Ok, props to Dave Barry

[willswimforfood]

A while back, I read a Dave Barry column on The DaVinci Code. A great book, it has been poked at for the seemingly endless cliffhangers. This column, which I will now post for your reading pleasure (gotta sign up for the website to see it on there)

I have written a blockbuster novel. My inspiration was The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown, which has sold 253 trillion copies in hardcover because it's such a compelling page-turner. NOBODY can put this book down:

MOTHER ON BEACH: Help! My child is being attacked by a shark!

LIFEGUARD (looking up from The DaVinci Code: Not now! I just got to page 243, where it turns out that one of the men depicted in ''The Last Supper'' is actually a woman!

MOTHER: I know! Isn't that incredible? And it turns out that she's . . .

SHARK (spitting out the child): Don't give it away! I'm only on page 187!

The key to The DaVinci Code is that it's filled with startling plot twists, and almost every chapter ends with a ''cliffhanger,'' so you have to keep reading to see what will happen. Using this formula, I wrote the following blockbuster novel, titled The Constitution Conundrum. It's fairly short now, but when I get a huge publishing contract, I'll flesh it out to 100,000 words by adding sentences.

CHAPTER ONE: Handsome yet unmarried historian Hugh Heckman stood in the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., squinting through the bulletproof glass at the U.S. Constitution. Suddenly, he made an amazing discovery.

''My God!'' he said, out loud. ``This is incredible! Soon I will say what it is.''

CHAPTER TWO: ''What is it?'' said a woman Heckman had never seen before who happened to be standing next to him. She was extremely beautiful, but wore glasses as a sign of intelligence.

''My name is Desiree Legume,'' she said.

Heckman felt he could trust her.

''Look at this!'' he said, pointing to the Constitution.

''My God, that's incredible!'' said Desiree. ``It's going to be very surprising when we finally reveal what we're talking about!''

CHAPTER THREE: ''Yes,'' said Hugh, ``incredible as it seems, there are extra words written in the margin of the U.S. Constitution, and nobody ever noticed them until now! They appear to be in some kind of code.''

''Let me look,'' said Desiree. ``In addition to being gorgeous, I am a trained codebreaker. Oh my God!''

''What is it?'' asked Hugh in an excited yet concerned tone of voice. ''The message,'' said Desiree, ``is . . . ''

But just then, the chapter ended.

CHAPTER FOUR: ''It's a fiendishly clever code,'' explained Desiree. 'As you can see, the words say: `White House White House Bo Bite House, Banana Fana Fo Fite House, Fe Fi Mo Mite House, White House.' ''

''Yes,'' said Hugh, frowning in bafflement. ``But what can it possibly mean?''

''If I am correct,'' said Desiree, ``it is referring to . . . the White House!''

''My God!'' said Hugh. ``That's where the president lives! Do you think . . . ''

''Do I think what?'' said Desiree.

''I don't know,'' said Hugh. ``But we're about to find out.''

CHAPTER FIVE: Hugh and Desiree crouched in some bushes next to the Oval Office.

''We'd better hurry up and solve this mystery,'' remarked Desiree anxiously. ''It's only a matter of time before somebody notices that the Constitution is missing.'' She had slipped it into her purse at the National Archives while the guard wasn't looking.

''The answer must be here somewhere,'' said Hugh, studying the ancient document, which was brown from age and the fact that he had spilled Diet Peach Snapple on it.

''Wait a minute!'' he said. ``I've got it!''

''What?'' said Desiree, her breasts heaving into view.

''The answer!'' said Hugh. ``It's . . .

But just then, shots rang out.

CHAPTER SIX: ''That was close!'' remarked Desiree. ``Fortunately, those shots had nothing to do with the plot of this book.''

''Yes,'' said Hugh. ``Anyway, as I was saying, the answer is to hold the Constitution up so that it is aligned with the White House and the Washington Monument. . . . There, do you see what I mean?''

''My God!'' said Desiree, seeing what he meant. ``It's . . . ''

''Hold it right there,'' said the president of the United States.

CHAPTER SEVEN: '' . . . and so you see,'' concluded the president, ``you two uncovered a shocking and fascinating secret that, if it should ever get out, could change the course of history.''

''Mr. President,'' said Desiree, ``thank you for that riveting and satisfying explanation, which will be fleshed out into much greater detail once there is a publishing contract.''

''Also,'' noted Hugh, ``we may use some beverage other than Snapple, depending on what kind of product-placement deals can be worked out.''

