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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?

-Dave Barry

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I Don't Like Anything

Dave Barry

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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?

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I Guess The Negative Thing That Happens To Me Is That I'm Old Now. They Said There Was A Generation I Was Too Young For And Now Some Will Say There's Probably 10 Generations I'm Too Old For. They'll Say, Isn't He Dead Or Retired Or Whatever? Or It Just Becomes Fashionable To Say "oh He's Not Funny Anymore," Which, I Don't Know, Maybe To Them I'm Not. I'm More Likely To Hear That Now Than I Am To Hear That I'm Unacceptably Risqué.

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.

Here In The News Media, Our Focus Is On Speed. When We Get Hold Of Some New And Possibly Inaccurate Information, Our Highest Priority Is To Get It To You, The Public, Before Our Competitors Do. If The News Media Owned Airlines, There Would Be A Lot Less Concern About How Many Planes Crashed, And A Lot More Concern About Whose Plane Hit The Ground First.

Crabgrass Can Grow On Bowling Balls In Airless Rooms, And There Is No Known Way To Kill It That Does Not Involve Nuclear Weapons.

You Will Never Find Anybody Who Can Give You A Clear And Compelling Reason Why We Observe Daylight Savings Time.

Compelling Reason

Take The Folks At Coca-cola. For Many Years, They Were Content To Sit Back And Make The Same Old Carbonated Beverage. It Was A Good Beverage, No Question About It; Generations Of People Had Grown Up Drinking It And Doing The Experiment In Sixth Grade Where You Put A Nail Into A Glass Of Coke And After A Couple Of Days The Nail Dissolves And The Teacher Says: Imagine What It Does To Your Teeth! So Coca-cola Was Solidly Entrenched In The Market, And The Management Saw No Need To Improve.

My Mother Told Me, “son, It Is Better To Be Rich And Healthy Than Poor And Sick.” I Have Tried Very Hard To Heed Those Words.

Most Married Couples, Even Though They Love Each Other Very Much In Theory, Tend To View Each Other In Practice As Large Teeming Flaw Colonies, The Result Of Being That They Get On Each Other's Nerves And Regularly Erupt Into Vicious Emotional Shouting Matches Over Such Issues As Toaster Settings.

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

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

A Child Can Go Only So Far In Life Without Potty Training. It Is Not Mere Coincidence That Six Of The Last Seven Presidents Were Potty Trained, Not To Mention Nearly Half Of The Nation's State Legislators.

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

Today's Scientific Question Is: What In The World Is Electricity? And Where Does It Go After It Leaves The Toaster?

Dinner Special - Turkey $2.35; Chicken Or Beef $2.25; Children $2.00

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

Proofread Carefully To See If You Any Words Out.

To People Who Make Moving Ads That Block The View Of Websites: Not Only Will We Not Buy From You, But We Want Shrews To Eat Your Liver.

I Am Not The Only Person Who Uses His Computer Mainly For The Purpose Of Diddling With His Computer.

I'm Not Sure You Can Count As History, Was Keith Richards's "life," Which He So Modestly Titled It. I Did Find It A Fascinating Book. Keith's A Pretty Honest Fellow.

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

Speaking Of Food, English Cuisine Has Received A Lot Of Unfair Criticism Over The Years, But The Truth Is That It Can Be A Very Pleasant Surprise To The Connoisseur Of Severely Overcooked Livestock Organs Served In Lukewarm Puddles Of Congealed Grease. England Manufactures Most Of The World's Airline Food, As Well As All The Food You Ever Ate In Your Junior-high-school Cafeteria.

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.

Rembrandt's First Name Was Beauregard, Which Is Why He Never Used It.

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

I Guess Nobody Assumes Anybody Is A Libertarian. It's A More Complex Political Discussion Than Most People Are Used To, To Explain Why You Think The Way You Do About Public Education Or Drug Laws, And Why It's Not As Simple As Being For Or Against Something.

Once Again, We Come To The Holiday Season, A Deeply Religious Time That Each Of Us Observes, In His Own Way, By Going To The Mall Of His Choice.

As A Professional Journalist, I Am Always Looking For New Ways To Get Paid For Being Motionless.

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.

One Day Soon The Gillette Company Will Announce The Development Of A Razor That, Thanks To A Computer Microchip, Can Actually Travel Ahead In Time And Shave Beard Hairs That Don't Even Exist Yet

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.

In South Florida, We Have Industrial Cockroaches That Have To Be Equipped With Loud Warning Beepers So You Can Get Out Of Their Way When They Back Up.

