconds Between The Time The Driver Turns The Wheel And The Time The Taxi Actually Changes Direction, A Handicap That The Driver Is Compensating For By Going 175 Miles Per Hour, At Which Velocity We Are Able To Remain Airborne Almost To The Far Rim Of Some Of The Smaller Potholes.

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

A Short Distance Away Is The Tidal Basin, Ringed By Cherry Trees That Every Year Produce Flowers, An Event To Which Washingtonians React As Though It Were The Second Coming Of Christ.

And What Is The Scientific Community Doing About These Problems, Young People? They're Cloning Sheep. Great! Just What We Need! Sheep That Look More Alike Than They Already Do! Thanks A Lot, Scientific Community!

A Perfect Parent Is A Person With Excellent Child-rearing Theories And No Actual Children.

Perfect Parents

Thanks To My Solid Academic Training, Today I Can Write Hundreds Of Words On Virtually Any Topic Without Possessing A Shred Of Information Which Is How I Got A Good Job In Journalism.

I Like Golf Because You Can Be Really Terrible At It, And Still Not Look Much Dorkier Than Anybody Else.

By The Eighties, A Lot Of Radio Stations Had Started Playing "sixties" Music. They Called It "classic Rock," Because They Knew We'd Be Upset If They Came Right Out And Called It What It Is, Namely "middle-aged-person Nostalgia Music.

My Son Wouldn't Go Get Heroin. If He Did Or Didn't, It Wouldn't Have Anything To Do With Whether It Was Legal Or Illegal.

What Happens If A Big Asteroid Hits Earth ? Judging From Realistic Simulations Involving A Sledge Hammer And A Common Laboratory Frog, We Can Assume It Will Be Pretty Bad.

What I Think Is That The F-word Is Basically Just A Convenient Nasty-sounding Word That We Tend To Use When We Would Really Like To Come Up With A Terrific-ally Witty Insult, The Kind Winston Churchill Always Came Up With When Enormous Women Asked Him Stupid Questions At Parties.

One Key Lesson Of History Is That Virtually Anything, Including Afternoon Or Evening Thundershowers, Causes Germany To Invade Belgium.

I Love Halloween. It Reminds Me Of My Happy Childhood Days As A Student At Wampus Elementary School In Armonk, N.y., When We Youngsters Used To Celebrate Halloween By Making Decorations Out Of Construction Paper And That White Paste That You Could Eat.

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.

The Reason It's Called "grape Nuts" Is That It Contains "dextrose," Which Is Also Sometimes Called "grape Sugar," And Also Because "grape Nuts" Is Catchier, In Terms Of Marketing, Than "a Cross Between Gerbil Food And Gravel," Which Is What It Tastes Like.

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

I Actually Kind Of Like Janet Reno. She Seems Like A Nice Enough Lady. But When You're Basically Going Through The Entire Phone Book Trying To Find Women Lawyers Who Don't Have Maids To Pick The Attorney General Of The United States, How Well Can You Do?

Basically Ken Is A Very Gentle, Home-loving Person. I Remember When One Of His Stick Insects Had A Knee Infection. He Stayed Up All Night Rubbing It With Germoline And Banging Its Head On The Table.

'i'm Sorry,' Guys Are Always Telling Women, 'but I'm Just Not Ready To Make A Commitment.' Guys Are In A Permanent State Of Nonreadiness. If Guys Were Turkey Breasts, You Could Put Them In A 350-degree Oven On July Fourth, And They Still Wouldn't Be Done In Time For Thanksgiving.

Computers Are Getting Smarter All The Time. Scientists Tell Us That Soon They Will Be Able To Talk To Us. (and By 'they', I Mean 'computers'. I Doubt Scientists Will Ever Be Able To Talk To Us.)

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.

Dogs Would Make Totally Incompetent Criminals. If You Could Somehow Get A Group Of Dogs To Understand The Concept Of The Kennedy Assassination, They Would All Immediately Confess To It. Whereas You'll Never See A Cat Display Any Kind Of Guilty Behavior, Despite The Fact That Several Cats Were Seen In Dallas On The Grassy Knoll Area, Not That I Wish To Start Rumors.

There Are Also A Number Of Humans Living Up There (canada), And In Many Ways They Have A Lifestyle Quite Similar To Ours, Including Such Traditional American Activities As Driving Japanese Cars.

