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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.

-Dave Barry

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We're Trying To Make

Dave Barry

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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.

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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

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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

The Main Accomplishment Of Almost All Organized Protests Is To Annoy People Who Are Not In Them.

With A Novel, You Have The Reader With You A Lot Longer, And You Owe Him A Lot More. Obviously You Have To Have A Plot - I Say "obviously," Although I Think A Lot Of Fiction Doesn't, And Nothing Seems To Happen. But To Me, There Should Be Something That Happens, And It Should Be At Least Vaguely Plausible. And Because The Readers Are Going To Be With These Characters For A Long Time, You Have To Get To Know Them And Like Them And Want To Know What Happens To Them.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

What Was Life Like In The Colonies? Probably The Best Word To Describe It Would Be "colonial".

You Can Say Any Fool Thing To A Dog And The Dog Will Just Give You This Look That Says, 'my Gosh, You're Right! I Never Would've Thought Of That!

Never Lick A Steak Knife.

In My Experience, You Run Into Trouble When You Ask A Group Of Beer-drinking Men To Perform Any Task More Complex Than Remembering Not To Light The Filter Ends Of Cigarettes.

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

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

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.

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

Genes Are Little Items That Are Found In Every Living Thing Except Sen. Alfonse D'amato.

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.

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

Sign At A Kentucky Appliance Store: Don't Kill Your Wife. Let Our Washing Machine Do The Dirty Work.

My Point Here, Young Couples, Is That Baby-having Is Extremely Serious Business, And You Probably Don't Have The Vaguest Idea What You're Doing, As Is Evidenced By The Fact That You're Reading A Very Sloppy And Poorly Researched Book.

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.

Print Neatly. That's The Kind Of Advice That The Irs Considers A "dynamite" Tax Tip. If You Ask Them A Real Tax Question, Such As How You Can Cheat, They're Useless.

Eating Rice Cakes Is Like Chewing On A Foam Coffee Cup, Only Less Filling.

Found A Smoldering Cigarette Left By A Horse.

I Would Rather Undergo A Vasectomy Via Weed Whacker Than Attend An Opera.

I'm A Humorist. A Guy Like Paul Simon Just Makes My Life So Much Simpler. When I Was There, He Had A Hearing Against Hate. Steven Spielberg Came And Testified Against Hate. Paul Simon Said Hate Was Bad. Orrin Hatch Was There, And He Was Against Hate Too. Everyone Was Opposed To Hate. Is This Really A Wonderful Way To Spend Our Tax Dollars, To Have These Men Drone Away About How Against Hate They Are?

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

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

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.

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

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

I Am A World-class Weenie When It Comes To Letting People Stick Needles Into Me. My Subconscious Mind Firmly Believes That If God Had Wanted Us To Have Direct Access To Our Bloodstreams, He Would Have Equipped Our Skin With Small, Clearly Marked Doors.

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

Your First Job Is To Prepare The Soil. The Best Tool For This Is Your Neighbor's Garden Tiller. If Your Neighbor Does Not Own A Garden Tiller, Suggest That He Buy One.

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

There Are No Bad Haircuts In Cyberspace.

Every Year, Hundreds Of Thousands Of People Try Their Hand At This Demanding Profession (humor Columnist). After A Few Months, Almost All Of Them Have Given Up And Gone Back To The Ninth Grade.

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.

One Popular New Plastic Surgery Technique Is Called Lip Grafting, Or 'fat Recycling,' Wherein Fat Cells Are Removed From One Part Of Your Body That Is Too Large, Such As Your Buttocks, And Injected Into Your Lips. People Will Then Be Literally Kissing Ass.

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