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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

-Dave Barry

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What, Exactly, Is The

Dave Barry

...

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

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

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

For Me, The Worst Part Of Playing Golf, By Far, Has Always Been Hitting The Ball.

I Think I've Learned Over The Years, Because You'd Have To Be Stupid Not To, That When A Book Publisher Gives You A Deadline They're Just Kidding For The Most Part. I Don't Know What They Do With It, It's Like You Send Them Your Book And They Just Hold It In Their Hands For Like Six Months And I Don't Know Why, And You Realize You Probably Had More Time.

[there Is] A Breed Of Fashion Models

To Enter Europe, You Must Have A Valid Passport With A Photograph Of Yourself In Which You Look Like You Are Being Booked On Charges Of Soliciting Sheep.

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

When You Say You Don't Think We Should Have Public Schools, They Can't Believe You Mean That. You Must Mean That They Should Be Smaller. But You Can't Really Mean No Public Schools.

I Called A Company And Asked To Speak To Bob. The Person Who Answered Said, "bob Is On Vacation. Would You Like To Hold?

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.

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

A Small Deer Came Into My Camp And Stole My Bag Of Pickles. Is There A Way I Can Get Reimbursed? Please Call.

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

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

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

What I Need Is A Search Engine That, No Matter What I Type In, Comes Back With Go Back To Work.

I Also Saw A Huge Expansion Of The Internet, With Many Major Corporations, Afraid Of Being Left Behind, Spending Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars To Develop World Wide Web Sites In A Frantic Scramble To Reach The Vast New Consumer Market Of Web Use

Proper Turkey Preparation Is Critical. According To The U.s. Department Of Agriculture, More Americans Die Every Year From Eating Improperly Cooked Turkey Than Were Killed In The Entire Peloponnesian War. This Is Because Turkey Can Contain Salmonella, Which Are Tiny Bacteria That, If They Get In Your Bloodstream, Develop Into Full-grown Salmon, Which Could Come Leaping Out Of Your Mouth During An Important Business Presentation.

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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.

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

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

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

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

Technology Is Constantly Improving Our Lives. Look At The Cellular Telephone. Just Ten Years Ago, Virtually Nobody Was Able To Get Into A Car Crash Caused By Trying To Steer And Dial At The Same Time; Today, People Do This All The Time.

Don't You Wish You Had A Job Like Mine? All You Have To Do Is Think Up A Certain Number Of Words! Plus, You Can Repeat Words! And They Don't Even Have To Be True!

9 Saw The First Direct-dialed Long-distance Telephone Call, Between New York And San Francisco. Of Course, Back In That Primitive Era The Parties Had To Speak To Each Other Manually; Today One Or Both Ends Of The Conversation Would Be Carried On By A Machine.

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

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!

I Now Realize That The Small Hills You See On Ski Slopes Are Formed Around The Bodies Of Forty-seven-year-olds Who Tried To Learn Snowboarding.

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Never Try To Put All The Chemicals In The Entire World In Your Body At The Same Time.

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Turbulence.” This Is What Pilots Announce That You Have Encountered When Your Plane Strikes An Object In Midair. You'll Be Flying Along, And There Will Be An Enormous, Shuddering Whump, And Clearly The Plane Has Rammed Into An Airborne Object At Least The Size Of A Water Buffalo, And The Pilot Will Say, “folks, We're Encountering A Little Turbulence.” Meanwhile They Are Up There In The Cockpit Trying Desperately To Clean Water-buffalo Organs Off The Windshield.

By The Eighties, A Lot Of Radio Stations Had Started Playing "sixties" Music. They Called It "classic Rock," Because They Knew We'd Be Upset If They Came Right Out And Called It What It Is, Namely "middle-aged-person Nostalgia Music.

Europeans, Like Some Americans, Drive On The Right Side Of The Road, Except In England, Where They Drive On Both Sides Of The Road; Italy, Where They Drive On The Sidewalk; And France, Where If Necessary They Will Follow You Right Into The Hotel Lobby.

