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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.

-Dave Barry

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I Guess The Negative

Dave Barry

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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.

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Nobody Understands How Hard It Is, Being A Captain.

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.

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.

This (french-kissing) Is A Really Sexy Thing To Do, According To The French People, Although You Should Bear In Mind That They Also Like To Eat Snails.

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.

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

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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.

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.

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.

There Is Nothing As Relaxing As Being Out On The Open Sea, Listening To The Waves And The Wind And The Sails And Voices Downstairs Yelling "how Do You Flush These Toilets?"

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

Here's A Man Who Was Twice Elected To The Most Powerful Position On Earth Despite Needing A Teleprompter To Correctly Identify What Year It Was.

Talking About Golf Is Always Boring. Playing Golf Can Be Interesting, But Not The Part Where You Try To Hit The Little Ball; Only The Part Where You Drive The Cart.

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

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.

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

I Regularly Read Internet User Groups Filled With Messages From People Trying To Solve Software Incompatibility Problems That, In Terms Of Complexity, Make The U.s. Tax Code Look Like Dr. Seuss.

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

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.

The Major Parties Could Conduct Live Human Sacrifices On Their Podiums During Prime Time, And I Doubt That Anybody Would Notice.

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.

Murphy's Golden Rule: Whoever Has The Gold, Makes The Rules.

The Four Building Blocks Of The Universe Are Fire, Water, Gravel And Vinyl.

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.

The Letters In 'brace Beemer' Can Be Arranged To Spell 'embrace Beer.'

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

Life Is Anything That Dies When You Stomp On It.

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

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.

Guys Are Simple... Women Are Not Simple And They Always Assume That Men Must Be Just As Complicated As They Are, Only Way More Mysterious. The Whole Point Is Guys Are Not Thinking Much. They Are Just What They Appear To Be. Tragically.

And That's The Wonderful Thing About Family Travel: It Provides You With Experiences That Will Remain Locked Forever In The Scar Tissue Of Your Mind.

I Care About Our Young People, And I Wish Them Great Success, Because They Are Our Hope For The Future, And Some Day, When My Generation Retires, They Will Have To Pay Us Trillions Of Dollars In Social Security

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

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.

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

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.'

Although Golf Was Originally Restricted To Wealthy, Overweight Protestants, Today It's Open To Anybody Who Owns Hideous Clothing.

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I Took An Estimated Two Thousand Years Of High School French, And When I Finally Got To France, I Discovered That I Didn't Know One Single Phrase That Was Actually Useful In A Real-life French Situation.

First, A Few Words About This Title. It Isn't Easy, Coming Up With Book Titles. A Lot Of The Really Good Ones Are Taken. Thin Thighs In 30 Days, For Example. Also The Bible.

Another Foreign-policy Triumph For Reagan Was His 1984 Visit To China, Where He Met For More Than Three Hours With Mao Zedong Before Realizing That Mao Was Dead.

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.

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

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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.

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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.

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The Sixties Are Now Considered A Historical Period, Just Like The Roman Empire.

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

American Business Long Ago Gave Up On Demanding That Prospective Employees Be Honest And Hardworking. It Has Even Stopped Hoping For Employees Who Are Educated Enough That They Can Tell The Difference Between The Men's Room And The Women's Room Without Having Little Pictures On The Doors.

Proofread Carefully To See If You Any Words Out.

The Nuclear Generator Of Brain Sludge Is Television.

Sign Outside A Country Shop: We Buy Junk And Sell Antiques.

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Directors Are Always Changing Things At The Last Minute. Actors Will Do A Scene, And The Director Will Say, ‘okay, That Was Perfect, But This Time, Bob, Instead Of Saying “what’s For Dinner?” You Say, “wait A Minute! Benzene Is Actually A Hydrocarbon!” And Say It With A Norwegian Accent. Also, We Think Maybe Your Character Should Have No Arms.

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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.'

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.

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.

Megahertz: This Is Really, Really Big Hertz.

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.

If God Had Wanted Us To Be Concerned For The Plight Of The Toads, He Would Have Made Them Cute And Furry.

Funny, Isn't It? The Airlines Go To All That Trouble To Keep You From Taking A Gun On Board, Then They Just Hand You A Dinner Roll You Could Kill A Musk Ox With.

You Have To Be Careful On The Deck, Because Of The "hatches," Which Are Holes Placed Around A Sailboat At Random To Increase The Insurance Rates.

Dogs Make Good Pets Because They Are Very Loyal

Unlike Cats Dogs Never Scratch You When You Wash Them. They Just Become Very Sad And Try To Figure Out What They Did Wrong.

The Story You Envision As You Start Out Is Always A Great Story; When The Facts Turn Out To Be Different From, Or More Complex Than, What You Expected, Your First Reaction Is Always Disappointment. That's When You Must Fight The Urge To Bend The Story To Your Preconceived Notions. First, It's Dishonest. And Second, In The End, The Truth Is Always The Best Story.

She Goes To Frederick's Of Hollywood At The Mall And Purchases An Explicit Lingerie Outfit So Sheer That You Could Read An Appliance Warranty Through It In An Unlit Closet.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

People - Just Weird People Are Attracted To Miami. And They Come There Not For Serious Reasons, Usually.

