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You Kids Have Fun, And Be Home By Thanksgiving!" Our Parents Would Call To Us On Halloween Night, As We Staggered Out The Front Door, Weighed Down By Hundreds Of Pounds Of Concealed Vandalism Supplies, Including Enough Raw Eggs To Feed Somalia For Decades. By Morning, Thanks To Our Efforts, The Entire Neighborhood Would Be Covered With A Layer Of Congealed Shaving Cream And Toilet Paper That, Around Certain Unpopular Neighbors' Homes, Was Hundreds Of Feet Thick. This Is How The Appalachian Mountains Were Formed.

-Dave Barry

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You Kids Have Fun,

Dave Barry

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You Kids Have Fun, And Be Home By Thanksgiving!" Our Parents Would Call To Us On Halloween Night, As We Staggered Out The Front Door, Weighed Down By Hundreds Of Pounds Of Concealed Vandalism Supplies, Including Enough Raw Eggs To Feed Somalia For Decades. By Morning, Thanks To Our Efforts, The Entire Neighborhood Would Be Covered With A Layer Of Congealed Shaving Cream And Toilet Paper That, Around Certain Unpopular Neighbors' Homes, Was Hundreds Of Feet Thick. This Is How The Appalachian Mountains Were Formed.

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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 United States Tried, By Depressing The Clutch Of Diplomacy And Downshifting The Gearshift Lever Of Rhetoric, To Remain Neutral, But It Became Increasingly Obvious That The Nation Was Going To Get Into A War, Especially Since It Was Almost 1812.

Your Digestive System Is Your Body's Fun House, Whereby Food Goes On A Long, Dark, Scary Ride, Taking All Kinds Of Unexpected Twists And Turns, Being Attacked By Vicious Secretions Along The Way, And Not Knowing Until The Last Minute Whether It Will Be Turned Into A Useful Body Part Or Ejected Into The Dark Hole By Mister Sphincter.

When I Heated My Home With Oil, I Used An Average Of 800 Gallons A Year. I Have Found That I Can Keep Comfortably Warm For An Entire Winter With Slightly Over Half That Quantity Of Beer.

Motto Of The U.s. Airline Industry - "we're Hoping To Have A Motto Announcement In About An Hour."

We Believe That Electricity Exists, Because The Electric Company Keeps Sending Us Bills For It, But We Cannot Figure Out How It Travels Inside Wires.

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

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

But That's Kind Of An Easy Stance To Be If You're A Humor Columnist, Because You're Tending To Make Fun Of The Government And The Powerful. I'm Sort Of A Soft-core Libertarian In That My Compass Is Generally Pointing Away From 'let's Let The Government Do This' Does It Matter To Me That It's Democrats Who Think We Need More Elaborate Programs That Involve Shifting Money From One Group To Another Group Or It's Republicans Saying We Need To Take A Harder Look At What Kinds Of Things People Are Watching On Cable Tv? Neither One Of Those Things Strikes Me As A Good Idea.

The Problem With Winter Sports Is That - Follow Me Closely Here - They Generally Take Place In Winter.

In Fact, Just About All The Major Natural Attractions You Find In The West- The Grand Canyon, The Badlands, The Goodlands, The Mediocrelands, The Rocky Mountains And Robert Redford- Were Caused By Erosion.

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

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

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

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.

If Swimming Is So Good For Your Figure, How Do You Explain Whales?

It Is A Scientific Fact That Your Body Will Not Absorb Cholesterol If You Take It From Another Person's Plate.

Passing The Sat: My Personal Theory Is That It Has To Do With How Much Money You Send Them In The Mail. I Think The Amounts They Tell You To Send Are Actually Just Suggested Minimum Donations - If You Get My Drift.

I Shared This Insight With Some Other Boat Owners, And They All Agreed That, Definitely, Putting Your Boar Into The Water Is Asking For Trouble. Most Of Them Have Had Their Boats Sitting In Their Driveways Long Enough To Be Registered Historical Landmarks.

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.