Classical Music Gradually Lost Popularity Because It Is Too Complicated: You Need Twenty-five Or Thirty Skilled Musicians Just To Hum It Properly. So People Began To Develop Regular Music.

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.

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You Might Have Mentioned This To Me Molly,” Said Leonard. “the Fact That There Are Hostile Natives On The Island.” “i Forgot,” Said Molly. “you Forgot?” Said Leonard. “there’s Been A Lot Happening,” Said Molly.

Never Be Afraid To Try Something New. Remember That A Lone Amateur Built The Ark. A Large Group Of Professionals Built The Titanic.

Japan Has A Low Crime Rate, Unless You Count The Fact That Approximately Every Fifteen Minutes The Entire Cabinet Gets Indicted For Taking Bribes.

For A While I Got Into The South Pacific Theater Of World War Ii. I Read "american Caesar" By William Manchester, The Biography Of General Macarthur. Because Of That I Ended Up Reading "tales Of The South Pacific" By James Michener And Then Because Of That Reading His "hawaii." That Is What Happens.

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

Disney Resort And World And Compound, A Place Where Your Dreams Really Do Come True, If You Dream About Having People Wearing Enormous Cartoon-animal Heads Come Around To Your Restaurant Table And Act Whimsical And Refuse To Go Away Until You Laugh With Delight.

The Weightlifting Competition I Saw Was The Women's 63 Kg Class. I'm Not Sure Whether This Means The Actual Women Weighed 63 Kg Or The Weights They Lifted Weighed 63 Kg. Or Possibly The Temperature In The Weightlifting Hall Was 63 Kg. There's No Way To Know For Sure Without Finding Out What A "kg" Is, And My Belief, As An American, Is That If I Have To Start Understanding The Metric System, Then The Terrorists Have Won.

I've Always Found Relationships, Men And Women, The Fact That They Are So Radically Different, And It Manifests Itself In So Many Different Ways, And Yet Somehow We Still Try To Live Together And Be Friends. I Find That Endlessly Valuable As A Source Of Material For Humor. Generally Dogs Are Always Funny In My Opinion. And The Federal Government - Just A Relentlessly Productive Source Of Humor.

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.

To An Adolescent, There Is Nothing In The World More Embarrassing Than A Parent.

How Can You Be Afraid Of Women?” “those Ain’t Normal Women.

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

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

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Sign At A New England Church: Will The Last Person To Leave Please See That The Perpetual Light Is Extinguished?

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Nobody Cares If You Can't Dance Well. Just Get Up And Dance.

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.

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

Famous Designers Think Nothing Of Putting Their Names On Your Clothing, But Would Have The Servants Set The Dogs On You If You Ever Tried To Put Your Name On Their Clothing.

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

The Greatest Electrical Pioneer Of Them All Was Thomas Edison Edison's First Major Invention, In 1877, Was The Phonograph, Which Could Soon Be Found In Thousands Of American Homes, Where It Basically Sat Until 1923, When The Record Was Invented.

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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

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The Fact That Gene Weingarten And I And Bathroom Inventory Are Now Part Of Some Kind Of Matrix Of Poop Strongly Suggests That The Pulitzer Is Not What It Once Was.

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

Cyrus Pembridge, The Never Land’s Captain, Was Widely Regarded As The Most Incompetent Man To Comman A Ship Since The Formation Of Water. “who In The Name Of Common Sense Would Put To Sea On That Ship With That Man In Charge?” Wondered Mack. “well,” Alf Answered, “we Are.” “true,” Mack Said.

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.

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

This (america) Is A Land Of Rich Diversity, From The Towering Skyscrapers Of Manhatan All The Way To The Towering Mounds Of Garbage Piled Up Next To The Towering Skyscrapers Of Manhattan.

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.

Eternal Boyhood Is The Dream Of A Depressing Percentage Of American Males, And The Locker Room Is The Temple Where They Worship Arrested Development.

