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This Is The Most Elaborate And Luxurious Method Of Convincing Others That You Can Cook. Take Everybody Out On Your Yacht Until They're Green In The Face. Then You Can Rave For Weeks About Your Sauce Marinara And No One Will Gainsay You.

-P. J. O'Rourke

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This Is The Most

P. J. O'Rourke

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This Is The Most Elaborate And Luxurious Method Of Convincing Others That You Can Cook. Take Everybody Out On Your Yacht Until They're Green In The Face. Then You Can Rave For Weeks About Your Sauce Marinara And No One Will Gainsay You.

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More From P. J. O'Rourke

As I Get Older, All Sorts Of Things Become Less Funny. Once One Has Children, Any Cruelty Involving Children Becomes Far Less Amusing Than When One Was At The Mercy Of One's Friends' And Relatives' Children.

Political Stuff Is All About His [hunter S. Thompson] Reaction To A Situation. And My Stuff Is Much More Externally Driven.

The Question Nowadays Is Not What Makes Government Work. The Question Is How Do We Make It Stop.

Government Work

When [george W.] Bush Was Elected, I Think They Thought I Would Have Some Sort Of Special "in" With That Administration, To Provide Some Sort Of Inside Poop. Which Is Not Something I'd Be Interested In Doing, And Anyway, I Didn't. I Actually Knew More People In His Dad's Administration. So It Was Obviously Winding Down At Rolling Stone, And They Were Having Financial Troubles, Too. They Weren't Getting The Advertising, And The Issues Were Getting Thin. They Fired Bob Love, Who'd Been My Editor There For A Long Time.

You Can Learn All About The Human Condition From Covering The Crime Beat In A Big City - You Don't Need To Go To Beirut For That - But A Foreign Correspondent Begins To Understand Poverty From A Different Perspective.

Government Usually Doesn't Work. It Doesn't Work Because It Is Political. People Who Are Wise, Good, Smart, Skillful, Or Hardworking Don't Need Politics, They Have Jobs. The Difference Between The Political Process And An Honest Life Is The Difference Between Parading Around Waving Picket Signs While Hollering Catcalls In Front Of The White House And Getting Up In The Morning To Go Make A Living.

Staying Married May Have Long-term Benefits. You Can Elicit Much More Sympathy From Friends Over A Bad Marriage Than You Ever Can From A Good Divorce.

A U.s. Dollar Is An Iou From The Federal Reserve Bank. It's A Promissory Note That Doesn't Actually Promise Anything. It's Not Backed By Gold Or Silver.

It Is Easy To Understand Why The Cat Has Eclipsed The Dog As Modern America's Favorite Pet. People Like Pets To Possess The Same Qualities They Do. Cats Are Irresponsible And Recognize No Authority, Yet Are Completely Dependent On Others For Their Material Needs. Cats Cannot Be Made To Do Anything Useful. Cats Are Mean For The Fun Of It. In Fact, Cats Possess So Many Of The Same Qualities As People That It Is Often Hard To Tell The People And The Cats Apart.

Summing It Up..."where's A Good Place For Dinner?" I Asked. "there's The Brasserie Lipp On The Avenue St. Germaine," She Said, "or La Coupole In Montmartre." "not La Coupole," I Said. "i've Been There Before. That's The Place That's Crowded And Noisy And Smells Bad And Everybody's Rude As Hell, Isn't It?" "i Think You Just Described France," She Said.

Imagine A Weight-loss Program At The End Of Which, Instead Of Better Health, Good Looks, And Hot Romantic Prospects, You Die. Somalia Had Become Just This Kind Of Spa.

Good Manners Can Replace Morals. It May Be Years Before Anyone Knows If What You Are Doing Is Right. But If What You Are Doing Is Nice, It Will Be Immediately Evident.

You Start Out With Mad Magazine, And You Go Right Through The Sort Of Black Humor Of Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Mort Sahl, Paul Krassner... If You Put Lenny Together With Mad Magazine And Run It Through The Brain Of A College Student, You Get National Lampoon.

You Can't Get Rid Of Poverty By Giving People Money.

Never Strike Anyone So Old, Small Or Weak That Verbal Abuse Would Have Sufficed.

Popular Culture Has Become Engorged, Broadening And Thickening Until It's The Only Culture Anyone Notices.

Popular Culture

Anyone Who Thinks He Has A Better Idea Of What's Good For People Than People Do Is A Swine.

Sometimes You Need A B-2 Bomber And Sometimes You Need Your Mother.

Money Is Preferable To Politics. It Is The Difference Between Being Free To Be Anybody You Want And To Vote For Anybody You Want. And Money Is More Effective Than Politics Both In Solving Problems And In Providing Individual Independence. To Rid Ourselves Of All The Trouble In The World, We Need To Make Money. And To Make Money, We Need To Be Free.

In The Wake Of Animal House, The Stock Briefly And Quite Wrongly Shot Up. So I Love That Movie.