Harry Is Heavily Into Camping, And Every Year In The Late Fall, He Makes Us All Go To Assateague, Which Is An Island On The Atlantic Ocean Famous For Its Wild Horses. I Realize That The Concept Of Wild Horses Probably Stirs Romantic Notions In Many Of You, But This Is Because You Have Never Met Any Wild Horses In Person. In Person, They Are Like Enormous Hooved Rats. They Amble Up To Your Camp Site, And Their Attitude Is: 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.

Actually, There Are People From All Ove - Not Just Latin America, Certainly Not Just Cuba, But All Over Europe, All Over The United States. I Like That. I Like Knowing A Lot Of Different Types Of People. And I Can Afford To Live In A Relatively Safe Part Of Miami.

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.

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

...hell, Which As Every Frequent Traveler Knows, Is In Concourse D Of O'hare Airport.

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.

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).

There Are No Bad Haircuts In Cyberspace.

On Behalf Of The Newspaper Industry I Wish To Announce Some Changes We're Making To Serve You Better. When I Say 'serve You Better,'' I Mean 'increase Our Profits.' We Newspapers Are Very Big On Profits These Days. We're A Business, Just Like Any Other Business, Except That We Employ English Majors.

We'll Try To Cooperate Fully With The Irs, Because, As Citizens, We Feel A Strong Patriotic Duty Not To Go To Jail.

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.

Be Advised That There Is No Parking In Europe.

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.

We Journalists Make It A Point To Know Very Little About An Extremely Wide Variety Of Topics; This Is How We Stay Objective.

I've Gained A Few Pounds Around The Middle. The Only Lower Body Garments I Own That Still Fit Me Comfortably Are Towels.

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.

If Charles Lindbergh, Flying With No Instruments Other Than A Bologna Sandwich, Managed To Cross The Atlantic And Land Safely On A Runway Completely Covered With French People, Why Are Today's Airplanes, Which Are Equipped With Radar And Computers And Individualized Liquor Bottles, Unable To Cope With Fog?

Trails Need To Be Reconstructed. Please Avoid Building Trails That Go Uphill.

My Theory Is That There Is A Finite Amount Of Intelligence In A Family, And You're Supposed To Gradually Transfer It To Your Children Over A Period Of Many Years. This Is Why Your Parents Started To Get So Stupid Just At The Time In Your Life When You Were Getting Really Smart.

You Know How On The Evening News They Always Tell You That The Stock Market Is Up In Active Trading, Or Off In Moderate Trading, Or Trading In Mixed Activity, Or Whatever. Well, Who Gives A

The Whole Thing About Whether You Smoke Marijuana Or Not Is So Ridiculous. That And Whether You Protested The Vietnam War. Give Me A Break. Especially The Marijuana Thing.

The Objective Is Not So Much To Walk Your Dog, As It Is To Empty Him.

It Always Rains On Tents. Rainstorms Will Travel Thousands Of Miles, Against Prevailing Winds For The Opportunity To Rain On A Tent.

What I Like Best About The Telephone Is That It Keeps You In Touch With People, Particularly People Who Want To Sell You Magazine Subscriptions In The Middle Of The Night.

If For Some Reason You Are Unsure Where To Go, All You Have To Do Is Stand There Looking Lost, And Within Seconds A Helpful New Yorker Will Approach To See If You Have Any "spare" Change.

Most Recently I Read Michael Lewis "boomerang." The Other Guy I Love Is Bill Bryson.

Congress Is Thinking About Eliminating A Federal Program Under Which Scientists Broadcast Signals To Alien Beings. This Would Be A Large Mistake. Alien Beings Have Atomic Blaster Death Cannons. You Cannot Cut Off Their Federal Programs As If They Were Merely Poor People.

Winter's Here, And You Feel Lousy: You're Coughing And Sneezing; Your Muscles Ache; Your Nose Is An Active Mucus Volcano. These Symptoms -- So Familiar At This Time Of Year -- Can Mean Only One Thing: Tiny Fanged Snails Are Eating Your Brain.

Your Job Is To Give People A Reason To Keep Reading.

Another Possible Source Of Guidance For Teenagers Is Television, But Television's Message Has Always Been That The Need For Truth, Wisdom And World Peace Pales By Comparison With The Need For A Toothpaste That Offers Whiter Teeth *and* Fresher Breath.

Fortunately The Boat We Rented Had A Motor In It You Will Definitely Want This Feature On Your Sailboat Too, Because If You Put Up The Sails, The Boat Tips Way Over, And You Could Spill Your Beer.