You Should Definitely Visit The Louvre, A World-famous Art Museum Where You Can View, At Close Range, The Backs Of Thousands Of Other Tourists Trying To See The Mona Lisa.

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.

The Science Fair Has Long Been A Favorite Educational Tool In The American School System, And For A Good Reason: Your Teachers Hate You.

Canada, As You Know, Is A Major Important Nation Boasting A Sophisticated, Cosmopolitan Culture That Was Tragically Destroyed Last Week By Beavers.

There Are Two Kinds Of Solar-heat Systems: Passive Systems Collect The Sunlight That Hits Your Home, And Active Systems Collect The Sunlight That Hits Your Neighbors' Homes, Too.

Love And Pregnancy And Riding On A Camel Cannot Be Hid

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.

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

What Women Want: To Be Loved, To Be Listened To, To Be Desired, To Be Respected, To Be Needed, To Be Trusted, And Sometimes, Just To Be Held. What Men Want: Tickets To The World Series.

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.

The Best Time To Go To Disney World, If You Want To Avoid Huge Crowds, Is 1962.

We Don't Shoot Somebody Soon, I'm Gonna Forget How

What's Happened To Marriage? The Wedding-industrial Complex. Brides Get Swept Up In This World Of Obsession - It Has To Be Your Perfect Day.

It Was Not Easy Victory In The America Cup. Our Boys Spent Years Experimenting With Different Designs For Their Boat Before They Came Up With The Innovative Idea Of Having A Submerged Nuclear Submarine Tow It.

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

You Must Prepare Yourselves, Young People, Because Uncle Dave's Generation Is Getting Old. We Are Almost Ready To Go To The Retirement Home To Spend The Rest Of Our Days Tapping Our Bedpans Rhythmically In Time To "easy Listening" Rock 'n' Roll. We Must Pass The Torch On To You, And You Must Grasp It, Ideally By The End That Is Not On Fire.

Computers Are Getting Smarter All The Time. Scientists Tell Us That Soon They Will Be Able To Talk To Us. (and By 'they', I Mean 'computers'. I Doubt Scientists Will Ever Be Able To Talk To Us.)

I Am Not One To Generalize, But Cartoonists, As A Group, Exhibit A Level Of Social Sophistication Generally Associated With Pie Fights. In High School, When The Future Lawyers Were Campaigning For Class President, The Future Cartoonists Were Painstakingly Altering Illustrations In Their History Books So That Robert E. Lee Appeared To Be Performing An Illegal Act With His Horse.

Modern Cyberspace Is A Deadly Festering Swamp, Teeming With Dangerous Programs Such As 'viruses,' 'worms,' 'trojan Horses' And 'licensed Microsoft Software' That Can Take Over Your Computer And Render It Useless.

You Can Only Be Young Once. But You Can Always Be Immature.

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.

There Shall Be A National Anthem Containing Incomprehensible Words And A High Note That Normal Humans Cannot Hit Without Risk Of Hernia.

Nature Is Located Mainly In National Parks, Which Are Vast Tracts Of Wilderness That Have Been Set Aside By The United States Government So Citizens Will Always Have Someplace To Go Where They Can Be Attacked By Bears. And We're Not Talking About Ordinary Civilian Bears, Either: We're Talking About Federal Bears, Which Can Behave However They Want To Because They Are Protected By The Same Union As Postal Clerks.

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

Scientists Now Believe That The Primary Biological Function Of Breasts Is To Make Males Stupid.

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)

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

I Don't Even Care What Bill Bryson Writes About Because He Will Make It Interesting. I Love "a Walk In The Woods," About The Appalachian Trail, But His Most Amazing Book Is "a Short History Of Nearly Everything."

If The People In Europe Are Soooooo Smart, How Come So Many Of Them Can't Seem To Locate The Deodorant, Huh?

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

Please Try Not To Be Such A Wiener-head.

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.

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.