Adam Smith Pointed Out That There Were Three Things That Make Us More Prosperous, In A General Sort Of Way: Freedom To Pursue Our Own Self-interest; Specialization, Which He Called Division Of Labor; And Freedom Of Trade.

Division Of Labor

One Of These Suburbs Is Actually Named Stalingrad, Which Goes To Show That The French Have Learned Nothing About Politics Since They Guillotined All The Smart People In 1793.

I Am A Journalist And, Under The Modern Journalist's Code Of Olympian Objectivity (and Total Purity Of Motive), I Am Absolved Of Responsibility. We Journalists Don't Have To Step On Roaches. All We Have To Do Is Turn On The Kitchen Light And Watch The Critters Scurry.

It's Better To Make Fun Of Yourself Because You've Always Got Someone Around To Make Fun Of, And They Can't Sue You.

The Vietnamese Hoa Were Merchants And Manufacturers. They Were Very Successful And Thus, According To The Logic Of Marxism, Responsible For Society's Failures. The Hoa Suffered The Same Fate As The Pizza Parlour In Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing Except At The Hands Of The World's Fourth Largest Army Instead Of A Small, Petulant Movie Director.

All Change Is Bad. But Sometimes It Has To Be Done.

I Was Never In The Office [of Rolling Stone]. It Was Very Different From Lampoon, Where We Spent A Lot Of Time Together Socially, Which Is To Say "drunk."

It's Better To Spend Money Like There's No Tomorrow Than To Spend Tonight Like There's No Money.

Ireland And The Irish

As A Libertarian I Believe We Should Have A Federal Government Simple And Circumscribed Enough To Be Run By An Average, Dull, Normal American. With George W. Bush We Have Half The Equation In Place.

Most Of The People Who Have Grabbed Hold Of Climate Change And Greenhouse Gases, Pollution, Oil Dependency - They Have Another Motive, And Their Motive Is To Attain The Appearance Of Virtue Without Having Actually Done Anything Virtuous.

Never Do Anything To A Clitoris With Your Teeth That You Wouldn't Do To An Expensive Waterproof Wristwatch.

I Don't See Evidence Of America Being A Poorer Country Than It Was 20 Years Ago. I've Seen Impoverished Devastation. I've Seen Places Where Things Had Been Good And Now They Were Very Bad.

In Theory, Taxes Should Be Like Shopping. What I Buy Is Government Services. What I Pay Are My Taxes.

Never Refuse Wine. It Is An Odd But Universally Held Opinion That Anyone Who Doesn't Drink Must Be An Alcoholic.

There's Such A Self-conscious Balance That Goes Into Television. Also, These Are Not People That Think Things Through.

I'd Like To End The Book A Lot Of Ways. Except I Don't Have Any Answers. Use Your Common Sense. Be Nice. This Is The Best I Can Do. All The Trouble In The World Is Human Trouble. Well, That's Not True. But When Cancer Cells Run Amok And Burst Out Of The Prostate And Take Over The Liver And Lymph Glands And End Up Killing Everything In The Body Including Themselves, They Certainly Are Acting Like Some Humans We Know.

I Don't Watch Much Television. Yeah, That's Pretty Funny. I Don't Know Where The Daily Show Stand Politically, Do You?

Finland Is A Rich Country. What Have They Got? They Got Nokia Phones And Plywood. How'd They Get So Rich? Because They're Free.

The Weirder You're Going To Behave, The More Normal You Should Look.

Taxi Drivers All Over The World, By The Way, Are Under Newspaper Guild Contract To Give Easy Quotes To Foreign Correspondents.

You May Be Surprised To Discover You're Rich, Especially If You're Broke.

A Pleasant Natural Environment Is A Good - A Luxury Good, Philosophical Good, A Moral Goody-good, A Good Time For All. Whatever, We Want It. If We Want Something, We Should Pay For It, With Our Labor Or Our Cash. We Shouldn't Beg It, Steal It, Sit Around Wishing For It, Or Euchre The Government Into Taking It By Force.

A Hat Should Be Taken Off When You Greet A Lady And Left Off For The Rest Of Your Life. Nothing Looks More Stupid Than A Hat.

Michael O'donoghue Was A Very Close Friend Of Mine - Very Encouraging With My Stuff, And Really A Great Guy - But He Was A No-kidding Difficult Person.

El Salvador Has The Scenery Of Northern California And The Climate Of Southern California Plus - And This Was A Relief - No Californians.

There's No Such Thing As A Race And Barely Such A Thing As An Ethnic Group. If We Were Dogs, We'd Be The Same Breed.... Trouble Doesn't Come From Slopes, Kikes, Niggers, Spics Or White Capitalist Pigs; It Comes From The Heart.

Because Of Their Cuisine, Germans Don't Consider Farting Rude. They'd Certainly Be Out Of Luck If They Did.