''Good,'' said the president. ``Now can I have the Constitution back?''

They all enjoyed a hearty laugh, for they knew that the movie rights were also available.

I found it amusing, so it stuck in my head.

Tonight I went and saw Resident Evil Two. And in the previews I saw a preview for this: http://nationaltreasure.movies.go.com/ .

I'll never be able to take that movie seriously. Fan of Cage however, so I might go see it.

[Jesda]

My favorite Dave Barry commentary was on the toilet flush laws. No surprise he got the Pulitzer.

[willswimforfood]

His books are top-notch as well. Love the sig, by the way.

[Rex]

Dave BarryFrom the BSDI fortune cookies program --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(fortunes)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. -- Dave Barry

After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact that it sinks like a stone. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"

After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out. It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life more advanced than the lichen family. -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"

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?" -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"

Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing. -- Dave Barry

Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"

American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors. -- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister"

An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He wears a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is advertised only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and Rich Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote excellence:"The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful. Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha." -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"

And so, men, we can see that human skin is an even more complex and fascinating organ than we thought it was, and if we want to keep it looking good, we have to care for it as though it were our own. One approach is to undergo a painful surgical procedure wherein your skin is turned inside-out, so the young cells are on the outside, but then of course you have the unpleasant side effect that your insides gradually fill up with dead old cells and you explode. So this procedure is pretty much limited to top Hollywood stars for whom youthful beauty is a career necessity, such as Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles. -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"%%Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, buttelevision's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdomand world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste thatoffers whiter teeth *___and* fresher breath. -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"%%As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who areinterested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sickperverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask,"that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?" ... -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"%%As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they wouldinterfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for theWright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figureout how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned onWilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexualorgans!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result,birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost neversee an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up andstand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversationswith their feet. When they find a conversation in which people aretalking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are bothhighly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know"%%Besides the device, the box should contain:

* Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"

* A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.

YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tramcable.

IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to yourspouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a carthat can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger Kingwithout a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that'swhy."

WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret. -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"%%But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, whowas a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formaleducation and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands ofAmerican homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record wasinvented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when heinvented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliantadaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sendselectricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets theelectricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliantpart) sends it right back to the customer again.

This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batchof electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, sincevery few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the UnitedStates was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling itever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rateincreases. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"%%Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device thatwould give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except thatyou undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumermaneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THISOWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADYUNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNEDIT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILDWHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER ANDSET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS,RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THEFACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT? -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"%%Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Partof this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-oldwill be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show acommercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as"Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on atable next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer alwayssays: "Part of this complete breakfast". Don't that really mean,"Adjacent to this complete breakfast", or "On the same table as thiscomplete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claimif, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or adead bat?

Answer: Yes. -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"%%Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?

Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small businesssigns to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of aword, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FORANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind whencreating hand- lettered small-business signs is that you should putquotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOTDOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S. -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"%%"Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such aconventional thing to happen to him." -- John Barrymore's dying words%% Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless youhave been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which inmost American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In thetime it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron couldhave traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,although God alone knows why it would want to. The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homeshave alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in onedirection for a while, then goes in the other direction. This preventsharmful electron buildup in the wires. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what,exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men."All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other withspears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about:Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, pleasetake her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something?My wife is available. No. How about ..." -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"%% Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shoppingmall 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 youhow to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence","Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at NightSo the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc. -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"%%First, a few words about tools.

Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage ofthe laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriouslyinjure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. Ifyou're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who lookparticularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools forgranted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entirelife to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three daysnow. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child getswhen he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torchin the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would havethe strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, whichmeans his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which areadvertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that arethe color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have theirnames spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot("part of this complete breakfast"). -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"%% -- Gifts for Children --

This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children,because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend monthsand months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your childrenexactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. Ifyour child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face YouCan Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that itmight help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believeme, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a childwho is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"%% -- Gifts for Men --

Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professionalice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But youshould never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all theclothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. Forexample, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, onlythree of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laughat him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone severalyears without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he willpretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.

If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. Morethan once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new setof tires. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"%%Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, hemakes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Oceanfamous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horsesprobably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because youhave never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are likeenormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and theirattitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knockdown your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law,just like Richard Nixon." -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"%%Have you ever wondered what makes Californians so calm? Besides drugs,I mean. The answer is hot tubs. A hot tub is a redwood containerfilled with water that you sit in naked with members of the oppositesex, none of whom is necessarily your spouse. After a few hours intheir hot tubs, Californians don't give a damn about earthquakes ormass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything , which is whythey are able to produce "Laverne and Shirley" week after week. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electricallesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reachyour hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out inpain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn animportant electrical lesson.

