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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.

-Dave Barry

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Palestinian And Israeli Leaders

Dave Barry

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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.

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Mutual Interest

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

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

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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.

The Irs Spends God Knows How Much Of Your Tax Money On These Toll-free Information Hotlines Staffed By Irs Employees, Whose Idea Of A Dynamite Tax Tip Is That You Should Print Neatly.

If You Explain So Clearly That Nobody Can Misunderstand, Somebody Will. If You're Right 90% Of The Time, Why Quibble About The Remaining 3%? In Africa Some Of The Native Tribes Have A Custom Of Beating The Ground With Clubs And Uttering Spine Chilling Cries. Anthropologists Call This A Form Of Primitive Self-expression. In America We Call It Golf.

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I've Been To Washington Many Times Over The Years For Stories, And It Always Seems Remarkably The Same. More The Same Than The Rest Of The Country. It's Almost Like They Dress The Same As They Did 20 Years Ago. The Same Old Guys Are Sitting Outside The Same Dirty, Dingy Secret Offices In The Capitol That You're Not Allowed To Go In.

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

I Was Reading This James Bond Book, And Right Away I Realized That, Like Most Books, It Had Too Many Words.

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

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I Grew Up In The Southwest Bronx. Father An Accountant, Mother A Schoolteacher. Brother Was Six Years Older, Which Explains Why I Gobbled Crystal Meth At 12, Smoked Hashish At 13, And Was Shooting Smack At 17, Which Explains How I Got Hepatitis C, Which Was The Basis Of My First Book, Which Was A Humor Book About Dying.

Spain Travel Tip: If Bathroom Genders Are Indicated By Flamingos, The Boy Flamingo Is The One With A Hat. I Learned This The Hard Way.

I Believe It Was Shakespeare, Or Possibly Howard Cosell, Who First Observed That Marriage Is Very Much Like A Birthday Candle, In That 'the Flames Of Passion Burn Brightest When The Wick Of Intimacy Is First Ignited By The Disposable Butane Lighter Of Physical Attraction, But Sooner Or Later The Heat Of Familiarity Causes The Wax Of Boredom To Drip All Over The Vanilla Frosting Of Novelty And The Shredded Coconut Of Romance.' I Could Not Have Phrased It Better Myself.

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

When Preparing Your Return, You Should Be Sure To Avoid Common Mistakes. The Two Most Common Taxpayer Mistakes, States The Irs Booklet, Are (1) "failure To Include A Current Address," And (2) "failure To Be A Large Industry That Gives Humongous Contributions To Key Tax-law-writing Congresspersons."

You Should Be Prepared For Anything During Divorce Proceedings - Even The Truth.

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

At Least Once Per Year, Some Group Of Scientists Will Become Very Excited And Announce That: •the Universe Is Even Bigger Than They Thought! •there Are Even More Subatomic Particles Than They Thought! •whatever They Announced Last Year About Global Warming Is Wrong.

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.

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.

Reading... A Vacation For The Mind.

The Books All Say That Barracuda Rarely Eat People, But Very Few Barracuda Can Read.

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.

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

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

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The Bad News Was That The Yard Contained A Dog. A Very, Very Large Dog, Wide And Hairy, Like A Cross Between A Rottweiler And A Goodyear Blimp.

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.

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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.

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As A Professional Journalist, I Have Always Been Fascinated By People Who Appear To Have Even More Spare Time Than I Do.

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

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

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Funny Inspirational

Why Else Do We Have Miami, If Not To Give Me Material?

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

People Who Want To Share Their Religious Views With You Almost Never Want You To Share Yours With Them.

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In Fact, When You Get Right Down To It, Almost Every Explanation Man Came Up With For Anything Until About 1926 Was Stupid.

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Never Allow A Child To Spend All Of His Allowance. Insist That He Set Aside A Certain Amount Of Money Every Week And Put It In A Safe Place, Where You Can Get It If You Need To Buy Beer.

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Never Lick A Steak Knife.

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

Productive Work

I Recently Had My Annual Physical Examination, Which I Get Once Every Seven Years, And When The Nurse Weighed Me, I Was Shocked To Discover How Much Stronger The Earth's Gravitational Pull Has Become Since 1990.

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

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

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

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A Full-grown Manatee, Which Can Weigh More Than 1,000 Pounds, Looks Like The Result Of A Genetic Experiment Involving A Walrus And The Goodyear Blimp.

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

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If You Surveyed A Hundred Typical Middle-aged Americans, I Bet You'd Find That Only Two Of Them Could Tell You Their Blood Types, But Every Last One Of Them Would Know The Theme Song From The Beverly Hillbillies.

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.

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.

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

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

Someone Was Tapping On The Window.

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

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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.

If You Have A Big Enough Dictionary, Just About Everything Is A Word.

Magnetism Is One Of The Six Fundamental Forces Of The Universe, With The Other Five Being Gravity, Duct Tape, Whining, Remote Control, And The Force That Pulls Dogs Toward The Groins Of Strangers.

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

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.

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

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

Cambridge University

The One Thing I'm Terrified Of Trying To Write About Is Sex. I Mean My God, My Wife Might Read It Or My Daughter Might Read It Or My Son Might Read It, So No, I've Never Really Written About Eroticism At All.

The Leading Cause Of Death Among Fashion Models Is Falling Through Street Grates.

And, Of Course, You Have The Commercials Where Savvy Businesspeople Get Ahead By Using Their Macintosh Computers To Create The Ultimate American Business Product: A Really Sharp-looking Report.