Famous Designers Think Nothing Of Putting Their Names On Your Clothing, But Would Have The Servants Set The Dogs On You If You Ever Tried To Put Your Name On Their Clothing.

I'm A Big Believer In Anesthesia. I Think It Should Be Used For Every Medical Procedure, Indlucing Routine Physicals.

Panicky Despair Is An Underrated Element Of Writing.

Microsoft Has A New Version Out, Windows Xp, Which According To Everybody Is The 'most Reliable Windows Ever.' To Me, This Is Like Saying That Asparagus Is 'the Most Articulate Vegetable Ever.'

Buying The Right Computer And Getting It To Work Properly Is No More Complicated Than Building A Nuclear Reactor From Wristwatch Parts In A Darkened Room Using Only Your Teeth.

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

I'm Happy To Start On One Topic And End On Another One Entirely, As Long As It's Funny.

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.

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.

For The Benefit Of Those Of You Who Have Real Jobs And Are Not Involved In The News Business, I Should First Explain That . . .

Are We Ever Going To Have A Federal Tax System That Regular People Can Understand?

Auto Racing Is Boring Except When A Car Is Going At Least 172 Miles Per Hour Upside Down.

If You Answered, ''spin The Bottle,'' Then I Frankly Do Not Want To Know Any More About Your Childhood.

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

The Soviet Union At This Time Was Being Run By The Communists, A Group Of Men Fierce In Their Dedication To Wearing Hilariously Bad Suits. Their Leader Was Josef Stalin (russian For "joey Bananas")

The French Are Not Rude. They Just Happen To Hate You. But That Is No Reason To Bypass This Beautiful Country, Whose Master Chefs Have A Well-deserved Worldwide Reputation For Trying To Trick People Into Eating Snails. Nobody Is Sure How This Got Started. Probably A Couple Of French Master Chefs Were Standing Around One Day, And They Found A Snail, And One Of Them Said: 'i Bet That If We Called This Something Like `escargot,' Tourists Would Eat It.' Then They Had Hearty Laugh, Because 'escargot' Is The French Word For 'fat Crawling Bag Of Phlegm.'

You Cannot Paint The Exterior Of Your House. You Have To Take The Paint Chip Down To Show The Paint-chip Nazis.

Socially Prominent People Are Very Fond Of Disease, Because It Gives Them A Chance To Have These Really Elaborate Charity Functions, And The Newspaper Headlines Say 'evening In Paris Ball Raises Money To Fight Gout' Instead Of 'rich People Amuse Themselves'.

You Can Only Be Young Once. But You Can Always Be Immature.

Remember: What Dad Really Wants Is A Nap. Really.

Funny Fathers Day

It Is Important To Be Nice. But Sometimes Niceness Can Be Misconstrued As Weak. Should We Be Nice To Everybody? Should We Be Nice Only When Others Are Nice To Us? Here Are Some Interesting Views About Being Nice. Read These Nice Quotes And Turn On Your Niceness.

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.

You Should Never Say Anything To A Woman That Even Remotely Suggests That You Think She's Pregnant Unless You Can See An Actual Baby Emerging From Her At That Moment.

Far Too Often, We Fathers Avoid The Subject Because It's So Awkward. The Subject I Am Referring To Is: Buying Gifts For Women. This Is An Area Where Many Men Do Not Have A Clue. Exhibit A Was My Father, Who Was A Very Thoughtful Man, But Who Once Gave My Mother, On Their Anniversary, The Following Token Of His Love, His Commitment, And-yes-his Passion For Her: An Electric Blanket.

A Secret Society Within A Secret Society.

San Francisco Leads The World In The Category Of Most People On The Sidewalk Holding Conversations With Purely Imaginary Companions.

I've Come To Realize That You're Going To Get Criticized No Matter What. Somebody Will Always Hate What You Write, Especially If You Write Humor For A Fairly Broad Audience. Somebody Will Always Find It Not Funny And Declare You're Not Funny Anymore. And Sometimes People Are Just Crazy.

There Was Nowhere To Sit Except The Bunk, Which Was Covered With Rotting Food, And A Wooden Stool, Upon Which Sat A Large Fur-covered Lump—an Old Cheese, Perhaps, Or A Dead Cat.

I Tried Sniffing Coke Once, But The Ice Cubes Got Stuck In My Nose.

