Sixteen Things That It Took Me 50 Years to
Learn
1. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and
compelling reason why we observe day-light-savings time.
2. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely
suggests you think she�s pregnant unless you can see an actual
baby emerging from her at that moment.
3. The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.
4. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age,
gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that,
deep down inside we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers.
5. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people
to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 111.
6. There is a very fine line between �hobby� and �mental illness.�
7. People who want to share their religious views with you almost
never want you to share yours with them.
8. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human
race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential,
that word would be �meetings.�
9. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to
annoy people who are not in them.
10. If there really is a God who created the entire universe with
all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity,
He will NOT use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad
hairstyle.
11. You should not confuse your career with your life.
12. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a
nice person.
13. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too
seriously.
14. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one
individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command.
Very often, that individual is crazy.
15. Your friends love you, anyway.
16. Nobody cares if you can�t dance well. Just get up and do it.
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.
I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar. 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."
Puns are little 'plays on words' that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
Those of you who were fortunate enough to read last year's column no doubt recall that I advised you to cheat, on the grounds that by reducing the amount of money you gave the government, you'd be supporting the President in his program to reduce government spending.
Alaska was originally a large place located way the hell past Canada, but this proved to be highly inconvenient for mapmakers, who in 1873 voted to make it smaller and put it into a little box next to Hawaii right off the coast of Calafornia, where it is today.
Spontaneous human combustion is when people, with no apparant cause, suddenly start burning like campfire marshmellows, reaching temperatures of thousands of degrees and being completely reduced to ashes. This is often fatal.
The responsibility for getting rid of the carcass of the eight-ton dead whale that washed up on Oregon's beach was placed upon the Oregon State Highway Division, apparently on the theory that highways and whales are very similar in the sense of being large objects.
The typical Nintendo game involves controlling a little man who runs around on the screen trying to stay alive while numerous powerful and inexplicably hostile forces try to kill him; in other words, it's exactly like real life.
Here at the Institute of Scary foods we are highly suspicious of olives, which, in our opinion, are the eyeballs of giant frogs. We believe that if you stood outside an olive factory, you'd hear the unmistakable tragic sound (RIBBETT-THUMP; RIBBETT-THUMP) of terrified sightless frogs leaping into things.
This fall, we'll be seeing a new, redesigned $20 bill. This is part of an anti-counterfeiting program to redesign all of our old currency, which has become too easy to duplicate with modern color photocopiers - a fact that was made all too clear when the Xerox Corp., in its 1997 annual report, reported profits of "$850 trillion, mostly in 50s." To thwart would-be photocopiers, instead of saying "TWENTY DOLLARS," the new, redesigned $20 bills say "FIFTEEN DOLLARS."
I got hundreds of responses to my "Eat Bugs For Money" column, including dozens of people who were willing to eat bugs for free. Bear in mind that, under our system of government, these people can vote.
Everybody in New York, including police horses, dresses fashionably, and whenever I'm there, even in my sharpest funeral-quality suit with no visible ketchup stains, I feel as though I'm wearing a Hefty trash bag. And it's LAST YEAR'S Hefty trash bag.
I am forced to admit that I would rather undergo a vasectomy via Weed Whacker than attend an opera. The one time I did sit through one, it lasted approximately as long as fourth grade and featured large men singing for 45 minutes in a foreign language merely to observe that the sun had risen.
Today's Tip for Fiction Writers: To make your writing more
vivid, insert a literary device.
WEAK: "Detective Jake Turmoil slowly opened the door to the
killer's room."
STRONG: "Detective Jake Turmoil slowly opened the door to the
killer's room and a metaphor sliced off his head."
IRS HUMOR EXAMPLE: "A lawyer, a doctor, and a priest were marooned
on a desert island. So we consificated their homes."
My editor, Gene, can remember the complete starting lineups for the New York Yankee teams from 1960 through 1964, and yet rountinely makes calls wherein, after he dials the phone, he forgets who he's calling, so when somebody answers, Gene has to ask (a) who it is, and (b) does this person happen to know the purpose of the call.
