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You're Not Allowed To Park A Truck In Your Driveway. You're Not Allowed To Work On Your House On Sunday. The People Who Enforce These Laws Are Nuts. After I Wrote A Column On This, I Got I Don't Know How Many Letters From Coral Gables Homeowners, Story After Story After Story, Wonderfully Horrible Stories. And The Venom They Felt For Their Own Government!

-Dave Barry

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You're Not Allowed To

Dave Barry

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You're Not Allowed To Park A Truck In Your Driveway. You're Not Allowed To Work On Your House On Sunday. The People Who Enforce These Laws Are Nuts. After I Wrote A Column On This, I Got I Don't Know How Many Letters From Coral Gables Homeowners, Story After Story After Story, Wonderfully Horrible Stories. And The Venom They Felt For Their Own Government!

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The Mollusks—generous Hosts When They Weren’t Trying To Kill You.

I Say We Scrap The Current System And Replace It With A System Wherein You Add Your Name To The Bottom Of A List, And Then You Send Some Money To The Person At The Top Of The List, And Then You... Oh, Wait, That Is Our Current System.

There's Only One Way Kids Will Wear Helmets, And That's If Their Parents Are Nagging Them To. They Will Never Wear Helmets Because Some State Passes A Law Requiring It.

A Secret Society Within A Secret Society.

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.

This Year, U.s. Airlineswill Carry A Record 143 Million Passengers, Who Will Be In The Air For 382 Million Hours, During Which They Will Be Fed An Estimated Total Of Four Peanuts.

I Report As A Machine; I Write As A Person. That Clear Dichotomy Softens The Transition.

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

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

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

...and Suddenly It Hits You: Human Skin Is Actually Made Up Of Billions Of Tiny Units Of Protoplasm, Called "cells"! And What Is Even More Interesting, The Ones On The Outside Are All Dying! This Is A Fact. Your Skin Is Like An Aggressive Modern Corporation, Where The Older Veteran Cells, Who Have Finally Worked Their Way To The Top And Obtained Offices With Nice Views,are Constantly Being Shoved Out The Window Head First, Without So Much As A Pension Plan,by Younger Hotshot Cells Moving Up From Below.

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

Flipping A Coin

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.

I Realize That I'm Generalizing Here, But As Is Often The Case When I Generalize, I Don't Care.

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 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.

Please Try Not To Be Such A Wiener-head.

I Read A Lot Of Lot Non-demanding Fiction.

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.

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.

Take Out The Fortune Before You Eat The Cookie.

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

The Only Kind Of Seafood I Trust Is The Fish Stick, A Totally Featureless Fish That Doesn't Have Eyeballs Or Fins.

The Four Building Blocks Of The Universe Are Fire, Water, Gravel And Vinyl.

...when The Armed Robber Of Unhappiness Knocks Over The Keebler Cookie Display Of Our Complacency, And Bangs The Samurai Sword Of Negativity On The Checkout Counter Of Our Dreams, We Must Not Be Afraid To Hurl The Fruit Cocktail Can Of Hope.

Newspaper Readership Is Declining Like Crazy. In Fact, There's A Good Chance That Nobody Is Reading My Column.

U.s. News Organizations Observe The Anniversary Of September 11 With Investigations About The Nation's Continuing Vulnerability To Terrorism. First, The New York Daily News Reports That Two Of Its Reporters Carried Box Cutters, Razor Kinves, And Pepper Spray On Fourteen Commerical Flights Without Getting Caught. Then Abc News Reports That It Smuggled Fifteen Pounds Of Uranium Into New York City. Then Fox News Reports That It Flew Osama Bin Laden To Washington, D.c., And Videotaped Him Touring The White House.

I Do Not Mean To Suggest For A Moment That All It Takes To Be A Top Executive Is A Custom-tailored European Suit. You Also Need The Correct Shirt And Tie.

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

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

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.