In The Old Days, It Was Not Called The Holiday Season; The Christians Called It "christmas" And Went To Church; The Jews Called It "hanukka" And Went To Synagogue; The Atheists Went To Parties And Drank. People Passing Each Other On The Street Would Say "merry Christmas!" Or "happy Hanukka!" Or (to The Atheists) "look Out For The Wall!"

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

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

When I Say "dogs", I'm Talking About Dogs, Which Are Large, Bounding, Salivating Animals, Usually With Bad Breath. I Am Not Talking About Those Little Squeaky Things You Can Hold On Your Lap And Carry Around. Zoologically Speaking, These Are Not Dogs At All; They Are Members Of The Pillow Family.

I'm One Of Those People Who Tells My Wife, "no Coaching From The Sidelines."

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

It Is A Well-documented Fact That Guys Will Not Ask For Directions. This Is A Biological Thing. This Is Why It Takes Several Million Sperm Cells... To Locate A Female Egg, Despite The Fact That The Egg Is, Relative To Them, The Size Of Wisconsin.

I Tried Sniffing Coke Once, But The Ice Cubes Got Stuck In My Nose.

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.

The Population Of Earth Has Reached 7 Billion People, Every Single One Of Whom Send You Irritating Emails To Join Something Called "linkedin."

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

At The Time, We Were Mad At Moammar Gadhafi, Which Resulted In Us Bombing All Over Libya And Killing A Bunch Of People, But Not Him. Then Ronald Reagan Gets Up And Says We're Not Trying To Kill Him, We're Just Dropping Bombs. You Can Kill All The Libyans You Want, But Legally You Can't Try To Kill The Leader.

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.

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

Infiniti Ads Are Part Of An Exciting New Trend Called "advertising Whose Sole Purpose Is To Irritate You."

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.

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

Weddings Are Crazy. When You Get Right Down To It, A Wedding Is A Party, And Not An Important Party, Really. But For Young People, It Becomes The Biggest Thing In Their Lives. After It's Over, They Realize It Wasn't That Big A Deal.

I've Never Been Struck By Lightning As Far As I Know, So The Higher Power Is Treating Me As Well As Even Those People Who Love Him Very Much.

I Got A Lot Of Mail From Organizations Concerned With Bike Safety. Then I Got A Couple From People Who Wanted My Support For Mandatory Helmet Laws. I Can't Support That. If You Pass A Law Like That You'll Do More Harm Than Good, Because You'll Make People Think They've Done Something About The Problem When They Haven't.

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

Those Who Can't Laugh At Themselves Leave The Job To Others.

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.

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 Irs Spends God Knows How Much Of Your Tax Money On These Toll-free Information Hot Lines Staffed By Irs Employees, Whose Idea Of A Dynamite Tax Tip Is That You Should Print Neatly. If You Ask Them A Real Tax Question, Such As How You Can Cheat, They're Useless. So, For Guidance, You Want To Look To Big Business. Big Business Never Pays A Nickel In Taxes, According To Ralph Nader, Who Represents A Big Consumer Organization That Never Pays A Nickel In Taxes. . . .

If He (the New York Taxi Driver) Talked To Me, He Might Lose His Concentration, Which Would Be Very Bad Because The Taxi Has Some Kind Of Problem With The Steering, Probably Dead Pedestrians Lodged In The Mechanism, The Result Being That There Is A Delay Of 8 To 10 Seconds Between The Time The Driver Turns The Wheel And The Time The Taxi Actually Changes Direction, A Handicap That The Driver Is Compensating For By Going 175 Miles Per Hour, At Which Velocity We Are Able To Remain Airborne Almost To The Far Rim Of Some Of The Smaller Potholes.

Violence And Smut Are Of Course Everywhere On The Airwaves. You Cannot Turn On Your Television Without Seeing Them, Although Sometimes You Have To Hunt Around.

Washington Is Nicknamed "the Evergreen State" Because It Sounds Better Than "the Incessant Nagging Drizzle State."