The Larger The German Body, The Smaller The German Bathing Suit And The Louder The German Voice Issuing German Demands And German Orders To Everybody Who Doesn't Speak German. For This, And Several Other Reasons, Germany Is Known As 'the Land Where Israelis Learned Their Manners'.

Farm Policy, Although It's Complex, Can Be Explained. What It Can't Be Is Believed. No Cheating Spouse, No Teen With A Wrecked Family Car, No Mayor Of Washington, D.c., Videotaped In Flagrante Delicto Has Ever Come Up With Anything As Farfetched As U.s. Farm Policy.

Especially With A Magazine Like Lampoon, Which Was Very Dependent On Newsstand Sales. Our Readers Didn't Usually Occupy The Same Address Long Enough To Get A Subscription, Because They Were In College, Or They Were Hippies. So It Was Very Up-and-down, And We Had To Calculate How Many To Print, Which Was Always Sort Of A Headache From A Business Point Of View.

The Democrats Are The Party That Says Government Will Make You Smarter, Taller, Richer, And Remove The Crabgrass On Your Lawn. The Republicans Are The Party That Says Government Doesn't Work And Then They Get Elected And Prove It.

Lampoon Ran Out Of Steam In The Early '80s, And Wasn't Able To Reinvent Itself Because It Ran Out Of Talent. People Who Wanted To Do This Kind Of Stuff Could Suddenly Make $100,000 In Hollywood Right Out Of College.

It Had Never Occurred To Us That The Kremlin's New Anti-booze Campaign Would Apply To Journalists. Now, That's A Human-rights Violation.

Think About Last Time You Were Broke ... Now How Well Did It Go With Spending Your Way Out Of It? Did That Work?

In The Wake Of Animal House, All Of Us At The Lampoon Had A Lot Of Hollywood Opportunities. We Could Definitely Get People To Return Phone Calls.

I've Always Figured That If God Wanted Us To Go To Church A Lot He'd Have Given Us Bigger Behinds To Sit On And Smaller Heads To Think With.

Then There Was Lsd, Which Was Supposed To Make You Think You Could Fly. I Remember It Made You Think You Couldn't Stand Up, And Mostly It Was Right.

I Always Thought There Was Some Romance To That '30s Leftist Stuff, Even Though I'm A Republican.

A Firm, Hearty Handshake Gives A Good First Impression, And You'll Never Be Forgiven If You Don't Live Up To It.

First Impression

Journalists Aren't Supposed To Praise Things. It's A Violation Of Work Rules Almost As Serious As Buying Drinks With Our Own Money Or Absolving The Cia Of Something.

I Am A Great Admirer Of Women.

Los Angeles Is Many Places In One Place.

The Republican Convention, An Event With The Intellectual Content Of A Guns'n'roses Lyric Attended By Every Ofay Insurance Brokerin America Who Owns A Pair Of White Shoes.

I Was Told To Hand Over My Disposable Lighter, To Prevent, I Suppose, Any Threat Of "do What I Say Or I'll Light This Marlboro And You'll All Die - In Thirty Years Due To Inhalation Of Secondhand Smoke."

Bob Wallace Was My Editor At Rolling Stone When I First Started Writing There, And He's A Wonderful Editor. I Was In The Philippines During The Marcos Overthrow, And I Was Up On What Was Called Smokey Mountain. I Think It's Gone Now, But It Was A Garbage Dump With A Bunch Of People Living On It. I Was Talking To Bob On The Phone, And I Told Him, "i'm A Humorist. I Can't Write About This." And Bob Told Me To Let My Style Be Dictated By The Subject, To Take What I Saw And Write About It In The Tone That It Requires.

Writing This Book Required An Enormous Amount Of Help From Friends. To Them Goes The Credit. I'll Take The Money.

I Think In The [bill] Clinton Era, If People Hadn't Been Spending Vast Amounts Of Time Attacking Clinton, They Would Have Found That They Had Essentially The Same Problems As They Do Now.

Seriousness Is Stupidity Sent To College.

And, By The Way, How Come All The People Who Were So In Favor Of Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament Are So Opposed To Unilateral Protection Against Nukes?

Nuclear Disarmament

Vegetables Are Something God Invented To Let Women Get Even With Their Children.

You Can't Get Good Chinese Takeout In China And Cuban Cigars Are Rationed In Cuba. That's All You Need To Know About Communism.

A Charity Ball Is Like A Dance Except It's Tax Deductible.

Term Limits Aren't Enough. We Need Jail.

On Michael Moore Tv Show, When He Went To The Home Of The Guy Who Invented The Car Alarm And Set Off All The Car Alarms On The Block... Pretty Funny.

Even Very Young Children Need To Be Informed About Dying. Explain The Concept Of Death Very Carefully To Your Child. This Will Make Threatening Him With It Much More Effective.