On planes, I always take a window seat, because I want to know if a wing falls off. The pilot would never even mention this.
Being burned at the stake had become the punishment for just about every infraction including jousting without a permit. By the 1430s so many people had been burned at the stake that Europe ran out of stakes and had to start burning people at the lump of peat, which took forever. Eventually the fuel was exhausted, and the Dark Ages began.
Elizabeth I presided over the Elizabethan Era, which produced the immortal William Shakespeare, who wrote such timeless works as "Richard II", "Richard III", "Richard III Strikes Back" and "Hamlet Hears a Who", and who gave us a priceless legacy of famous phrases that, to this very day, are pretty much incomprehensible.
One night in 1609 an astronomer named Galileo, who had just
invented a new device called the "telescope," peered through it and
discovered that he could see directly into the bedroom window of
a woman who lived nearly 500 feet away. As a result, many guys
became interested in astronomy. Or so they told their wives.
Another important scientific advance occurred in 1614 when the
logarithm was invented by Scottish mathematician John Napier.
Some day, when time travel is invented, high-school students will
go back and kill him.
In 1687 Sir Isaac Newton, after watching an apple fall off a tree,
wrote his famous Principia Mathematica, which states that there is
a universal force, called "gravity," inside apples. Later scientists
would expand this definition to include grapefruit, but the basic
concept remains unchanged to this day.
In 1877, inventor Thomas Alva Edison leaned over a device and recited "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in a loud and clear voice. Nothing happened, because the device was a pencil sharpener. Embarrassed, Edison vowed that one day he would invent an electric light so he could see what the hell he was doing.
The U.S., determined to liberate Cuba from Spanish control, dispatched the famous "Rough Riders" in the legendary charge up San Juan Hill, only to enjoy a hearty laugh at their own expense when they realized that San Juan was in Puerto Rico. Historians believe this is the first known instance of the Central Intelligence Agency in action.
When a woman shops for clothes, her primary objective is NOT to find clothes that fit her particular body. Her primary objective is to purchase clothes that are the size she wore when she was 19 years old. This will be some arbitrary number such as "8" or "10." Don't ask me "8" or "10" of what; that question has baffled scientists for centuries.
The point, young people, is that there is a right way and a wrong
way to prepare for your SATs, and unless you are even stupider than
you look, you want to do it the right way.The term "SAT" is a set
of initials, or "antonym," standing for "Scholastic Attitude Treaty
Organization." This is a series of tests that predict your ability
to perform in the college environment by measuring the degree to
which you possess knowledge that nobody would ever in a million
years actually need.The SAT was developed by the prestigious
Educational Testing Service, which is located in Princeton, N.J.,
home of Harvard University. The original idea behind the SATs, as
stated in the E.T.S.'s Official Historical Statement of Goals and
Purposes, was "to sell a huge quantity of No. 2 pencils that we
ordered by mistake." Experts suggest that if you don't know the
answer on an SAT, you start by "weeding out" the answers that are
obviously false. Some of the telltale signs to look for are:
* The answer contains swear words.
* The answer contains the phrase "according to a White House
spokesperson."
Young people, you'll find that the things you learned in school will be vitally important to your success, provided that you are a contestant on Jeopardy. Otherwise they're useless.
My point is that I have never been a huge fan of Beowulf, or epic poems in general. "Epic," in my opinion, is a code word that English teachers use for "boring," the same way they use "satirical" when they mean "you will not laugh once."
Guys do not get enough credit for being domestic. This is because the people who give OUT the credits for being domestic are -- not to generalize or anything -- women.