It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffedyour feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very smallobjects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they willattract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream andcollect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to yourfriend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into thecarpet, thus completing the circuit.

Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough withouttouching anything, you would build up so many electrons that yourfinger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless youhave carpeting. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"%%"Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet.As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books ofequal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney.Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, youprobably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although ofcourse every case is different, I would definitely say that based on myexperience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come outof this thing with at least a cabin cruiser.

"Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, ourmotto is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'" -- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering"%% Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who'swilling to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shopfor lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say"shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of homecenters: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmastrees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandisebecause they are too busy applying little price stickers to everyobject -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ... Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove thebroken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he hasa replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen theinside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much thesame way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look atan electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment ofthese sometime around the middle of next week". -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%"How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray beingcarried by a waiter at a nice party?"

Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the horsd'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tellwhat's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, thensay: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of itback on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Anothercheese!" and so on. -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"%%"I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win anargument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, andsteer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect,they don't even invite me." -- Dave Barry%%I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.

What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of goodgrammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading causeof slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, theUnited States would have lost World War II." -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"%% I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but becausewe use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequentlyleads to violence. What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say,in traffic, is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've hadtime to think of witty and learned insults or look them up in thelibrary, we could call each other up:

You: Hello? Bob? Bob: Yes? You: This is Ed. Remember? The person whose parking space you took last Thursday? Outside of Sears? Bob: Oh yes! Sure! How are you, Ed? You: Fine, thanks. Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is: "Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..." No, wait. I mean: "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill and ..." No, wait. (Sound of reference book thudding onto the floor.) S-word. Excuse me. Look, Bob, I'm going to have to get back to you. Bob: Fine. -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"%%I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance thatthe Earth will be destroyed in the next several days. Congress isthinking about eliminating a federal program under which scientistsbroadcast signals to alien beings. This would be a large mistake.Alien beings have nuclear blaster death cannons. You cannot cut offtheir federal programs as if they were merely poor people ... -- Davy Barry, "THE ALIENS ARE COMING, THE ALIENS ARE COMING!"%%"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'." -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"%%"I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is thekind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlledsubstances being in widespread use. Back then, there were norestrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so wemade one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been givenpowerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerativenerve disease." -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"%%I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize thatthe whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professionalcongresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missileso we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of theplumber.

But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues suchas this, because in a free and open society, where the very future ofthe world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you neverwin large cash journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usuallywrite about, such as nose-picking. -- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against Political Fallout"%%"... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that wassupposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but whichactually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..." -- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning Points in l'Amour"%%I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't dotoo much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide whichdirection your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. Aftermuch trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hottub to face is up. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown... HEY! PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU DAMMIT! I said I thinkwe can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown today.When we take the time to be courteous to each other, we find that weare happier and less likely to engage in nuclear war. This point wasdriven home by the recent summit talks, where Nancy Reagan and RaisaGorbachev, each of whose husband thinks the other's husband is vermin,were able to sit down at a high-level tea and engage in courteousconversation ... -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"%% If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairsaround your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnaceexplodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The"professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides anddeposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend thebetter part of the week in your basement whacking objects at randomwith heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and givesyou a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run asuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate. And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. Howdifficult can it be?" Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible,which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in payingother people to screw things up when you can easily screw them upyourself for far less money. This article can help you. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become sosophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. Allthose who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where thedevil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing upas a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you. -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"%%Kids have *_____never* taken guidance from their parents. If you couldtravel back in time and observe the original primate family in theoriginal tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primateteenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting forgrubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primateteenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves. -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"%%Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived withwas made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always gettingpinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to thefarmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at theirsleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Doyou think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, insteadof every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned underthe tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any cropswhatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, whichLassie filed the applications for. -- Dave Barry%%Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stickyour hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well asMental Anguish. You would sue:

* The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls in there".

* The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious cretin like yourself.

* Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you a large cash settlement anyway. -- Dave Barry%%Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an oftenoverlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands ofdollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry yourtax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want tospend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owemoney, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent willprobably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care?It's not his money. -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"%%Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitiveman picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into theair, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the firstprimitive umpire.