In Fact, Just About All The Major Natural Attractions You Find In The West- The Grand Canyon, The Badlands, The Goodlands, The Mediocrelands, The Rocky Mountains And Robert Redford- Were Caused By Erosion.

As The Saying Goes: "if You're Not Part Of The Solution, You're A Newspaper Columnist."

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.

Until I Became A Parent, I Thought Children Just Naturally Knew How To Catch A Ball, That Catching Was An Instinctive Biological Reflex That All Children Are Born With, Like Knowing How To Operate A Remote Control Or Getting High Fevers In Distant Airports.

Too Many Rocks In The Mountains.

France: As A Professional Journalist, I Like The Idea Of A Society Where It Is Considered An Acceptable Occupation To Basically Sit Around And Drink.

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 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?

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.

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.

People Don't Think Of Writers As Sex Objects. The Women Who Write To Me And Suggest That We Ought To Have Sex Usually Turn Out To Be, Like, Eighty. And Their Letters Always End With, "just Joking."

Do Not Put This Product In A Big Vat And Drop Rats Into It From A Cat-walk.

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.

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.

It's Very Slow For Me To Create Humor. It Takes Me A Long Time To Write A Humor Piece. It Takes Days.

Generally The Pythons Are Better Than Anything Else At Killing.

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.

Love And Pregnancy And Riding On A Camel Cannot Be Hid

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.

The Mollusks—generous Hosts When They Weren’t Trying To Kill You.

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.

Your Digestive System Is Your Body's Fun House, Whereby Food Goes On A Long, Dark, Scary Ride, Taking All Kinds Of Unexpected Twists And Turns, Being Attacked By Vicious Secretions Along The Way, And Not Knowing Until The Last Minute Whether It Will Be Turned Into A Useful Body Part Or Ejected Into The Dark Hole By Mister Sphincter.

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.

If You Were To Open Up A Baby's Head - And I Am Not For A Moment Suggesting That You Should - You Would Find Nothing But An Enormous Drool Gland.

Nobody Understands How Hard It Is, Being A Captain.

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

I Think I Became Funny Because I Grew Up In The Bronx. I Was Small And Weak And Jewish Instead Of Large And Fierce And Puerto Rican. You Need Something.

All Of Us Are Born With A Set Of Instinctive Fears - Of Falling, Of The Dark, Of Lobsters, Of Falling On Lobsters In The Dark, Of Speaking Before A Rotary Club, And Of The Words "some Assembly Required".

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.

See, When The Government Spends Money, It Creates Jobs; Whereas When The Money Is Left In The Hands Of Taxpayers, God Only Knows What They Do With It. Bake It Into Pies, Probably. Anything To Avoid Creating Jobs.

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)

Camping Is Nature's Way Of Promoting The Motel Business.

I Never Start A Section Of The Story Without Knowing How It Will End. I Also Consciously Try To Shape The Story As Though It Were A Movie.

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

Denmark (also Called Norway) Is Best Known As The Original Home Of The Prune Danish As Well As The Vikings, Who Wore Hats With Horns Sticking Out Of Them, And For A Very Good Reason: They Were Insane.

Reading... A Vacation For The Mind.

You're Not Allowed To Park A Truck In Your Driveway. You're Not Allowed To Work On Your House On Sunday. The People Who Enforce These Laws Are Nuts. After I Wrote A Column On This, I Got I Don't Know How Many Letters From Coral Gables Homeowners, Story After Story After Story, Wonderfully Horrible Stories. And The Venom They Felt For Their Own Government!

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.

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

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.

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.)

Always Remember That If Editors Were So Damned Smart, They Would Know How To Dress.

Everyone Has A Right To Be Stupid. Some Just Abuse The Privilege.

Don't Get Me Wrong. I Like Disney World. The Rest Rooms Are Clean Enough For Neurosurgery, And The Employees Say Things Like "howdy, Folks!" And Actually Seem To Mean It. You Wonder: Where Do They Get These People? My Guess: 1952. I Think Old Walt Realized, Way Back Then, That There Would Eventually Be A Shortage Of Cheerful People, So He Put All The Residents Of South Western Nebraska Into A Giant Freezer With A Huge Picture Of Jiminy Cricket On The Outside, And The Corporation Has Been Thawing Them Out As Needed Ever Since.