The Thing I Have Learned, Especially In The Internet Age, Probably The Easiest Thing In The World Is To Declare That Something Is Not Funny. I Mean It's Not Actually Humor To Say Something Is Not Funny, But It Is Viewed By A Lot Of People - And By That I Mean Mainly Snarky Young Internet Men - As A Kind Of Humor In And Of Itself Is Putting Down Other People's Efforts At Humor. And I Don't Care That Much Anymore About That Because I Know How Easy That Is To Do.

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

I Haven't Been Able To Slam-dunk The Basketball For The Past Five Years. Or, For The Thirty-eight Years Before That, Either.

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

If You Have Ever Seen The Movie Night Of The Living Dead, You Have A Rough Idea How Modern Corporations And Organizations Operate, With Projects And Proposals That Everybody Thought Were Killed Constantly Rising From Their Graves To Stagger Back Into Meetings And Eat The Brains Of The Living.

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

What Happens If A Big Asteroid Hits Earth ? Judging From Realistic Simulations Involving A Sledge Hammer And A Common Laboratory Frog, We Can Assume It Will Be Pretty Bad.

I Played Lead Guitar In A Band Called The Federal Duck, Which Is The Kind Of Name That Was Popular In The '60s As A Result Of Controlled Substances Being In Widespread Use. Back Then, There Were No Restrictions, In Terms Of Talent, On Who Could Make An Album, So We Made One, And It Sounds Like A Group Of People Who Have Been Given Powerful But Unfamiliar Instruments As A Therapy For A Degenerative Nerve Disease.

We Travel Because, No Matter How Comfortable We Are At Home, There's A Part Of Us That Wants - That Needs - To See New Vistas, Take New Tours, Obtain New Entrees, Introduce New Bacteria Into Our Intestinal Tracts, Learn New Words For "transfusion," And Have All The Other Travel Adventures That Make Us Want To French-kiss Our Doormats When We Finally Get Home.

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

If Congress Were To Pass A 'flat' Tax, You'd Simply Pay A Fixed Percentage Of Your Income, And You Wouldn't Have To Fill Out Any Complicated Forms, And There Would Be No Loopholes For Politically Connected Groups, And Normal People Would Actually Understand The Tax Laws, And Giant Talking Broccoli Stalks Would Come Around And Mow Your Lawn For Free, Because Congress Is Not Going To Pass A Flat Tax, You Pathetic Fool.

The Trouble Is, You Cannot Grow Just One Zucchini. Minutes After You Plant A Single Seed, Hundreds Of Zucchini Will Barge Out Of The Ground And Sprawl Around The Garden, Menacing The Other Vegetables. At Night, You Will Be Able To Hear The Ground Quake As More And More Zucchinis Erupt.

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.

Never Lick A Steak Knife.

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.

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.

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.

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

The President, Apparently, Was So Totally Unaware Of Where His Foreign Policy Was That He Had To Appoint A Distinguished Commission To Help Him Locate It, And When The Commissioners Called Him In To Testify, He Told Them, Essentially, That He Couldn't Remember What It Looked Like. Now, If Richard Nixon Had Claimed Something Like That You Would At Least Have Had The Comfort Of Knowing He Was Lying. You Could Trust Nixon That Way. But With This President, You Have This Nagging Feeling That He's Telling The Truth.

Line Printer Paper Is Strongest At The Perforations.

In Modern America, Food Is Abundant Everywhere Except Aboard Commercial Airplanes.

In Those Days, Most People Read Newspapers, Whereas Today, Most People Do Not. What Caused This Change? One Big Factor, Of Course, Is That People Are A Lot Stupider Than They Used To Be, Although We Here In The Newspaper Industry Would Never Say So In Print.

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.

English History Consists Largely Of Royal People Getting Their Heads Chopped Off...needless To Say, This Brand Of History Was A Hit With Our Son.