Many people, responding to a column I wrote on the SAT tests, angrily objected to my statement that Princeton, N.J., is the home of Harvard University. Whoops! Princeton is of course the home of Yale University. Harvard University, according to the directory of the American Society of Colleges and Universities, is a type of weevil. Second, I received a letter from a woman who chastised me for stating, in a column about the Napa Valley, that "pinot noir" is French for "a type of wine." This is totally incorrect: "pinot noir" is actually French for "not a type of wine." But the point is that I am very sorry about these pesky errors that keep creeping into my column, and I am grateful to the many readers who, week after week, write angry letters correcting me. This is in no way whatsoever related to the topic of this week's column; namely: Is the public stupid? In closing, let me repeat that I am not saying that YOU are stupid. You, personally, are highly intelligent. How do I know this? Because I'm psychic! I also know that your name ... wait a minute ... it's coming to me ... your name contains at least one vowel. Am I right? I knew it! Pretty impressive, huh? Send me some money.
Thanks to the Internet, all you have to do is type in the words "population of Rhode Island" into your computer, and a moment later the number appears on your computer screen: 467,298. This is not the population of Rhode Island, of course: This is the number of Web sites that contain the words "population," "Rhode," "Island" or "of."
Men tend to attach great significance to Manhood. This results in certain characteristically masculine, by which I mean stupid, behavioral patterns that can produce unfortunate results such as violent crime, war, spitting and ice hockey. These things have given males a bad name (specifically, "asshole"). I realize that I'm making gender-based generalizations here, but my feeling is that if God did not want us to make gender-based generalizations, She would not have given us genders. I'm not saying guys are scum. I'm saying that many guys who consider themselves to be committed to their marriages will stray if they are confronted with overwhelming temptation, defined as "virtually any temptation." Okay, so maybe I AM saying guys are scum. But they're not MEAN-SPIRITED scum.
Your basic guy dog firmly believes that if he pees on enough territory, he will be declared Dominant Male Dog of the Entire Earth. This is basically the same instinct that determines the U.S. foreign policy, except that instead of peeing on foreign countries, we give them money or drop bombs on them, sometimes simultaneously.
Contrary to what many women believe, it's fairly easy to develop a long-term, stable, intimate, and mutually fulfilling relationship with a guy. Of course, this guy has to be a Labrador retriever. With human guys, it's extremely difficult.
Guys are born with a fundamental, genetically transmitted mental condition known to psychologists as: The Fear That If You Get Attatched to a Woman, Some Unattached Guy, Somewhere, Will Be Having More Fun Than You.
Guys are extremely reluctant to make commitments, or even to take steps that might LEAD to commitments. That is why, when a guy goes out on a date with a woman and finds himself really liking her, he will often demonstrate his affection by avoiding her for the rest of his life.
Consider the behaviour of guy dogs, who spend their lives in a ceaseless quest to establish their masculine dominance by peeing on everything in the entire world. Scientists believe that the reason dogs howl at the moon is because they (the dogs) (also some of the scientists) are upset that the can't get up there and pee on it.
You may feel that there is something twisted about the values of a guy who can be more committed to a bunch of transient athletes than he is to his own wife. But you have to consider the larger picture, from the guy's point of view: His wife may be a warm, loving, and loyal person, but THERE IS NO WAY SHE WILL EVER MAKE THE PLAY-OFFS.
I read an article once stating that down in Central America, they take sports a little too seriously in the sense that they routinely kill each other over soccer. (For the record, I think this is over reacting, unless of course once again we are talking about the play-offs).
My feeling is that if more guys would join mellow, purposeless, and semi-dysfunctional organizations such as the Lawn Rangers, then there would be a lot fewer guys getting involved in aggressive, venal, destructive, and frequently criminal organizations such as the U.S. Congress.
DNA molecules (DNA stands for "DinohydroNuclearsomethingsofAmerica") contain strings of small electrons called "genes" that provide, in secret code (to prevent other species, such as raccoons, from stealing it), all the information required to make you an individual person, such as hair color, shoe size, and social security number.
I have been married, on and off, since 1969, and I STILL do not grasp the point of making the bed.
I will admit that most guys do not do any more laundry than they absolutely have to. A single-sock load would not be out of the question, for a guy. A guy might well choose to wash ONLY THE REALLY DIRTY PART of the sock.
Let's face it, the human race needs guys because of the numerous contributions that guys make to society - positive contributions, vital contributions, contributions that are in no way diminished by the fact that I can't, offhand, think of what they are.