What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good asmine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers. -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"%%Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, andit has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skinvery closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gentlytracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ... [EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the next few square feet of the woman's skin. Thank you.]... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking yourcigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up ofbillions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is evenmore interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is afact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where theolder veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top andobtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out thewindow head first, without so much as a pension plan, by youngerhotshot cells moving up from below. -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"%%Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sexbecause virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabsand large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy littleeyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim aroundand around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally thefemale gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she justdumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, drivenby some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So thetruth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many ofthem that it doesn't make any difference. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know"%%My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and Ithrew my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste.First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through theframe, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked upthe amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushedforward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifierperfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean throughthe window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciativecrowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was asymbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one statein my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and Ireally just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It soundedOK. -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"%%... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be toget it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay inthe mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songson the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damagechildren emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about asnowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learnto love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is abouta young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as anoutcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Doeshe ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respectRudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asksRudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than somekind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want yourchildren exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shopquickly. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"%% Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete hometool sets for under $4?" An excellent question. Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sellplastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and wherethey have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full ofRaisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixonadministration. In either the hardware or housewares department,you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country anddescribed as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle withinterchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of toolsthat Americans might use around the home. Buy it. This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is itinexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in theso-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right offif you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it todirect sunlight. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time thateach of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of hischoice.

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christianscalled it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka"and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. Peoplepassing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "HappyHanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!" -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"%%... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to youwith ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holidayshoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holidayadvertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into ashopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to takethem to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"%%One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you couldmanufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring thatthey be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let'ssay your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-findingstudy on how the French government handles diseases transmitted bysherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag,strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thusrendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could alsobe rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr.Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as CuticleInspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would savemillions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violentlysupport a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is thatyour potential market is very small: there are only around 500 membersof Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, arealready too large to fit on normal aircraft. -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"%%... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. BoyceConnell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. Onething I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. Ifsomebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts iton his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do whata lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself. -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"%%Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnictable. -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"%% Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arminto a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbingproblems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up theradio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at howplumbing works. A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system,except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires,it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucetsand toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing atall like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity cankill you. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%Probably the question asked most often is: Do one-celled animals haveorgasms? The answer is yes, they have orgasms almost constantly, whichis why they don't mind living in pools of warm slime. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know"%%Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person lovesto spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied wayto indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far thecleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when infact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in alifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end ofthe first day even if they have plenty of food and water. -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"%%"Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never usedit." -- Dave Barry%%REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system?

SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying thatthe country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You cancarry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away."I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kindof chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge todo all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation ofours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What weneed is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my politicalcareer be being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, butthat's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and Ican't help it. -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"%%Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build abig store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed atreasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let'sbuild a home center. And before long home centers were springing uplike crabgrass all over the United States. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts offduring games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know"%%So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donateyour current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically andhurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vastarray of 8-millimeter video equipment.

... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while youwere gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer formatthat makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced astoenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not bemade available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by aformat called "Elroy", so *order yours now*. -- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics Revolution"%% So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed tomaneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort ofcorner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than toflop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching towardit, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily inthe armpit area -- headed right straight toward us. Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard andI were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept ourheads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you'reunarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in waterup to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in theopposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms ofour feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran allthe way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brotherscartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seenthese two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonkedinto trees and coconuts fell onto their heads. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"%%... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, theirprocedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so asto infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source ofsharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people makingdocumentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairlylistless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, anotherdocumentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking,under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about theeffect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeplyscientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great Whitein the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind ofthing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, andthen they act as though this was a totally unexpected and verydangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted allalong. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"%%Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going tocelebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting aroundstringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on"The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kindof subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. Thegovernment would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-levelDepartment of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions andbillions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, whichit would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maimingthousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along withthe Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of moneyand go to a mall. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"%%Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sitback and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a goodbeverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown updrinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put anail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolvesand the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" SoCoca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management sawno need to improve ... -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"%%The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient thancities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded anddifficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NORULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as youwant in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parkinglot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by asquat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got outand explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault,his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I wasneither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parkinglots. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"%%The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unitcalled the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed inwriting -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties wouldbe heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devicesimmediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on abun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a SpecialSauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip ofpaper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Pattywould be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning.The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting toemit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be SeafoodLover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets." -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"%%"The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel andvinyl." -- Dave Barry%%The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I canremember. Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spiderstruggling to weave its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming inspring, the shark reveals to us yet another of the infinite andwonderful facets of nature, namely the facet that it can bite your headoff. This causes us humans to feel a certain degree of awe. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"%%The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronicdevices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers,where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) withsledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed,consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather thanhave to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old onesrepaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consistof two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronicdevices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!" -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"%%The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-freeinformation hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of adynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them areal tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.