I Am Much More Likely To Care About Someone Trying To Be Funny And Give Them Some Credit For Whatever He Or She Did That Was Remotely Funny Than I Am To Be Mused By Somebody Declaring This Isn't Funny, That Isn't Funny, This Sucks. If You Want To Write Humor, You're Going To Have To Get Used To That.

In Los Angeles, The Jury In The Reginald Denny Beating Trial, After Much Thinking, Concludes, That Person A Is Not Necessarily Trying To Kill Person B Just Because Person A Happens To Very Deliberately Bash Person B's Skull In With A Brick. The Verdict Is Applauded By Scientists At The Tobacco Institute.

The Word User Is The Word Used By The Computer Professional When They Mean Idiot.

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.

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!

I Hate To Speak For The Whole Society, But I Will. I'm A Journalist, It's My Job. There's Been Something Of A Reaction Against Political Correctness. Needless To Say, The Government Hasn't Caught Up Yet.

This Year, U.s. Airlineswill Carry A Record 143 Million Passengers, Who Will Be In The Air For 382 Million Hours, During Which They Will Be Fed An Estimated Total Of Four Peanuts.

And So By The Fifteenth Century, On October 8, The Europeans Were Looking For A New Place To Try To Get To, And They Came Up With A New Concept: The West.

If You Had To Identify, In One Word, The Reason Why The Human Race Has Not Achieved, And Never Will Achieve, Its Full Potential, That Word Would Be 'meetings.'

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

The Universe Has Fascinated Mankind For Many, Many Years, Dating Back To The Very Earliest Episodes Of Star Trek, When The Brave Crew Of The Enterprise Set Out, Wearing Pajamas, To Explore The Boundless Voids Of Space, Which Turned Out To Be As Densely Populated As Queens, New York. Virtually Every Planet They Found Was Inhabited, Usually By Evil Beings With Cheap Costumes And Russian Accents, So Finally The Brave Crew Of The Enterprise Returned To Earth To Gain Weight And Make Movies.

Mother Nature Clearly Intended For Us To Get Our Food From The "patty" Group, Which Includes Hamburgers, Fish Sticks, And Mcnuggets- Foods That Have Had All Of Their Organs Safely Removed.

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

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

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 Never Stop Running. I'm Not One Of The Weenies Who Drop Out Just Because The Electoral College Votes. I'm Still In The Race. I'm An Extremely Corrupt Candidate And I Stress That In Case Anybody In Our Reading Audience Is Interested In Sending Me Money.

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

It Is A Scientific Fact That Your Body Will Not Absorb Cholesterol If You Take It From Another Person's Plate.

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.

Maybe Somebody Finally Shot The Dog.

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.

Nobody Is Excused From The Excellence Trend. Babies Are Not Excused. Starting Right After They Get Out Of The Womb, Modern Babies Are Exposed To Instructional Flashcards Designed To Make Them The Best Babies They Can Possibly Be, So They Can Get Into Today's Competitive Preschools. Your Eighties Baby Sees So Many Flashcards That He Never Gets An Unobstructed View Of His Parents' Faces. As An Adult, He'll Carry Around A Little Wallet Card That Says "7x9=63," Because It Will Remind Him Of Mother.

The Newspaper Industry When I Came Along In The Mid-70s Was Rich And Powerful And Growing And Hungry For Material And Open To New People. None Of That Is True In The Newspaper Industry Today. Print In General Is Pretty Rugged. The Good Thing Is That You Can Gain A Foothold On The Internet Because Everybody Has Access To It, Even Things Like Twitter - I Mean, You Can Get A Reputation For Being Funny Pretty Quickly On Twitter, On A Blog, That Kind Of Thing.

There Comes A Time When You Should Stop Expecting Other People To Make A Big Deal About Your Birthday. That Time Is Age 11.

There Comes A Time

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.

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

There Are Two Distinctive Classes Of People Today, Those Who Have Personal Computers, And Those Who Have Several Thousand Extra Dollars Apiece.

The Japanese Tend To Communicate Via Nuance And Euphemism, Often Leaving Important Things Unsaid; Whereas Americans Tend To Think They're Being Subtle When They Refrain From Grabbing The Listener By The Shirt.

I Was Very Pleased To Get A Supreme Court Justice Suggesting A Column, So I Went And Did A Column About Beano. I Went With My Wife And Another Guy To A Mexican Restaurant, Which We Thought Would Be The Ultimate Test For An Antiflatulance Product. There's A Reason Most Of Mexico Is Located Out Of Doors. And It Worked. Several Newspapers Refused To Run That Column. But They Did Run Advertisements For Beano.