Never Trust Anything You Read In A Travel Article. Travel Articles Appear In Publications That Sell Large, Expensive Advertisements To Tourism-related Industries, And These Industries Do Not Wish To See Articles With Headlines Like: Uruguay: Don't Bother.

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

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.

There Was Nowhere To Sit Except The Bunk, Which Was Covered With Rotting Food, And A Wooden Stool, Upon Which Sat A Large Fur-covered Lump—an Old Cheese, Perhaps, Or A Dead Cat.

Once Again We Find Ourselves Enmeshed In The Holiday Season, That Very Special Time Of Year When We Join With Our Loved Ones In Sharing Centuries-old Traditions Such As Trying To Find A Parking Space At The Mall.

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.

I Read Warren Zevon's Bizarre Biography, "i'll Sleep When I'm Dead." His Wife, Crystal Zevon, Posthumously Published A Journal He Wrote And Some Interviews With Ex-band Members. Like [keith] Richards's Book "life," It's Brutally Honest.

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

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

It Is Inhumane, In My Opinion, To Force People Who Have A Genuine Medical Need For Coffee To Wait In Line Behind People Who Apparently View It As Some Kind Of Recreational Activity.

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.

I Have A Friend Named Doris Who Argues, On Good Authority, That The Single Biggest Cause Of Global Warming Is Menopause.

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.

Orangutan Are Very Weird Animals But They Look Very Soulful.

As A Child, I Was More Afraid Of Tetanus Shots Than, For Example, Dracula.

When Your Super Bowl Guests Arrive, They Should Find A Mound Of Potato Chips Large Enough To Conceal A Pony Sitting In Front Of The Television. For Nutritional Balance, You Should Also Put Out A Bowl Of Carrot Sticks. If You Have No Carrot Sticks, You Can Use Pinecones, Or Used Electrical Fuses, Because Nobody Will Eat Them Anyway. This Is No Time For Nutritional Balance: This Is The Super Bowl, For God's Sake.

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

I Like Golf Because You Can Be Really Terrible At It, And Still Not Look Much Dorkier Than Anybody Else.

The Democrats Seem To Be Basically Nicer People, But They Have Demonstrated Time And Again That They Have The Management Skills Of Celery. They're The Kind Of People Who'd Stop To Help You Change A Flat, But Would Somehow Manage To Set Your Car On Fire. I Would Be Reluctant To Entrust Them With A Cuisinart, Let Alone The Economy. The Republicans, On The Other Hand, Would Know How To Fix Your Tire, But They Wouldn't Bother To Stop Because They'd Want To Be On Time For Ugly Pants Night At The Country Club

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I'm Always Writing New Books So I Don't Dwell On The Ones I've Already Done. I Think That's A Habit From Being A Newspaper Guy Because You're Always Writing Columns And You Can't Reflect On The Ones You've Already Done.

We Are Talking About Mutated Women, The Result Of Cruel Genetic Experiments Performed By Fashion Designers So Lacking In Any Sense Of Human Decency That They Think Nothing Of Putting Their Initials On Your Eyeglass Lenses. The Leading Cause Of Death Among Fashion Models Is Falling Through Street Grates. If A Normal Woman Puts On Clothing Designed For These Unfortunate People, She Is Quite Naturally Going To Look Like Revenge Of The Pork Person.

The Coyotes Made Too Much Noise Last Night And Kept Me Awake. Please Eradicate These Annoying Animals.

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

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

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I Want A Pit Crew... I Hate The Procedure I Currently Have To Go Through When I Have Car Problems.

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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.

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Inspirational Life

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As You Get Older; You've Probably Noticed That You Tend To Forget Things. You'll Be Talking With Somebody At A Party, And You'll Know That You Know This Person, But No Matter How Hard You Try, You Can't Remember His Or Her Name. This Can Be Very Embarassing, Especially If He Or She Turns Out To Be Your Spouse.

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

Lobsters Displays All Three Of The Classic Biological Characteristics Of An Insect, Namely: 1. It Has Way More Legs Than Necessary. 2. There Is No Way You Would Ever Pet It. 3. It Does Not Respond To Simple Commands Such As "here, Boy!"