So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business neverpays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a bigconsumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes... -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"%%"... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ..." -- Dave Barry%%The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumberhas already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture,finished, and put inside boxes. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expiredwarranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply bychanging the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tippedmarker. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oilusing other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and MiddleEastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormousbulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. Noneof the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory ratsdeveloped cancer. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"%%The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What isit about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television,that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece ofindustrial waste? -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"%%The reason it's called "Grape Nuts" is that it contains "dextrose",which is also sometimes called "grape sugar", and also because "GrapeNuts" is catchier, in terms of marketing, than "A Cross Between GerbilFood and Gravel", which is what it tastes like. -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"%% The Three Major Kind of Tools

* Tools for hittings things to make them loose or to tighten them up or jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces, bludgeons, and truncheons.)

* Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)

* Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far greater than the value of any project that could possibly result. (Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.) -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collectthe sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect thesunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"%%This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly,because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy underwhich it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has"deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, theconsumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow anyrules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge foroxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine RefillPerson School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengersover water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. Theseinnovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have beenpassed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights withamazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions doapply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark,and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out. -- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"%%... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal livesas well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, asdetermined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties peoplebuy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80scouple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation threeweeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available,they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellentrestaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd ofexcellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their beepers goingoff like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't havea table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli. -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"%%To understand this important story, you have to understand how thetelephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a localcomputer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which isin turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on thelawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.

Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If itsuspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies thecomputer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert theone above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybebreak down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordidincident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse,an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapiocapudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna'sloudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listenand drink gin and laugh themselves silly. -- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own Phones?"%%Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?

And where does it go after it leaves the toaster? -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"%%"Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-wordexcept in major motion pictures." -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"%%USER, n.: The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot." -- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"%%We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has anofficial name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian DeathFlu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wishyou had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", thatsaid "ELECTROCUTION".

Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) yourteeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushingprocess, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for acouple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sidewaysout of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpastestalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroomfloor, which is how the police would find you.

You know the kind of flu I'm talking about. -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"%%We ought to be very grateful that we have tools. Millions of years agopeople did not have them, and home projects were extremely difficult.For example, when a primitive person wanted to put up paneling, he hadto drive the little paneling nails into the cave wall with his barefist, so generally the paneling wound up getting spattered withprimitive blood, which isn't really all that bad when you consider howugly paneling is to begin with. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"%%We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell fromthe fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urgingyou to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him rightin his bowl full of jelly. -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"%%Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading alot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is agovernor or mayor or something from one of the flatter states, and thereason you'll be reading about him is that he's one of the 50 topcontenders for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. These menwill spend the next 18 months going around the country engaging in themost degrading activities imaginable, such as wearing idiot hats andappearing on "Meet the Press". "Meet the Press" is one of those Sundaymorning public interest shows that the public is not the least bitinterested in. It features a panel of reporters who ask questions of aguest politician, who wins an Amana home freezer if he can get throughthe entire show without answering a single question ... -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"%%What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the showerstall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landedbarefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot characterfrom "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off ofwhile he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because ourdog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building uppowerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into thebathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, anyone of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contactlenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury whereyou have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah",if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, withthat uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it;they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment toflush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them. -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"%%"What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come upwith a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill alwayscame up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions atparties. -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"%%What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, whichnobody really understands anyway, is a new concept called WeekdayMorning Time, whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space-launch-style "hold" for two to three hours, during which it justremains 7 a.m. This way we could all wake up via a civilized gradualprocess of stretching and belching and scratching, and it would stillbe only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually emerge from bed. -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"%%When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons ayear. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entirewinter with slightly over half that quantity of beer. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"%%Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as yourchildren open their old-fashioned presents.

Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"

You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"

Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory, and I get this cretin TOP?"

Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."

You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"

Daughter: "It looks like goat barf." -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"

Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you come back.

Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago, when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot. Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made, and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed, although their insurance rates went way up. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"

You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail. Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year; some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years. 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. -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"

You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form. The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified", which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last names. Here's the complete text:

"(1) How much did you make? (AMOUNT) "(2) How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT) "(3) Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME) household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"

The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long form. -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"

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. -- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"

You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that, contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day, you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"