Bureaucrats Want Bigger Bureaus. Special Interests Are Interested In Whatever's Special To Them. These Two Groups Bring Great Pressure To Bear Upon Politicians Who Have Another Agenda Yet: To Cater To The Temporary Whims And Fads Of The Public And The Press.

If You Get Outside The World Of Show Business And Its Satellites, There's A Whole World Of Car Nuts In The Los Angeles Area.

You Can Smoke Or Drink On A Golf Course Without Interrupting The Game, And You Can Take A Leak - Something You Can't Do On A Squash Court And Shouldn't Do In A Swimming Pool.

Keeping House Is As Unpleasant And Filthy As Coal Mining, And The Pay's A Lot Worse.

I'd Known The People At Rolling Stone For A While. I'd Gone To Them With A Piece I'd Done On Beirut For Vanity Fair That Vanity Fair Didn't Want To Publish, Because They Said I Was Making Fun Of Death... This Was Tina Brown.but They Paid Me For It. So I've Got This Big Chunk Of A Piece, And Rolling Stone Liked It, But They Thought It Was A Little Dated. But Then They Called Me Back And Asked Me To Do A Similar Piece About The Turks And Caicos Islands, Where The Whole Government Had Been Arrested For Dope Smuggling. That Was Fun.

Some People Are Better Imagined In One's Bed Than Found There In The Morning.

Hubris Is One Of The Great Renewable Resources.

Renewable Resources

Mankind Has Invested More Than Four Million Years Of Evolution In The Attempt To Avoid Physical Exertion. Now A Group Of Backward-thinking Atavists Mounted On Foot-powered Pairs Of Hula-hoops Would Have Us Pumping Our Legs, Gritting Our Teeth, And Searing Our Lungs As Though We Were Being Chased Across The Pleistocene Savanna By Saber-toothed Tigers. Think Of The Hopes, The Dreams, The Effort, The Brilliance, The Pure Force Of Will That, Over The Eons, Has Gone Into The Creation Of The Cadillac Coupe De Ville. Bicycle Riders Would Have Us Throw All This On The Ash Heap Of History.

There Are Just Two Rules Of Governance In A Free Society: Mind Your Own Business. Keep Your Hands To Yourself.

Mind Your Own Business

Oh, God. The Sixties Are Coming Back. Well I've Got A 12-gauge Double-barreled Duck Gun Chambered For Three-inch Magnum Shells. And - Speaking Strictly For This Retired Hippie And Former Pinko Beatnik - If The Sixties Head My Way, They Won't Get Past The Porch Steps. They Will Be History. Which, For Chrissakes, Is What They're Supposed To Be.

Only One Way To Cover A Story Like This, And Make That A Double, Bartender, Please.

Fiscal Conservatism Is Just An Easy Way To Express Something That Is A Bit More Difficult, Which Is That The Size And Scope Of Government, And Really The Size And Scope Of Politics In Our Lives, Has Grown Uncomfortable, Unwieldy, Intrusive And Inefficient.

I Don't Think I'll Ever Be A Real Boat Reporter. My Rolex Isn't Big Enough.

You Read [bill ] Maher's Book, And He Didn't Take Econ 101. All His Arguments About Gasoline, It's Not That They're Right Or Wrong - They're Just Not Informed.

It Was To Be A Short Visit For The G-shevs. More Than Four Days In The U.s. And Raisa's Visa Card Bill Would Shatter The Fragile Soviet Economy.

Gambling Is So Pervasive In Nevada That Maybe The State Should Just Go The Whole Hog. There'd Be Gum Machines That Dispensed Chewing Tobacco If You Lost. You Could Gamble For The Toilet Paper In Public Bathroom Stalls. And Fill Out Keno Cards In An Attempt To Win Cancer Therapy At The Hospital.

If A Journalist Shows A Facility For Praise He's Liable To Be Offered A Job In Public Relations Or Advertising And The Next Thing You Know He's Got A Big Office, A Huge Salary And Is Living In A Fine Home With A Lovely Wife And Swell Kids - Another Career Blown To Hell.

When I Get In Deep Water, I Prefer To Announce That I'm In Over My Head.

I'm Not Guaranteeing What We Come Up With Will Be Better For The Planet. There Is Ethanol, For Instance, Which Actually Nets Out With More Pollution At Greater Expense, And More Harm To The Environment Than Petroleum, But We'll Come Up With Something.

There's A Certain Kind Of Behavior In The Arab World That, To Me, Resembles The Way Young Men Behave When There Is No Significant Influence From Women In Their Lives.

You Don't Despair About Something Like The Middle East, You Just Do The Best You Can.

This Country Is So Urbanized We Think Low-fat Milk Comes From Cows On Nutri/system Weight-loss Plans.

[t]he Clinton Administration Launched An Attack On People In Texas Because Those People Were Religious Nuts With Guns. Hell, This Country Was Founded By Religious Nuts With Guns. Who Does Bill Clinton Think Stepped Ashore On Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps Volunteers? Or Maybe The People In Texas Were Attacked Because Of Child Abuse. But, If Child Abuse Was The Issue, Why Didn't Janet Reno Tear-gas Woody Allen?