What Gets Me Is, I Waited In Line For An Hour To Do This. I Could Have Experienced Essentially The Same Level Of Enjoyment Merely By Sticking My Finger Down My Throat.

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

Palestinian And Israeli Leaders Finally Recover The Road Map To Peace, Only To Discover That, While They Were Looking For It, The Lug Nuts Of Mutual Interest Came Off The Front Left Wheel Of Accommodation, Causing The Sport Utility Vehicle Of Progress To Crash Into The Ditch Of Despair.

Mutual Interest

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Panicky Despair Is An Underrated Element Of Writing.

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Playing An Unamplified Electric Guitar Is Like Strumming On A Picnic Table.

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Software Is Usually Accompanied By Documentation In The Form Of Big Fat Scary Manuals That Nobody Ever Reads. In Fact, For The Past Five Years Most Of The Manuals Shipped With Software Products Have Actually Been Copies Of Stephen King's The Stand With New Covers Pasted On.

When I Read That I Had To Go To Gettysburg.

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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

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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.

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He Could Even Think About How Fast He Was Thinking About Things.

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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!

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Found A Smoldering Cigarette Left By A Horse.

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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.

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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.

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Eventually Everyone Has To Die, Except Elvis.

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By Today's Beauty Standards, Of Course, Marilyn Monroe Was An Oil Tanker.

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I Actually Like South Florida. I Never Lived In A More Interesting Place Than This. I've Never Met A Wider Range Of People. I Guess When I Came Here I Thought There Were Cubans And Then There Were People From New York And That Was Miami. Now I Know That It's Cubans, People From New York, And Some People From New Jersey.

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.

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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.

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

I Love The Olympics, Because They Enable People From All Over The World To Come Together And--regardless Of Their Political Or Cultural Differences--accuse Each Other Of Cheating.

Epcot Center Also Features Pavilions Built By Various Foreign Nations, Where You Can Experience An Extremely Realistic Simulation Of What Life In These Nations Would Be Like If They Consisted Almost Entirely Of Restaurants And Souvenir Stores.

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

A Long Memory Is The Most Subversive Idea In America. A Tautology Is A Thing Which Is Tautological. A Witty Saying Proves Nothing, But Saying Something Pointless Gets People's Attention. If Your Kids Look Like You, It's Hereditory. If They Look Like The Neighbor, It's The Environment. Although Golf Was Originally Restricted To Wealthy, Overweight Protestants, Today It's Open To Anybody Who Owns Hideous Clothing.

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

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

Orangutan Are Very Weird Animals But They Look Very Soulful.

What I Like Best About The Telephone Is That It Keeps You In Touch With People, Particularly People Who Want To Sell You Magazine Subscriptions In The Middle Of The Night.

It Is A Good Idea To 'shop Around' Before You Settle On A Doctor. Ask About The Condition Of His Mercedes. Ask About The Competence Of His Mechanic. Don't Be Shy! After All, You're Paying For It.

I Don't Want To Dis Anybody, But Someone Like Robert Parker. I First Read A Spenser Book Maybe 20 Years Ago And Then Read Every One That Came Out. I Did That With Tony Hillerman Too.

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

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.

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

The Problem With Writing About Religion Is That You Run The Risk Of Offending Sincerely Religious People, And Then They Come After You With Machetes.

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.

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

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

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.'

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

The Most Powerful Force In The Universe Is Gossip.

The Major Advantage Of Domestic Travel Is That, With A Few Exceptions Such As Miami, Most Domestic Locations Are Conveniently Situated Right Here In The United States.

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.

And To You Taxpayers Out There, Let Me Say This: Make Sure You File Your Tax Return On Time! And Remember That, Even Though Income Taxes Can Be A 'pain In The Neck,' The Folks At The Irs Are Regular People Just Like You, Except That They Can Destroy Your Life

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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!"

The Primary Function Of The Government Is - And Here I Am Quoting Directly From The U.s. Constitution - 'to Spew Out Paper.'

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

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

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")

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

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.