Airline Food Is Not Intended For Human Consumption. It's Intended As A Form Of In-flight Entertainment, Wherein The Object Is To Guess What It Is, Starting With Broad Categories Such As "mineral" And "linoleum."

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Karate Is A Form Of Martial Arts In Which People Who Have Had Years And Years Of Training Can, Using Only Their Hands And Feet, Make Some Of The Worst Movies In The History Of The World.

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He Felt A Momentary Pang Of Regret That He Had Not Spent More Time With His Beloved Wife. But It Passed When He Remembered That The Reason He’d Gone To Sea In The First Place Was That He Had Never Really Liked His Beloved Wife.

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.

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In My Experience, If You Go To A Hospital For Any Reason Whatsoever, Including To Read The Gas Meter, They Give You A Tetanus Shot.

I Suspect That Laguardia Is An Elaborate Prank, And New York Has A Real Airport Nearby That Only Locals Know About.

Baby's Room Should Be Close Enough To Your Room So That You Can Hear Baby Cry, Unless You Want To Get Some Sleep, In Which Case Baby's Room Should Be In Peru.

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

It Would Be Hard To Conceive Of Any Activity More Useless Than Stamp Collecting.

Stamp Collecting

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

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.

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

If The Security Personnel Do Their Job Properly, They Just Might Cause You To Miss Your Plane, Thereby Possibly Saving Your Life.

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.

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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.

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.

I Am Not A Violent Person. I Am A Product Of The Flower Power '60s. I Have Actually Worn Bell-bottomed Jeans.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.'

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Inspirational Life

He Was Distracted By A Giggle, And Turned To See A Rare Sight: A Girl.

I Find Myself Having These Conversations Where I Go...you Know, The Guy, In That Place. The Guy In The Place With The Thing, You Know. And It Becomes This Game Of Charades. And Then Finally, We Realize That I Mean The Pope.

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

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

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.

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.

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...)

I Don't Know What You Can Possibly Do For Less Than $50 To Have Somebody Come In Your House.

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?

The Hardest Thing About Being A Guy Is That Women Don't Accept That You Really Are Just A Simple, Pathetic, Labrador Retriever-like Creature. That We Live In A World Were Women Actually Expect You To Think Thoughtful Thoughts, And Have Real Emotions, Which We Don't Have. Having To Try To Live Up To The Imaginary Ideal That Women Have Of What Men Are, Instead Of Just Being What You Are, Which Is Just A Pathetic Creature, But Still.

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

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

The Only Really Good Place To Buy Lumber Is At A Store Where The Lumber Has Already Been Cut And Attached Together In The Form Of Furniture Finished And Put Inside Boxes.

You Should Definitely Have A Travel Agent. Why Go Through All The Hassle Of Dealing With Airlines, Hotels, And Rental-car Agencies Yourself, Only To See The Arrangements Get All Screwed Up, When With Just A Single Phone Call You Can Have A Trained Professional Screw Them Up For You?

You Can, Legally, Possibly Hit And Kill A Fellow Golfer With A Ball, And There Will Not Be A Lot Of Trouble Because The Other Golfers Will Refuse To Stop And Be Witnesses Because They Will Want To Keep Playing.

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

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.

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 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.

Never Board A Commercial Aircraft If The Pilot Is Wearing A Tank Top.

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.

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.

The Problem ... Is That We Have Run Out Of Dinosaurs To Form Oil With. Scientists Working For The Department Of Energy Have Tried To Form Oil Using Other Animals; They've Piled Thousands Of Tons Of Sand And Middle Eastern Countries On Top Of Cows, Raccoons, Haddock, Laboratory Rats, Etc., But So Far All They Have Managed To Do Is Run Up An Enormous Bulldozer-rental Bill And Anger A Lot Of Middle Eastern Persons. None Of The Animals Turned Into Oil, Although Most Of The Laboratory Rats Developed Cancer.

I Never Had The Vaguest Idea Whether Any Of It Had Anything To Do With Me, Especially Being A Sixth Grader. When I Got Older And Traveled, I'd Read About The History Of Where I Was Going. I'd Be Like, "oh, History Is Kind Of Interesting."

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.

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.

When To Arrive At The Airport?: You Should Be At The Airport Already.

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

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.

England Manufactures Most Of The World's Airline Food, As Well As All The Food You Ever Ate In Your Junior-high-school Cafeteria.

Yet Another Spunky Li'l Nasa Robot Lands And Begins Transmitting Back Photographs Of Rocks That Appear Virtually Identical To The Rock Photos Beamed Back By All The Other Spunky Li'l Nasa Robots, Thus Confirming Suspicions That The Universe Has A Lot Of Rocks In It.

The Voice Belonged To Mr. Pzyrbovich, An Algebra Teacher Who Was Always Called Mr. P, For Obvious Reasons. He Has A Heavy Accent, Which A Lot Of Kids Said Made Him Hard To Understand, Although To Be Fair Some Of These Kids Would Have Never Understood Algebra Anyway.

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

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.

Smee! Raise The Ladies!

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.

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

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.

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.

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

We Idolized The Beatles, Except For Those Of Us Who Idolized The Rolling Stones, Who In Those Days Still Had Many Of Their Original Teeth.

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

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