If We Do Our Deficit Spending On Weapons, At Least We Get Weapons. Then If We Need Weapons, We Have Them. If We Don't Need Them, No Harm Is Done.

A World Government Run By The Un Will Be Like Getting An Old, Purblind, Half-deaf Substitute Teacher.

World Government

Imagine If All Of Life Were Determined By Majority Rule. Every Meal Would Be A Pizza. Every Pair Of Pants, Even Those In A Brooks Brothers Suit, Would Be Stone-washed Denim. Celebrity Diet And Exercise Books Would Be The Only Thing On The Shelves At The Library. And - Since Women Are A Majority Of The Population - We'd All Be Married To Mel Gibson.

When Buying And Selling Are Controlled By Legislation, The First Things To Be Bought And Sold Are Legislators.

Funny Inspirational

Visiting Future World Is Like Opening A Chinese Fortune Cookie To Read, "soon You'll Be Finished With Dinner."

Mike Had Called Me And Said He Could Offer Me Less, And I Said, "you're On!" Because I Was Really Excited With What Mike Kelly Was Doing, And Now What Cullen Murphy Is Doing With Atlantic. It's A Really Cool Magazine.

I'm A Registered Republican And Consider Socialism A Violation Of The American Principle That You Shouldn't Stick Your Nose In Other People's Business Except To Make A Buck.

If You Spend Seventy-two Hours In A Place You've Never Been, Talking To People Whose Language You Don't Speak About Social, Political, And Economic Complexities You Don't Understand, And You Come Back As The World's Biggest Know-it-all, You're A Reporter.

Jewishness Cropped Up And Has Never Successfully Been Put Down Since.

With Epcot Center, The Disney Corporation Has Accomplished Something I Didn't Think Possible In Today's World. They Have Created A Land Of Make-believe That's Worse Than Regular Life.

I Couldn't Have Gotten Into Harvard With A Crowbar.

I Arrived In The Middle Of A Press Conference - As Boring A Thing To Sit Through If You Don't Know The Language As It Is If You Do.

I Can Think Of A Number Of Areas In New York Where Three Acres Of Nuclear Waste Would Make The Neighborhood Safer To Walk Around In Than It Is Now, And Better Lit.

It Takes A Lot Of Weapons To Do Good Works (as Richard The Lionhearted Could Have Told Us). And This Is Not Just A Somali Problem. We Have Poverty And Deprivation In Our Own Country. Try Standing Unarmed On A Street Corner In Compton Handing Out Twenty-dollar Bills And See How Long You Last.

Now For Good Or Ill, California Is The Place Where Trends Tend To Be Set In Western Civilization - If Civilization Indeed It Is. California, For Several Generations Now, Has Been The Newest, Biggest, Most Experimental Place In The Newest, Biggest, Most Experimental Part Of Liberal Western Capitalism - Which Is Itself A New Experiment For Mankind.

My Wife And I Both Come From Irish Families. There Are Two Kinds Of Irish Families: The Hitting Kind And The Kidding Kind. If You're Fortunate - And Both Of Us Are - You Come From The Kidding Kind Of Irish Family.

That Is The Really Great Thing About Being An Adult Male, Once You Get Married And Have Children The Whole Decision-making Process Is Taken Out Of Your Hands, And I For One Am Extremely Grateful.

Gossip Is What You Say About The Objects Of Flattery When They Aren't Present.

Name Me, If You Can, A Better Feeling Than The One You Get When You've Half A Bottle Of Chivas In The Bag With A Gram Of Coke Up Your Nose And A Teenage Lovely Pulling Off Her Tube Top In The Next Seat Over While You're Doing A Hundred Miles An Hour In A Suburban Side Street.

If We Want The Whole World To Be Rich, We Need To Start Loving Wealth. In The Difference Between Poverty And Plenty, The Problem Is The Pverty, Not The Difference. Wealth Is Good.

The Idea Of A News Broadcast Once Was To Find Someone With Information And Broadcast It. The Idea Now Is To Find Someone With Ignorance And Spread It Around.

It's Much Better To Have Your Arguments Dismissed Because You Might Be Joking Than To Have Your Arguments Dismissed Because You're Not Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

Never Serve Oysters In A Month That Has No Paycheck In It.

Industrialization Came To England But Has Since Left.

Industrialization

Hunter S. Thompson Brings A Lunatic Genius To Ordinary Events, And I Bring An Ordinary Sensibility To Lunatic Events.

Government Subsidies Can Be Critically Analyzed According To A Simple Principle: You Are Smarter Than The Government, So When The Government Pays You To Do Something You Wouldn't Do On Your Own, It Is Almost Always Paying You To Do Something Stupid.

I Didn't See Any Nra Officials Killing Babies In Waco.