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It Was You Readers Who Really Came Through, Proving Once Again That When The American People Decide To "get Involved" In A Problem, It Is Best Not To Let Them Have Any Sharp Implements.

The Japanese Eat, Sleep, And Breathe Golf; The Only Thing They Don't Do Is Actually Play It, Because To Get On A Course, You Have To Make A Reservation Roughly 137 Years In Advance, Which Means That By The Time You Actually Get To The First Tee You Are Deceased. Of Course, In Golf This Is Not Really A Handicap.

We're Deep Into The Holiday Gift-giving Season, As You Can Tell From The Fact That Everywhere You Look, You See Jolly Old St. Nick Urging You To Purchase Things, To The Point Where You Want To Slug Him Right In His Bowl Full Of Jelly.

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.

In 1765, Parliament Passed The Stamp Act, Which, As Any American High School Student Can Tell You, Was An Act That Apparently Had Something To Do With Stamps.

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My Son Wouldn't Go Get Heroin. If He Did Or Didn't, It Wouldn't Have Anything To Do With Whether It Was Legal Or Illegal.

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

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.

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.

During Bomb Drills, We Students Were Told To Crouch Under Our Desks. Apparently The Desks Used In Classrooms In The Fifties Were Made Of An Exceptionally Missile-resistant Variety Of Wood. During The Cold War Years I Often Wondered Why It Never Occurred To Our Defense Planners To Protect The Entire Nation From Nuclear Attack By Simply Covering It, From Sea To Shining Sea, With A Huge Strategic Classroom Desk.

I Become Faint And Nauseous During Even Very Minor Medical Procedures, Such As Making An Appointment By Phone.

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!

You Should Never Say Anything To A Woman That Even Remotely Suggests That You Think She's Pregnant Unless You Can See An Actual Baby Emerging From Her At That Moment.

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.

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

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.

When I Write My Annual Tax Column, Some Ex-irs Agent Will Complain, "there You Go Irs Bashing Again." They're Always Saying That They're Just Doing Their Job. Someone I Know Once Said, "you Could Get Another Job."

It Is An Inconvenience, Being Located In A City Where Taxes Are Ludicrously High, Where You Pay Twice Your Annual Income To Rent An Apartment That Could Easily Be Carried On A Commercial Airline Flight.

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

Proofread Carefully To See If You Any Words Out.

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.

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

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.

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

Never Lick A Steak Knife.

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

Don't Get Me Wrong. I Like Disney World. The Rest Rooms Are Clean Enough For Neurosurgery, And The Employees Say Things Like "howdy, Folks!" And Actually Seem To Mean It. You Wonder: Where Do They Get These People? My Guess: 1952. I Think Old Walt Realized, Way Back Then, That There Would Eventually Be A Shortage Of Cheerful People, So He Put All The Residents Of South Western Nebraska Into A Giant Freezer With A Huge Picture Of Jiminy Cricket On The Outside, And The Corporation Has Been Thawing Them Out As Needed Ever Since.

Found A Smoldering Cigarette Left By A Horse.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Beer Sold Here In The United States Is Sweet And Watery And Lacking In Taste And Overcarbonated And Just Generally The Lamest, Wimpiest Beer In The Entire Known World. All The Other Nations Are Drinking Ray Charles Beer, And We Are Drinking Barry Manilow.

I Really Need To Know Where I'm Going With Fiction To Write It In A Way That At Least I'm Happy With. And I Really Think That A Lot Of Fiction Books End Badly Because Terrific Writers Said, "i'll Just Figure It Out" And Plunge In, But Have Created So Many Problems That They Are Kind Of Impossible To Solve. I Mean, I'm Talking Really Good Writers Do This And You Can Tell When They Got To The End They Either Had To Do Something Preposterous Or They Just Don't Really Resolve Things. So For Fiction I Spend A Lot More Time Outlining And For Humor I Really Don't Do Much Of It.

Just Get On Any Major Highway, And Eventually It Will Dead-end In A Disney Parking Area Large Enough To Have Its Own Climate, Populated By Large Nomadic Families Who Have Been Trying To Find Their Cars Since The Carter Administration.