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.

Back Then, The Entire Internet Consisted Of Two Slow, Boxcar-sized Univac Computers About 50 Feet Apart, Connected By A Wire. It Would Take One Of These Computers An Entire Day To Send An Email To The Other One, Which Would Immediately Delete It, Because It Was A Viagra Ad.

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

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

Software Is Usually Accompanied By Documentation In The Form Of Big Fat Scary Manuals That Nobody Ever Reads. In Fact, For The Past Five Years Most Of The Manuals Shipped With Software Products Have Actually Been Copies Of Stephen King's The Stand With New Covers Pasted On.

I Would Say That The Single Most Important Conclusion I Reached, After Traveling Through Japan, As Well As Countless Hours Reading, Studying, And Analyzing This Fascinating Culture, Is That You Should Always Tighten The Cap On The Shampoo Bottle Before You Put It In Your Suitcase.

I Have Seen Women Walk Right Past A Tv Set With A Football Game On And - This Always Amazes Me - Not Stop To Watch, Even If The Tv Is Showing Replays Of What We Call A "good Hit," Which Is A Tackle That Causes At Least One Major Internal Organ To Actually Fly Out Of A Player's Body.

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

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

I Was A Middle-of-the-road Democrat More Than Anything Else. I Know I Voted For Carter. Watergate Taught Me How Bad The Republicans Were.

My Current Computer, In Addition To 'dos,' Has 'windows,' Which Is Another Invention Of Bill Gates, Designed As A Security Measure To Thwart Those Users Who Are Somehow Able To Get Past Dos.

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.

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.

Sir,” James Asked, “what Are We Going To Do?” “we’re Going To Look For Water,” Said Alf. “and Food?” Said Tubby Ted. “water First,” Said Alf. “we Can Go Days Without Food.” “we Can What?” Tubby Ted Shouted.

I Do Some Of My Best Reading While Seated In The Bathroom.

The Badness Of A Movie Is Directly Proportional To The Number Of Helicopters In It.

As Americans We Must Always Remember That We All Have A Common Enemy, An Enemy That Is Dangerous, Powerful, And Relentless. I Refer, Of Course, To The Federal Government.

I Don't Have Any Insight Or Understanding On Anything About The Government. All I Think Is That It's Stupid - Which Is The One Perspective That's Almost Completely Lacking In Washington.

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.

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!

Of Course, The Truth Is That The Congresspersons Are Too Busy Raising Campaign Money To Read The Laws They Pass. The Laws Are Written By Staff Tax Nerds Who Can Put Pretty Much Any Wording They Want In There. I Bet That If You Actually Read The Entire Vastness Of The Us Tax Code, You'd Find At Least One Sex Scene. ("yes, Yes, Yes!" Moaned Vanessa As Lance, His Taut Body Moist With Moisture, Again And Again Depreciated Her Adjusted Gross Rate Of Annualized Fiscal Debenture...)

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.

Stuffwise We Are Not A Lean Operation. We're The Kind Of People Who, If We Were Deciding What Absolute Minimum Essential Items We'd Need To Carry In Our Backpacks For The Final, Treacherous Ascent To The Summit Of Mount Everest, Would Take Along Aquarium Filters, Just In Case.

If A Woman Has To Choose Between Catching A Fly Ball And Saving An Infant's Life, She Will Choose To Save The Infant's Life Without Even Considering If There Are Men On Base.

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.

Here's A Simple Experiment That You Might Want To Try If There Is Absolutely Nothing Else Going On In Your Life. All You Need Is A Cork, A Bar Magnet, And A Pail Of Water. Simply Attach Your Magnet To Your Cork, Then Drop It Into The Water, And Voilà (literally, "you Have A Compass")-you Have A Compass. How Does It Work? Simple. Notice That, No Matter Which Way You Turn The Bucket, The Cork Always Floats On Top Of The Water (unless The Magnet Is Too Heavy). Using This Scientific Principle, Early Hardy Mariners Were Able To Tell At A Glance Whether They Were Sinking!

Too Many Bugs And Leeches And Spiders And Spiderwebs. Please Spray The Wilderness To Rid The Area Of These Pests.

The Olympic Movement Simply Cannot Allow The Russians To Become Estranged, Because Russia Is A Vital Part Of The World Sports Community, In The Sense Of Having Nuclear Missiles.

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.

If You Look At Any List Of Great Modern Writers Such As Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, And F. Scott Fitzgerald, You'll Notice Two Things About Them: 1. They All Had Editors. 2. They Are All Dead. Thus We Can Draw The Scientific Conclusion That Editors Are Fatal.