One Of The Things That Makes Me A Conservative, Or A Libertarian, Or Whatever The Heck It Is That I Am - A Person Who Doesn't Much Like Big Government - Is That I Do Not Like The Concentration Of The Power.

The Weirder You're Going To Behave, The More Normal You Should Look. It Works In Reverse, Too. When I See A Kid With Three Or Four Rings In His Nose, I Know There Is Absolutely Nothing Extraordinary About That Person.

This Is The Most Elaborate And Luxurious Method Of Convincing Others That You Can Cook. Take Everybody Out On Your Yacht Until They're Green In The Face. Then You Can Rave For Weeks About Your Sauce Marinara And No One Will Gainsay You.

War Will Exist As Long As There's A Food Chain.

The Second Item In The Liberal Creed, After Self-righteousness, Is Unaccountability. Liberals Have Invented Whole College Majors--psychology, Sociology, Women's Studies--to Prove That Nothing Is Anybody's Fault. No One Is Fond Of Taking Responsibility For His Actions, But Consider How Much You'd Have To Hate Free Will To Come Up With A Political Platform That Advocates Killing Unborn Babies But Not Convicted Murderers. A Callous Pragmatist Might Favor Abortion And Capital Punishment. A Devout Christian Would Sanction Neither. But It Takes Years Of Therapy To Arrive At The Liberal View.

Very Little Is Known Of The Canadian Country Since It Is Rarely Visited By Anyone But The Queen And Illiterate Sport Fishermen.

Mike Kelly [from The Atlantic] Called Me Up And Said He Could Pay Me Less Money.

Apparently Bolivia Is The Key Source Of Lithium In The World. So We're Gonna Trade The Saudis For The Bolivians.

There's Not A Woman In The Book, The Plot Hinges On Unkindness To Animals, And The Black Characters Mostly Drown By Chapter 29.

Violence Is Interesting. This Is A Great Obstacle To World Peace And Also To More Thoughtful Television Programming.

Remember, Your Body Needs 6 To 8 Glasses Of Fluid Daily. Straight Up Or On The Rocks.

The Arab Peoples Possess An Ancient And Highly Developed Civilization That Is In Many Ways More Sophisticated Than Our Own. For Instance, They Invented Algebra. And This Is Why We Have To Go To War With Saddam Hussein This Minute And Bomb The Shish Kebab Out Of Him Before He Invents Trig And Chemistry And The Whole Of America Flunks High School.

Anyway, No Drug, Not Even Alcohol, Causes The Fundamental Ills Of Society. If We're Looking For The Source Of Our Troubles, We Shouldn't Test People For Drugs, We Should Test Them For Stupidity, Ignorance, Greed And Love Of Power.

The Middle Eastern States Aren't Nations; They're Quarrels With Borders.

There Is Parody, When You Make Fun Of People Who Are Smarter Than You; Satire, When You Make Fun Of People Who Are Richer Than You; And Burlesque, When You Make Fun Of Both While Taking Your Clothes Off.

I Don't Even Know Which End Of A Computer One Is Supposed To Gaze Into. I've Never Used A Computer.

Humor Is A Terrific Tool For Explaining Things, Especially When What You're Explaining Is Frightening Or Dull And Complicated.

When Adam Smith Was Being Incomprehensible, He Didn't Have The Luxury Of Brief, Snappy Technical Terms As A Shorthand For Incoherence.

There Are Plenty Of Problems In The World, And Doubtless Climate Change - Or Whatever The Currently Voguish Phrase For It All Is - Certainly Is One Of Them. But It's Low On My List.

Politicians Are Wonderful People As Longa As They Stay Away From Things They Don't Understand, Such As Working For A Living.

Predicting Innovation Is Something Of A Self-canceling Exercise: The Most Probable Innovations Are Probably The Least Innovative.

In 1970 Or '71, Early In The Magazine, Michael O'donoghue Did Maybe Eight Pages Of A 1958 Yearbook, From Ezra Taft Benson High School. But By The Time The [book-length] High-school Yearbook Came Around, He Didn't Want To Be Involved.

We Have No One To Blame For The Kennedys But Ourselves. We Took The Kennedys To Heart Of Our Own Accord. And It Is My Opinion That We Did It Not Because We Respected Them Or Thought What They Proposed Was Good, But Because They Were Pretty. We, The Electorate, Were Smitten By This Handsome, Vivacious Family. . . . We Wanted To Hug Their Golden Tousled Heads To Our Dumpy Breasts.

France In August When You Can Travel Through The Entire Country Without Encountering A Single Pesky Frenchman Or Being Bothered With Anything That's Open For Business.

Anyhow, All Mankind's Ideas And Interests, All Human Aims And Motives, Are Exhibited, Fully Formed, In A Three-year-old Child. The Kid Is Just Operating On A Smaller Scale And Lacks The Advantage Of Having Made Enormous Soft-money Campaign Contributions To Political Candidates.