I Have Been A Gigantic Rolling Stones Fan Since Approximately The Spanish-american War.

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

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

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

I've Been Checking With People Back In South Florida To See If Hurricane Dennis Is Going To Whack My House, And The Consensus Of The Experts Seems To Be: No, It Will Not, Unless It Does, In Which Case, Yes. So I'm Feeling Really Calm Over Here In London.

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

I Have Come Up With A Sure-fire Concept For A Hit Television Show, Which Would Be Called `a Live Celebrity Gets Eaten By A Shark'.

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

This Ball Was So Crowded That It Took Me - A Trained Professional Journalist With Vast Experience In This Area - Forty Five Minutes To Get A Beer.

Hardware: This Is The Part Of The Computer That Stops Working When You Spill Beer On It.

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!

In The Bowling Alley Of Tomorrow, There Will Even Be Machines That Wear Rental Shoes And Throw The Ball For You. Your Sole Function Will Be To Drink Beer.

One I'm Deeply Into Is Doris Kearns Goodwin's "team Of Rivals." I Was The Only Person In The Us Who Hadn't Read It.

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

I Have Never Had A Point In My Life To Make. I'm Just Trying To Entertain The Reader.

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.

Look, In Particular, At The People Who, Like You, Are Making Average Incomes For Doing Average Jobs- Bank Vice Presidents, Insurance Salesmen, Auditors, Secretaries Of Defense- And You'll Realie They All Dress The Same Way, Essentially The Way The Mannequins In The Sears Menswear Department Dress. Now Look At The Real Successes, The People Who Make A Lot More Money Than You- Elton John, Captain Kangaroo, Anybody From Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, And So On. They All Dress Funny- And They All Succeed.

Shawn's (shawn Weatherly - Former Beauty Queen) Acting Ability Is Such That She Could Not Convey The Concept Of Falling If Your Pushed Her Off A Cliff.

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

That Is The Wasp, Yes. But It Was Captured By Black Stache, And He’s Coming For This Ship Now.” “and How Do You Know That?” Asked Slank. “did A Seagull Tell You?” This Brought Chuckles From The Crew. Something Like That, Thought Peter.

Microsoft Has A New Version Out, Windows Xp, Which According To Everybody Is The 'most Reliable Windows Ever.' To Me, This Is Like Saying That Asparagus Is 'the Most Articulate Vegetable Ever.'

The Story Of The Eighties Will Be The Story Of The Reagan Administration And The Many Men And Women Who Served In It, Some Of Whom Are Already Out On Parole.

Never Under Any Circumstances Take A Sleeping Pill And A Laxative On The Same Night.

In Spain, Attempting To Obtain A Chicken Salad Sandwich, You Wind Up With A Dish Whose Name, When You Look It Up In Your Spanish-english Dictionary, Turns Out To Mean: Eel With Big Abcess.

If You Look At Photos Of The Gettysburg Address There's A Guy Off To The Right Who I Think Is Keith Richards.

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.

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

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

It May Be Meaningless, But At Least It's A Gesture.

This Book Is Dedicated To Wilbur And Orville Wright, Without Whom Air Sickness Would Still Be Just A Dream.

Sailboats Are The Slowest Form Of Transportation On Earth With The Possible Exeption Of Airline Flights That Go Through O'hare.

A Short Distance Away Is The Tidal Basin, Ringed By Cherry Trees That Every Year Produce Flowers, An Event To Which Washingtonians React As Though It Were The Second Coming Of Christ.

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

Computers Operate On Simple Principles That Can Be Easily Understood By Anybody With Some Common Sense, A Little Imagination, And An Iq Of 750.

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.

In More Than 20 Years Of Opening Beers With Guys, I Have Never Seen The Swedish Bikini Team Show Up. Almost Always, The Teams That Show Up In Beer Drinking Situations Consist Of Guys Who Have Been Playing League Softball And Smell Like Bus Seats.

There Are Two Kinds Of People In This World, And I Am One Of Them.

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