The Internet Is A Giant International Network Of Intelligent, Informed Computer Enthusiasts, By Which I Mean, "people Without Lives." We Don't Care. We Have Each Other.... While You Are Destroying Your Mind Watching The Worthless, Brain-rotting Drivel On Tv, We On The Internet Are Exchanging, Freely And Openly, The Most Settings, Uninhibited, Intimate And, Yes, Shocking Details About Our "config.sys."

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.

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

We Have Been Flooded With Postal Cards From All Over The United States And Several Parallel Universes. Just A Quick Glance Though These Cards Is Enough To Remind You Why This Great Nation, Despite All The Talk Of Decline, Still Leads The World In Tranquilizer Consumption.

Most Recently I Read Michael Lewis "boomerang." The Other Guy I Love Is Bill Bryson.

You Don't Have To Think Really Hard To Get The Joke. I Think Humor In General Appeals To All People.

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

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

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.

All Other Nations Are Drinking Ray Charles Beer And We Are Drinking Barry Manilow.

If You Were To Open Up A Baby's Head - And I Am Not For A Moment Suggesting That You Should - You Would Find Nothing But An Enormous Drool Gland.

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 Argue Very Well. Just Ask Any Of My Remaining Friends.

The Republicans Have A High Beady-eyed Self-righteous Scary Borderline Loon Quotient, As Evidenced By Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Robertson, The Entire State Of Utah, Etc.

Please Try Not To Be Such A Wiener-head.

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

The Easiest Way To Make A Fruitcake Is To Buy A Darkish Cake, Then Pound Some Old, Hard Fruit Into It With A Mallet. Be Sure To Wear Safety Glasses.

Greyhound Bus Lines Motto: "we Stop For Some Damn Thing Every 200 Yards."

Now, Once Again, We Find Ourselves Facing Rising Gas Prices, And The Question Is: This Time, Are We Going To Learn From The Past? Are We Finally Going To Get Serious About Energy Conservation? Of Course Not! We Have The Brains Of Mealworms! So We Need To Get More Oil Somehow. As Far As I Can Figure, There's Only One Practical Way To Do This. That's Right: We Need To Clone More Dinosaurs. We Have The Technology, As Was Shown In Two Blockbuster Scientific Movies, Jurassic Park And Jurassic Park Returns With Exactly The Same Plot. Once We Have The Dinosaurs, All We Need Is An Asteroid.

Skiing Combines Outdoor Fun With Knocking Down Trees With Your Face.

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.

All The Big Corporations Depreciate Their Possessions, And You Can, Too, Provided You Use Them For Business Purposes. For Example, If You Subscribe To The Wall Street Journal, A Business-related Newspaper, You Can Deduct The Cost Of Your House, Because, In The Words Of U.s. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger In A Landmark 1979 Tax Decision: Where Else Are You Going To Read The Paper? Outside? What If It Rains?

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

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

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

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

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.

Teenagers Are Bored. By Everything. Show A Teenager An Actual Volcanic Eruption, In Progress, Featuring Giant Billowing Clouds Of Smoke, Hot Rocks Raining From The Sky, Lava Floes Destroying Entire Villages, Etc., And The Teenager, Eyebrows Arched With Sarcasm, Will Look At You And Say, "gee, This Is Swell," Then Return To The Rental Car, Turn On His Portable Cd Player, And Listen To A Band Called Stomach Contents.

Experts Agree That The Best Type Of Computer For Your Individual Needs Is One That Comes On The Market About Two Days After You Actually Purchase Some Other Computer.

Within Less Than An Hour, Chuck And I Easily Located What Could Well Be The Correct Platform, Where We Pass The Time By Perspiring Freely Until The Train Storms In, Colorfully Decorated, As Is The Tradition In New York, With The Spray-painted Initials Of All The People It Has Run Over.

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

I Believe That We Parents Must Encourage Our Children To Become Educated, So They Can Get Into A Good College That We Cannot Afford.

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'.