[kurt] Vonnegut Once Said, If You Ever Want To Know Who Somebody Is... Like You Look At Richard Nixon, Or Adolf Hitler, Or Ralph Nader, Or Anybody Who Seems Like A Difficult Person To Understand, And Is Therefore Not Part Of The Pattern Of Human Behavior. Think About Who They Were In High School, And They Will Explain Themselves To You. So We Got A Hold Of, Like, 50 High-school Yearbooks, Including My Mom's From 1925 Or Something, And We Discovered That They're All The Same.

Women Are Successful In The Business World Because The Business World Was Created By Men. Men Are Babies. And Women Aregood With Kids.

Off They Go On This Sort Of Camping Trip To Iwo Jima, Where They're Taken Around And Shown Where All The Battles Took Place. It's Very Moving. Disgusting Little Island, Though. Still An Active Volcano. Stinks Of Sulfur. There Are Dead Japanese Everywhere Under That Island. It's Icky. But I Knew I Would Never Have Another Chance To Go, So I Took The Job.

It's The Squares Who Know How To Fly The Fighter Planes And Operate The Missiles And The Bombs And Work The M-16s. Liberals Would Still Be Fumbling With The Federally Mandated Trigger Locks.

Hunter S. Thompson And I Are Old Friends, But What We Do Is So Different. There Are Surface Similarities That Really Have To Do With Us Being Frustrated Poets.

Anything That Makes Your Mother Cry Is Fun

Never Steal Anything So Small That You'll Have To Go To An Unpleasant City Jail For It Instead Of A Minimum-security Federal Tennis Prison.

Jesse Jackson Was Spending Time With His Family, Or Families.

[al] Franken Is Left-wing And Funny. He's A Pretty Good Political Humorist.

Government Conspiracy? They Can't Even Deliver Our Mail And It's Got Our Address On It And Everything!

Long Conversations With Pals When Neither You Nor They Have Had A Drink Can Be A Test Of Palship.

Each Child Is Biologically Required To Have A Mother. Fatherhood Is A Well-regarded Theory, But Motherhood Is A Fact.

There's A Lot Of Debate On This Subject - About What Kind Of Car Handles Best. Some Say A A Front-engined Car, Some Say A Rear-engined Car. I Say A Rented Car. Nothing Handles Better Than A Rented Car. You Can Go Faster, Turn Corners Sharper, And Put The Transmission Into Reverse While Going Forward At A Higher Rate Of Speed In A Rented Car Than In Any Other Kind.

Then There Was Communism's Weak-tea Sister, Socialism. Socialists Maintained That We Shouldn't Take All The Money Away From All The People Since All The People Don't Have Money. We Should Take All The Money Away From Only The People Who Make Money. Then, When We Run Out Of That, We Could Take More Money From The People Who...hey, Wait! Where'd You People Go? What Do You Mean You're "tax Exiles In Monaco?"

Mankind Is Supposed To Have Evolved In The Treetops. But I Have Examined My Sense Of Balance, The Prehensility Of My Various Appendages, And My Attitude Toward Standing On Anything Higher Than, Say, Political Principles, And I Have Concluded That, Personally, I Evolved In The Backseat Of A Car.

A Careful Reading Of 50 Simple Things Leaves You Wondering Whether You're Going To Die From Environmental Disaster Or Intellectual Annoyance. Failing Either, You Can Worry Yourself To Death.

The Average Iq In America Is—and This Can Be Proven Mathematically—average.

A Dugout Is Much Superior To A Conventional Manufactured Canoe Because You Can Get Soaking Wet Without Bothering To Capsize It.

Walt Is Dead. And, After A Couple Of Hours At Epcot, You'll Wish You Were, Too.

You Can Always Reason With A German. You Can Always Reason With A Barnyard Animal, Too, For All The Good It Does.

Everything On A Boat Has A Different Name Than It Would Have If It Weren't On A Boat. Either This Is Ancient Seafaring Tradition Or It's How People Who Mess Around With Boats Try To Impress The Rest Of Us Who Actually Finished College.

People Will Tell You Anything But What They Do Is Always The Truth.

Dating Is The Social Engagement With The Threat Of Sex At Its Conclusion.

I Try To Only Ridicule People Who's Efforts Are Sincere. Very Little Trouble Has Been Caused In The World By Insincere Efforts. An Occasional Seduction Maybe. There Were Very Few Insincere Stalinists Or Nazis.

There's Nothing Inherently Lame About Electricity. I've Got A Basement Full Of Power Tools That All Operate With Electricity, And They're Manly Items. And When You See A Great Big Locomotive Hauling A Mile Of Freight Cars, That's A Hybrid. A Lot Of People Don't Understand That.

I'm Certainly Not Fearful.

To Mistrust Science And Deny The Validity Of The Scientific Method Is To Resign Your Job As A Human. You'd Better Go Look For Work As A Plant Or Wild Animal.