Scott Fitzgerald

You Should Not Confuse Your Career With Your Life.

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

I Have Read That, On The Average, The Japanese Are Getting Taller, But At The Moment They Seem To Be About The Same Height As American Junior-high-school Students, Only With Fewer Guns.

I Feel Like I Have More Experience With Publishing Humor Than Pretty Much Any Editor I'm Going To Be Dealing With So Sometimes I'll Get A Little Bit Nuts If I Write Something I Know Is Good A Certain Way, And Some Editor Because Of Some Restriction He Has And Wants To Change It That I Know Is Going To Make It Less Funny That'll Piss Me Off And Then I'm Inclined To Go, "well, Hey I've Been Doing This A Long Time, Maybe You Should..." That Doesn't Happen That Often, But I'm More Likely To Say That Now Than I Would Have Been A Long Time Ago. Because Dammit, I'm Infallible!

And Now, The Superstore - Unequaled In Size, Unmatched In Variety, Unrivaled Inconvenience.

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

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.

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.

It Takes A Minimum Of Six People, Working In Close Harmony, To Successfully Flush A Nautical Toilet. That's Why Those Old Ships Carried Such Large Crews.

A Person Who Is Nice To You, But Rude To The Waiter, Is Not A Nice Person.

For Dad, The Perfect Father's Day Would Be One In Which He Didn't Even Realize That It Was Father's Day, Because Nobody Was Making Him Appreciate Gifts He Didn't Want, Or Read Greeting Cards Filled With Lame Father's Day Poetry.

Smee! Raise The Ladies!

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.

I Believe Many Harley Guys Spend More Time Revving Their Engines Than Actually Driving Anywhere; I Sometimes Wonder Why They Bother To Have Wheels On Their Motorcycles.

Eventually Everyone Has To Die, Except Elvis.

A Secret Society Within A Secret Society.

I Was Really Bummed When I Got To The Last One Of Tony Hillerman Navajo Detective Books.

The Russians Will Never Be Able To Get Their Missiles Thought The Dense Protective Layer Of Delayed Flights Circling Over The United States In Complex, Puke-inducing Holding Patterns.

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

Here's My Proposal, Which Is Based On The Tv Show Survivor: We Put The Entire Congress On An Island. All The Food On This Island Is Locked Inside A Vault, Which Can Be Opened Only By An Ordinary American Taxpayer Named Bob. Every Day, The Congresspersons Are Given A Section Of The Tax Code, Which They Must Rewrite So That Bob Can Understand It. If He Can, He Lets Them Eat That Day; If He Can't, He Doesn't.

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.

...when The Armed Robber Of Unhappiness Knocks Over The Keebler Cookie Display Of Our Complacency, And Bangs The Samurai Sword Of Negativity On The Checkout Counter Of Our Dreams, We Must Not Be Afraid To Hurl The Fruit Cocktail Can Of Hope.

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.

If Black Stache Laughed, You Laughed. If He Snarled, You Snarled. If He Breathed In Your Direction, You Ran For Cover.

Thus The Metric System Did Not Really Catch On In The States, Unless You Count The Increasing Popularity Of The Nine-millimeter Bullet.

Advice To Expectant Mothers: You Must Remember That When You Are Pregnant, You Are Eating For Two. But You Must Remember That The Other One Of You Is About The Size Of A Golf Ball, So Let's Not Go Overboard With It. I Mean, A Lot Of Pregnant Women Eat As Though The Other Person They're Eating For Is Orson Welles.

There's An Old Saying Among Scientific Guys: "you Can't Make An Omelet Without Breaking Eggs, Ideally By Dropping A Cement Truck On Them From A Crane."

We Have Always Had Dogs, And They Have Faithfully Performed Many Valuable Services For Us, Such As: 1. Peeing On Everything. 2. When We're Driving In Our Car, Alerting Us That We Have Passed Another Dog By Barking Real Loud In Our Ears For The Next 114 Miles. 3. Trying To Kill The Avon Lady.

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.

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.

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.

I Watched As An Extremely Nerdy Exhibitor - I'm Talking About A Guy Who Makes Bill Gates Look Like Brad Pitt.

I Think Twitter Is Kind Of Fun, It's Not Deep And It Never Will Be, But It's A Great Way To Communicate One-liners And To Sort Of See What People Are Laughing About. It's A Terrific Source Of Misinformation.

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

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.

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