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

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.

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

Perfect Parents

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

Editorials Are Written By People Who Have Agreed To Have Several Strong Opinions A Day And To Write Them Down, Provided They Do Not Have To Sign Their Names.

I Hate Rap Music, Which To Me Sounds Like A Bunch Of Angry Men Shouting, Possibly Because The Person Who Was Supposed To Provide Them With A Melody Never Showed Up.

If You Look At Any List Of Great Modern Writers Such As Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, And F. Scott Fitzgerald, You'll Notice Two Things About Them: 1. They All Had Editors. 2. They Are All Dead. Thus We Can Draw The Scientific Conclusion That Editors Are Fatal.

Scott Fitzgerald

I Always Assumed That At Some Point I Would Have To Quit Making Jokes, Get A Real Job And Do Something Meaningful And Productive That Would Actually Benefit Society. Fortunately This Never Happened.

When The Boomers Started To Have Kids Reach Adolescence, There Was Suddenly This Feeling That They Needed To Protect Their Kids From All The Same Things They Did When They Were Kids. Which I Guess Is A Natural Tendency, But It Makes For A Less Fun Society.

There's Nothing Wrong With Enjoying Looking At The Surface Of The Ocean Itself, Except That When You Finally See What Goes On Underwater,you Realize That You've Been Missing The Whole Point Of The Ocean. Staying On The Surface All The Time Is Like Going To The Circus And Staring At The Outside Of The Tent.

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

I Always Wanted To Write When I Was A Kid; It Just Never Occurred To Me That You Could Have A Job That Didn't Involve Any Actual Work.... I Felt It Would Be Fun To Have A Job Like That Where You Could Make Stuff Up And Be Irresponsible And Get Paid For It.

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.

You Can, Legally, Possibly Hit And Kill A Fellow Golfer With A Ball, And There Will Not Be A Lot Of Trouble Because The Other Golfers Will Refuse To Stop And Be Witnesses Because They Will Want To Keep Playing.

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

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

Aarp Is A Large And Powerful Organization, Similar To The Mafia But More Concerned About Dietary Fiber.

When I Was A Kid, I Thought History Was The Most Boring Subject Of All. I Shouldn't Blame My Teachers; I Should Blame Me, But I'll Blame Them.

The Most Valuable Function Performed By The Federal Government Is Entertainment.

The Best Way To Understand This Whole Issue Is To Look At What The Government Does: It Takes Money From Some People, Keeps A Bunch Of It, And Gives The Rest To Other People.

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.

No Matter What Happens, Somebody Will Find A Way To Take It Too Seriously.

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.

The Nicest Father's Day Surprise Of All For Dad Would Be If You Handed Him A Box, And He Unwrapped It, And There, Inside, Sitting On A Bed Of Folded Tissue, Was The Pair Of His Undershorts That Somebody Threw Away Six Months Ago (without Asking Dad) Because They Had Reached The Stage Where They Were 3 Percent Undershorts And 97 Percent Holes. Dad Misses Those Undershorts. They Were His Faithful Undershorts Companion.

Childbirth, As A Strictly Physical Phenomenon, Is Comparable To Driving A United Parcel Truck Through An Inner Tube.

Why Can't Americans Do Their Own Taxes? Because The Federal Tax Code Is Out Of Control, That's Why. It's Gigantic And Insanely Complex, And It Gets Worse All The Time. Nobody Has Ever Read The Whole Thing. Irs Workers Are Afraid To Go Into The Same Room With It.

The Nuclear Generator Of Brain Sludge Is Television.

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

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

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

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.

Because Of The Level Of My Chess Game, I Was Able - Even Against A Weak Opponent, Such As My Younger Brothers Or The Dog - To Get Myself Checkmated In Under Three Minutes. I Challenge Any Computer To Do It Faster.

It's Very Slow For Me To Create Humor. It Takes Me A Long Time To Write A Humor Piece. It Takes Days.

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Kimberly Caldwell

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