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)

We Constantly See Surveys That Reveal This Ignorance, Especially Among Our High School Students,78 Percent Of Whom, In A Recent Nationwide Multiple-choice Test, Identified Abraham Lincoln As 'a Kind Of Lobster.' That's Right: More Than Three Quarters Of Our Nation's Youth Could Not Correctly Identify The Man Who Invented The Telephone.

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.

You Can't Have A Bad Time At Disney World. It's Not Allowed. They Have Hidden Electronic Surveillance Cameras Everywhere, And If They Catch You Failing To Laugh With Childlike Wonder, They Lock You Inside A Costume Representing A Beloved Disney Character Such As Goofy And Make You Walk About In The Florida Heat Getting Grabbed And Leaped On By Violently Excited Children Until You Have Learned Your Lesson.

It Was Public Art, Defined As Art That Is Purchased By Experts Who Are Not Spending Their Own Personal Money.

Cats Are Independent, By Which I Mean Smart.

I Had Arrived At The Airport One Hour Early So That, In Accordance With Airline Procedures, I Could Stand Around.

If Charles Lindbergh, Flying With No Instruments Other Than A Bologna Sandwich, Managed To Cross The Atlantic And Land Safely On A Runway Completely Covered With French People, Why Are Today's Airplanes, Which Are Equipped With Radar And Computers And Individualized Liquor Bottles, Unable To Cope With Fog?

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.

One Key Lesson Of History Is That Virtually Anything, Including Afternoon Or Evening Thundershowers, Causes Germany To Invade Belgium.

The Doctor Looked At My Cardiogram And Made That "hmmmm" Noise That Doctors Are Taught In Medical School So They Won't Come Right Out And Say "uh-oh!"

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.

As Long As Humanity Has Been Human, It Has Looked Toward The Heavens And Dreamed That Some Day, Some Way, There Would Be Giant Federal Contracts Involved.

The Objective Is Not So Much To Walk Your Dog, As It Is To Empty Him.

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.

Nevada Has A Very Dynamic Economy, With Gambling Being The Number-one Industry, Followed Closely By Blood Donorship.

Derangement Is The Only Possible Explanation For Owning A Cat, An Animal Whose Preferred Mode Of Communication Is To Sink Its Claws Three-quarters Of An Inch Into Your Flesh.

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

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.

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

2. The Instant The Doors Open, You Want To Push Forward As Hard As Possible, In An Effort To Get Onto The Train Without Letting Anybody Off. This Is Very Important. If Anybody Does Get Off, It Is Legal To Tackle Him And Drag Him Back On.

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.

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.

Each Year, Millions Of Skiers Come To Colorado To Experience Its Superb Emergency Medical Facilities.

If Peter Was Nine, And A New Boy Came To St. Norbert’s Home For Wayward Boys Who Said He Was Ten, Why, Then, Peter Would Declare Himself Eleven. Also, He Could Spit The Farthest. That Made Him The Undisputed Leader.

Generally The Pythons Are Better Than Anything Else At Killing.

I Bought Windows 2.0, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1415926, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows Rsvp, The Best Of Windows, Windows Strikes Back, Windows Does Dallas, And Windows Let's All Buy Bill Gates A House The Size Of Vermont.

Speaking Of Food, English Cuisine Has Received A Lot Of Unfair Criticism Over The Years, But The Truth Is That It Can Be A Very Pleasant Surprise To The Connoisseur Of Severely Overcooked Livestock Organs Served In Lukewarm Puddles Of Congealed Grease. England Manufactures Most Of The World's Airline Food, As Well As All The Food You Ever Ate In Your Junior-high-school Cafeteria.

Babies Are Equipped At Birth With A Number Of Instinctive Reflexes And Behavior Patterns That Cause Them To Spend Their First Several Years Trying To Kill Themselves. If Your Home Contains A Sharp, Toxic Object, Your Baby Will Locate It; If Your Home Contains No Such Object, Your Baby Will Try To Obtain One Via Mail Order.

There's Tremendous Pressure, If You're In That [goverment] System, To Be Involved And Be Interested And To Care About It. There's No Room To Say, "this Is Stupid."