Proofread Carefully To See If You Any Words Out.

I Tell People View The Federal Government As A Source Of Entertainment. It's A Lot Easier.

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.

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

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

Like Many Members Of The Uncultured, Cheez-it Consuming Public, I Am Not Good At Grasping Modern Art.

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.

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

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

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.

My Therapist Told Me The Way To Achieve True Inner Peace Is To Finish What I Start. So Far Today, I Have Finished 2 Bags Of M&m's And A Chocolate Cake. I Feel Better Already.

We Operate Under A Jury System In This Country, And As Much As We Complain About It, We Have To Admit That We Know Of No Better System, Except Possibly Flipping A Coin.

Flipping A Coin

The Obvious And Fair Solution To The Housework Problem Is To Let Men Do The Housework For, Say, The Next Six Thousand Years, To Even Things Up. The Trouble Is That Men, Over The Years, Have Developed An Inflated Notion Of The Importance Of Everything They Do, So That Before Long They Would Turn Housework Into Just As Much Of A Charade As Business Is Now. They Would Hire Secretaries And Buy Computers And Fly Off To Housework Conferences In Bermuda, But They'd Never Clean Anything.

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.

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

Thus The White Men And Native Americans Were Able, Through The Spirit Of Goodwill And Compromise, To Reach The First In What Would Become A Long Series Of Mutually Beneficial, Breached Agreements That Enabled The Two Cultures To Coexist Peacefully For Stretches Of Twenty And Sometimes Even Thirty Days, After Which It Was Usually Necessary To Negotiate New Agreements That Would Be Even More Mutual And Beneficial, Until Eventually The Native Americans Were Able To Perceive The Vast Mutual Benefits Of Living In Rock-strewn Sectors Of South Dakota.

Native American

As Sensitive And Broad-minded Humans, We Must Never Allow Ourselves To Be In Any Way Judgmental Of The Religious Practices Of Other People, Even When These People Clearly Are Raving Space Loons.

My Son, Rob....said The Only Time He Ever Wraps A Gift Is, Quote, "if It's Such A Poor Gift That I Don't Want To Be There When The Person Opens It."

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.

Men Have No Cause To Criticize Women About The Way They Are About Weddings. Because Men Are Like That About Sports, But It Never Ends. At Least Women, After The Wedding, Say It Wasn't That Big A Deal And They're Never Going To Look At The Dvd Again. Men Never Stop Being Crazy About Sports.

I Will Vote For The First Candidate Who Promises To Use Nuclear Missiles Against Linkedin.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

Although Humans Tend To View Sex As Mainly A Fun Recreational Activity Sometimes Resulting In Death, In Nature It Is A Far More Serious Matter.

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

The World Is Full Of Strange Phenomena That Cannot Be Explained By The Laws Of Logic Or Science. Dennis Rodman Is Only One Example.

[there Is] A Breed Of Fashion Models

European Toilet Paper Is Made From The Same Material That Americans Use For Roofing, Which Is Why Europeans Tend To Remain Standing Throughout Soccer Matches.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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

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 Of The Issues That We Professional Newspaper Columnists Are Required By Union Regulations To Voice Grave Concern About Is The Federal Budget Deficit, Which We Refer To As The "mounting" Deficit, Because Every Extra Word Helps When You Have To Produce A Certain Number Of Gravely Concerned Newsprint Inches.

The More Boring A Newspaper Is, The More It Is Respected. The Most Respected Newspaper In The United States Is The New York Times, Which Has Thousands Of Reporters Constantly Producing Enormous Front-page Stories About Bauxite...the [new York] Post Would Write About Bauxite Only If Famous Celebrites Were Arrested For Snorting It In An Exclusive Manhattan Nightclub.

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.

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.

This Is An Especially Good Time For You Vacationers Who Plan To Fly, Because The Reagan Administration, As Part Of The Same Policy Under Which It Recently Sold Yellowstone National Park To Wayne Newton, Has "deregulated" The Airline Industry. What This Means For You, The Consumer, Is That The Airlines Are No Longer Required To Follow Any Rules Whatsoever. They Can Show Snuff Movies. They Can Charge For Oxygen. They Can Hire Pilots Right Out Of Vending Machine Refill Person School.

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

Perfect Parents

I Still Think Of Myself As A Newspaper Guy And You Live By Deadlines In The Newspaper World, So, They Don't Really Give You Any Excuses. At The Paper They Never Say, "well, We Just Won't Have Tuesday's Paper Come Out, We'll Just Bring Tuesday's Paper Out On Wednesday, So Go Ahead, Take All The Time You Need." They Come Out With That Paper Regardless.

Maybe Somebody Finally Shot The Dog.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Sharks Are As Tough As Those Football Fans Who Take Their Shirts Off During Games In Chicago In January, Only More Intelligent.

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

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.

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.

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

Tokyo Is Huge. Something Like 15 Million People Live There, And My Estimate Is That At Any Given Moment, 14.7 Million Of Them Are Lost.

Another Well-known Paris Landmark Is The Arc De Triomphe, A Moving Monument To The Many Brave Women And Men Who Have Died Trying To Visit It.

...terry Jackson, Who Is The Miami Herald's Automotive Writer And Tv Critic. That's Correct: This Man Gets Paid To Drive New Cars And Watch Television. If He Ever Dies And Goes To Heaven, It's Going To Be A Big Let Down.

Ban Walking Sticks In Wilderness. Hikers That Use Walking Sticks Are More Likely To Chase Animals.

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