And Worrying Is Less Work Than Doing Something To Fix The Worry. This Is Especially True If We're Careful To Pick The Biggest Possible Problems To Worry About. Everybody Wants To Save The Earth; Nobody Want To Help Mom Do The Dishes.

[friedrich] Hayek Is Not Protesting That Things Like Child Labor And Stuff Are Good. He's Just Trying To Show That When Government Undertakes To Make Everything Good For Everybody, This Is What Happens. And He Addresses It To Socialists Of All Parties.

First And Foremost: Feed People.

Southern California Is A Nice Place, If You Could Cut Out The Show-business Cancer. It Just Keeps Spreading.

If The Dollar Weakens, Then Presumably All The Things That We Make In The United States - Buicks, For Instance - Can Be Sold Cheap All Over The World, And Everyone Will Be Buying Our Goods, And We'll Get All Sorts Of Yen-denominated, Or Yuan-denominated, Or Euro-denominated Securities, And Then Everybody Else Will Be Worried.

Newsmen Believe That News Is A Tacitly Acknowledged Fourth Branch Of The Federal System. This Is Why Most News About Government Sounds As If It Were Federally Mandated -- Serious, Bulky And Blandly Worthwhile, Like A High-fiber Diet Set In Type.

Worshiping The Earth Is More Fun Than Going To Church. It's Also Closer.

Going To Church

How A Peaceful, Uncrowded Place With Ample Wherewithal Stays Poor Is Hard To Explain. How A Conflict-ridden, Grossly Over-populated Place With No Resources Whatsoever Gets Rich Is Simple. The British Colonial Government Turned Hong Kong Into An Economic Miracle By Doing Nothing.

There's One More Terrifying Fact About Old People: I'm Going To Be One Soon.

.......the Poor Of The World Cannot Be Made Rich By Redistribution Of Wealth. Poverty Can't Be Eliminated By Punishing People Who've Escaped Poverty, Taking Their Money And Giving It As A Reward To People Who Have Failed To Escape. Economic Leveling Doesn't Work. Whether We Call It Marxism, Progressive Reform, Or Clintonomics, The Result Is The Same Slide Into The Stygian Pit. Communists Worship Satan; Socialists Think Perdition Is A Good System Run By Bad Men; And Liberals Want Us To Go To Hell Because It's Warm There In The Winter.

Asia Is The Continent Rhythm Forgot. At Best Asian Music Is Off-brand American Pop, Like Sonny Bono In A Karaoke Bar. At Worst Asian Music Sounds As If A Truck Full Of Wind Chimes Collided With A Stack Of Empty Oil Drums During A Birdcall Contest.

The Real Slums Are Another Matter. The Bad Parts Of Tondo Are As Bad As Any Place I've Seen, Ancient, Filthy Houses Swarmed With The Poor And Stinking Of Sewage And Trash. But There Are Worse Parts - Squatter Areas Where People Live Under Cardboard, In Shipping Crates, Behind Tacked-up Newspapers. Dad Would March You Straight To The Basement With A Hairbrush In His Hand If He Caught You Keeping Your Hamster Cage Like This.

Armenians And Azerbaijanis In Stepanakert, Capital Of The Nagorno-karabakh Autonomous Region, Rioted Over Much Needed Spelling Reform In The Soviet Union.

Some People Are Worried About The Difference Between Right And Wrong. I'm Worried About The Difference Between Wrong And Fun.

Satan Probably Wouldn't Have Talked So Big If God Had Been His Wife.

I Read Good. I Was An English Major.

If We're Free To Do What We Want, Why Does Government Always Have A Plan For Us?

In Comparative Terms, There's No Poverty In America By A Long Shot. Heritage Foundation Political Scientist Robert Rector Has Worked Up Figures Showing That When The Official U.s. Measure Of Poverty Was Developed In 1963, A Poor American Family Had An Income Twenty-nine Times Greater Than The Average Per Capita Income In The Rest Of The World. An Individual American Could Make More Money Than 93 Percent Of The Other People On The Planet And Still Be Considered Poor.

I Like Making Things. I Have A Wood Shop At Home. I Am A Terrible Carpenter But I Love Doing It.

It Doesn't Matter How Many Televisions And Computers And Pieces Of Stereo Equipment The Chinese Send To Us, Even If They're Sending Them To Us Only In Return For Some Funny, Little, Green Pieces Of Paper. That Is A Balanced Trade. They Got What They Wanted: The Green Pieces Of Paper. We Got What We Wanted: The Plush Toys, The Computers, The Stereo Components.

East Germany Was So Total In Its Totalitarianism That Everything Was Banned Which Wasn't Compulsory.

The Motorcycle Is A Device Created By The Team Of God And Darwin To Rid The World Of Useless Young Males.

We'll Run This Planet As We Please, And If You Don't Like It, Go Back Where We Came From.

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