The French Are Not Rude. They Just Happen To Hate You. But That Is No Reason To Bypass This Beautiful Country, Whose Master Chefs Have A Well-deserved Worldwide Reputation For Trying To Trick People Into Eating Snails. Nobody Is Sure How This Got Started. Probably A Couple Of French Master Chefs Were Standing Around One Day, And They Found A Snail, And One Of Them Said: 'i Bet That If We Called This Something Like `escargot,' Tourists Would Eat It.' Then They Had Hearty Laugh, Because 'escargot' Is The French Word For 'fat Crawling Bag Of Phlegm.'

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

Perfect Parents

If You Tell The Reader It's Funny, Then The Audience Is Like An Audience At A Stand-up Comedy Club And They Expect You To Be Funny, And If You're Not, They Notice. Whereas If You Read A Regular Op-ed About Israel Or The Family Or Medicine, You're Not Starting With The Assumption That You're Supposed To Laugh.

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

How Do These Celebrities Stay So Impossibly Thin? Simple: They Have Full-time Personal Trainers, Who Advise Them On Nutrition, Give Them Pep Talks, And Shoot Them With Tranquilizer Darts Whenever They Try To Crawl, On Hunger-weakened Limbs, Toward The Packet Of Rice Cakes That Constitutes The Entire Food Supply In Their 37,000-square-foot Mansions. For Most Celebrities, The Biggest Meal Of The Day Is Toothpaste (they Use Reduced-fat Crest).

If Everybody Were A Guy, The Human Race Could Easily Get By On Less Than One Twentieth The Current Number Of Shoes.

I Don't Like Anything Unsigned In A Newspaper That Purports To Be The Opinion Of Some Group If We Don't Know Who The Group Is. It's Laughable To Say That The Miami Herald's Editorials Or Any Newspaper's Editorials Represent Any Views Other Than Those Of The People Writing Them, So Why Don't We Tell Everybody Who They Are?

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

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!"

Line Printer Paper Is Strongest At The Perforations.

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.

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.

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.

Everyone Has A Right To Be Stupid. Some Just Abuse The Privilege.

Of Course God Enjoys A Good Prank As Much As The Next Infallible Deity.

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

Excellence Is The Trend Of The '80s. Walk Into Any Shopping Mall Bookstore, Go To The Rack Where They Keep The Best-sellers Such As Garfield Gets Spayed, And You'll See A Half-dozen Books Telling You How To Be Excellent: In Search Of Excellence, Finding Excellence, Grasping Hold Of Excellence, Where To Hide Your Excellence At Night So The Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It, Etc.

It Is A Well- Known Fact That Although The Public Is Fine When Taken Individually, When It Forms Itself Into Large Groups, It Tends To Act As Though It Has One Partially Consumed Pez Tablet For A Brain.

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

There Is A Breed Of Fashion Models Who Weigh No More Than An Abridged Dictionary.

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

The Simple Truth Is That Balding African-american Men Look Cool When They Shave Their Heads, Whereas Balding White Men Look Like Giant Thumbs.

Thanks To Modern Medical Advances Such As Antibiotics, Nasal Spray, And Diet Coke, It Has Become Routine For People In The Civilized World To Pass The Age Of 40, Sometimes More Than Once.

Mousse Was A Labrador Retriever, Which Is A Large Enthusiastic Bulletproof Species Of Dog Made Entirely From Synthetic Materials. This Is The Kind Of Dog That, If It Takes An Interest In Your Personal Regions (which Of Course It Does) You Cannot Fend It Off With A Blowtorch.

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

Granted, This System Is Insane, But We Must Not Let Sanity Stand In The Way Of Airport Security.

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.

Why Don’t You Lift The End?” Said Alf. “it’s Me Back, Alf,” Complained Mack. “you Know How It Troubles Me.” “no More Than Mine Troubles Me,” Said Alf. “but I Said It First,” Said Mack.

You And Teacher,” Said Molly. “yes,” Said Peter. “she’s Very Clever. You’ll Like Her.” “i’m Sure,” Said Molly.

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

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