The One Thing That Unites All Human Beings, Regardless Of Age, Gender, Religion Or Ethnic Background, Is That We All Believe We Are Above-average Drivers.

For A While I Got Into The South Pacific Theater Of World War Ii. I Read "american Caesar" By William Manchester, The Biography Of General Macarthur. Because Of That I Ended Up Reading "tales Of The South Pacific" By James Michener And Then Because Of That Reading His "hawaii." That Is What Happens.

Take Out The Fortune Before You Eat The Cookie.

Entire New Continent Can Emerge From The Ocean In The Time It Takes For A Web Page To Show Up On Your Screen. Contrary To What You May Have Heard, The Internet Does Not Operate At The Speed Of Light; It Operates At The Speed Of The Dmv.

Software: These Programs Give Instruction To The Cpu, Which Processes Billions Of Tiny Facts Called Bytes, And Within A Fraction Of A Second It Sends You An Error Message That Requires You To Call The Customer-support Hot Line And Be Placed On Hold For Approximately The Life-span Of A Caribou.

But The Feeling I Have, You Know, Is That I'll Never Come Close To Reading All, Or Even A Thousandth- A Billionth- Of The Books I'd Probably Love If I Ever Got To Them.

Derangement Is The Only Possible Explanation For Owning A Cat, An Animal Whose Preferred Mode Of Communication Is To Sink Its Claws Three-quarters Of An Inch Into Your Flesh.

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 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.

Many, Many Of You Have Written To Me Asking The Following Question: 'dave, Have Their Been Any New Advancements In The Field Of Artificial Falcon Insemination, And Could These Developments Be Used To Improve The American Electoral Process?'

But From The Perspective Of The Aging Parent, There Is No Major Difference Between Four And Fifteen, Except That When Your Child Is Four, His Motoring Privileges Are Restricted To Little Toy Fisher-price Vehicles Which Are Unlikely (although I Would Not Totally Rule It Out In America) To Sue You.

I Had Arrived At The Airport One Hour Early So That, In Accordance With Airline Procedures, I Could Stand Around.

You've Read Newspaper Stories About Elderly Widows Who Die And Leave Their Entire Estates To Their Pet Cats, Right? Well, Your Cat Reads Those Stories Too, And Has Spent Most Of Its Skulking, Devious Little Life Dreaming About Inheriting All Your Money.

Instead Of A Permit System Or Regulations, The Forest Service Needs To Reduce Worldwide Population Growth To Limit The Number Of Visitors To Wilderness.

Bad Grammar Is The Leading Cause Of Slow, Painful Death In North America.

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.

I Walked Out Of The Movie "lincoln" And Bought The Book [of Doris Kearns Goodwin] At The Bookstore Next Door.

Editorials Are Written By People Who Have Agreed To Have Several Strong Opinions A Day And To Write Them Down, Provided They Do Not Have To Sign Their Names.

If You Tell The Reader It's Funny, Then The Audience Is Like An Audience At A Stand-up Comedy Club And They Expect You To Be Funny, And If You're Not, They Notice. Whereas If You Read A Regular Op-ed About Israel Or The Family Or Medicine, You're Not Starting With The Assumption That You're Supposed To Laugh.

At Certain Times Each Year, We Journalists Do Almost Nothing Except Apply For The Pulitzers And Several Dozen Other Major Prizes. During These Times You Could Walk Right Into Most Newsrooms And Commit A Multiple Axe Murder Naked, And It Wouldn't Get Reported In The Paper Because The Reporters And Editors Would All Be Too Busy Filling Out Prize Applications.

Someone Was Tapping On The Window.

The Word Aerobics Comes From Two Greek Words: Aero, Meaning “ability To,” And Bics, Meaning “withstand Tremendous Boredom.

I Don't Think The Press Has Done A Very Good Job Dealing With Government Spending.the Defense Department With The $9,500 Toilet Seat, That's Not The Problem Anymore. Medicare And Medicaid And Social Security Are The Problem. That's Us. That's Our Generation. There The Press Never Says A Word.

When I'm Writing Columns, It's - All I'm Thinking About Is Jokes, Joke, Joke, Joke, Setup, Punch Line, Joke, Joke, Joke. And I Really Don't Care Where It Goes.

People Don't Like It When You Make Fun Of A Celebrity. When You Make Fun Of A Celebrity, You'll Hear From Really Loyal Fans Of That Celebrity.

I'm Not The Only Taxpayer Who Has No Idea What He's Sending To The Irs. This Year, Only 28 Percent Of All Americans Will Prepare Their Own Tax Returns, According To A Voice In My Head That Invents Accurate-sounding Statistics.

For Most Celebrities, The Biggest Meal Of The Day Is Toothpaste (they Use Reduced-fat Crest).

Spreadsheet: A Kind Of Program That Lets You Sit At Your Desk And Ask All Kinds Of Neat "what If?" Questions And Generate Thousands Of Numbers Instead Of Actually Working.

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.

Bill Gates Is A Very Rich Man Today... And Do You Want To Know Why? The Answer Is One Word: Versions.

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

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

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.

Big Business Never Pays A Nickel In Taxes, According To Ralph Nader, Who Represents A Big Consumer Organization That Never Pays A Nickel In Taxes.

Dogsled-riding Is A Sport That Is Relaxing As Well As Fragrant.

There Are No Bad Haircuts In Cyberspace.

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

Like All Writers, My Greatest Inspiration, My Ultimate Muse, Is A Deadline.

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

His Body Rigid With Terror As He Waited For The Savages To Something Horrible To Him—bash His Head With Clubs, Or Stab Him With Spears, Or… …or Tap Him On The Shoulder.

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.

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

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

Aside From Velcro, Time Is The Most Mysterious Substance In The Universe. You Can't See It Or Touch It, Yet A Plumber Can Charge You Upwards Of Seventy-five Dollars Per Hour For It, Without Necessarily Fixing Anything.

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.

During The Warm Season (august 8 And 9), Maine Is A True Vacation Paradise, Offering Visitors A Chance To Jump Into Crystal-clear Mountain Lakes And See If They Can Get Back Out Again Before Their Bodily Tissue Is Frozen As Solid As A Supermarket Turkey.

Miami Drivers Will Attempt To Pass You Inside A Car Wash.

I Really Try To Think Cinematically, Because That's How People Read. They Create A Theater In Their Minds.

No Man Had Ever Knocked Little Richard Down. But Of Course Ammm Was Not A Man.

A Hundred Years Ago, It Could Take You The Better Part Of A Year To Get From New York To California; Whereas Today, Because Of Equipment Problems At O'hare, You Can't Get There At All.

As Long As Humanity Has Been Human, It Has Looked Toward The Heavens And Dreamed That Some Day, Some Way, There Would Be Giant Federal Contracts Involved.

My Wife, Like Many Women, Actually Likes Wrapping Things. If She Gives You A Gift That Requires Batteries, She Wraps The Batteries Separately, Which To Me Is Very Close To Being A Symptom Of Mental Illness.

Funny Christmas

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.

In More Than 20 Years Of Opening Beers With Guys, I Have Never Seen The Swedish Bikini Team Show Up. Almost Always, The Teams That Show Up In Beer Drinking Situations Consist Of Guys Who Have Been Playing League Softball And Smell Like Bus Seats.

Ask Any Real Estate Broker To Name The Three Most Important Factors In Buying A Property, And He'll Say: "location, Location, Location." Now Ask Him To Name The Chief Justice Of The United States Supreme Court, And He'll Say: "location, Location, Location." This Tells Us That We Should Not Necessarily Be Paying A Whole Lot Of Attention To Real Estate Brokers.

The Taxpayers Cannot Be Relied Upon To Support Performing Arts Such As Opera. As A Taxpayer, I Am Forced To Admit That I Would Rather Undergo A Vasectomy Via Weed Whacker Than Attend An Opera.

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.

The Average Tax Payer Is Not A Big Voluntary Supporter Of The Arts. The Only Art That The Average Taxpayer Buys Voluntarily Either Has A Picture Of Bart Simpson On It Or Little Suction Cups On Its Feet So You Can Stick It Onto A Car Window.

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.

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.'

When I Write My Annual Tax Column, Some Ex-irs Agent Will Complain, "there You Go Irs Bashing Again." They're Always Saying That They're Just Doing Their Job. Someone I Know Once Said, "you Could Get Another Job."

Stache’s Attack Was Perfectly Timed, Thanks To His Veteran-pirate Grasp Tactics—and A Big Piece If Luck.

Democracy: In Which You Say What You Like And Do What You're Told.

American Consumers Have No Problem With Carcinogens, But They Will Not Purchase Any Product, Including Floor Wax, That Has Fat In It.

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