Smile! It costs nothing

by Taslim Arif

In case you needed any proof that the human race is doomed, here are some actual label instructions on consumer goods:

On Sears hair dryer:
"Do not use while sleeping."

On a bag of Fritos:
"You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside."

On a bar of Dial soap:
"Directions: Use like regular soap."

Some Swann frozen dinners:
"Serving suggestion: Defrost."

On a hotel-provided shower cap in a box:
"Fits one head."

On Tesco's Tiramisu desert:
"Do not turn upside down." (Printed on the bottom of the box.)

On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding:
"Product will be hot after heating"

On packaging for a Rowenta Iron:
"Do not iron clothes on body"

On Boot's Children's Cough Medicine
"Do not drive car or operate machinery"

On Nytol (a sleep aid):
"Warning: may cause drowsiness"

On a Korean kitchen knife:
"Warning: keep out of children"

On a string of Chinese-made Christmas lights:
"For indoor or outdoor use only."

On a Japanese food processor:
"Not to be used for the other use"

On Sainsbury's Peanuts
"Warning: contains nuts"

On an American Airlines packet of nuts:
"Instructions: open packet, eat nuts."

On a Swedish chainsaw:
"Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands"

Types of Real Trouble

* Self-Destruction
The old fashioned way to get into real trouble was by eating, drinking, taking drugs, getting diseases, and acting like a pig and a fool until you died. Today this is considered hopelessly poky and selfish. A clearly willful act of suicide in early youth is preferable, and more interesting to the public.

You should consider the feelings of others before you commit suicide. Try to kill yourself in a public place. Climb up on a bridge or out on a window ledge so that crowds can gather and cheer your urge to jump. Let at least one policeman climb out after you before you leap. This is how they earn medals and promotions.

If you are too shy or too afraid of heights for such a public exit, you
can include others in your gesture by leaving a well-composed suicide note. Even better is to leave a number of notes addressed to different people,  explaining how each of them was the principle cause of your despair. They'll be more flattered as to their importance than they would be if included in a general 'everybody hates me' sort of explanation.

Guns are always the best method of private suicide. They are more stylish looking than straight-edged razor blades and natural gas has gotten so expensive. Drugs are too chancy. You might miscalculate the dosage and just have a good time. Or you might wind up in the hospital as a human vegetable, in which case you'll spend the rest of your life being pestered to become the head of a Federal regulatory agency.

Some people favor committing suicide in the nude for additional shock value. But try to be honest with yourself about how your body looks naked. It's safer to wear something simple in white or light grey. Both go well with blood. And be sure to empty your bladder and your bowels before shooting yourself. Gore from a bullet wound is very impressive, but there is always an element of low comedy to excrement (as witnessed by the mention of it through out this post...)

There are times and places, of course, where it would be very bad manners to commit suicide.

* Never commit suicide at someone else's funeral. This is stealing the show--much too pushy.

* Try not to kill yourself in a way that will make you a martyr. The world does not need more hideous portraits painted on black velvet of the type seen depicting Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus Christ, and John F. Kennedy.

* Do not commit suicide to get back at your parents if they really DO despise you. You'll just be playing into their hands.

* Young people should not commit suicide over their college grades until their final exam scores have lowered the class curve.

Keeping Men Cooperative

It's important for women to resist the temptation to demand UNCONDITIONAL surrender from men. Men might get cranky. They might decide that it's better to rule in the bowling alleys and the duck blinds than serve in the House of Representatives, for example. And pro bowlers are poor alimony risks. On the
other hand, Satan probably wouldn't have talked so big if God had been his WIFE. He would have been to busy getting brimstone out of there and installing air conditioning.

So when you go on a date with a man, it's perfectly acceptable to make it clear that you are harder-working, more successful, and better paid than he is. But you should also realize that he needs to retain a measure of self-respect, which is why, no matter how much you're making, you should let him pay for everything.

Women can also reassure men about their social roles by adhering to traditional forms of address. An unmarried man is called 'Mister,' and a married man is called in a high shrill voice five or six times a day on the telephone at work.

Woman's Duty to Preserve Mankind

Besides the selfish reasons for sparing men, there is another consideration. Men are part of earth's natural heritage. It would be a shame for the children to grow up without knowing what a man looks like, never witnessing the impressive bulk of an unshaved male lying on the couch with a beer and a cigarette in an undershirt and boxers, watching football, or seeing men only in zoos.

Getting into Real Trouble

In order to be perfectly correct, when you decide to get real trouble, you should make sure that it's you who gets killed or sent to jail. But etiquette is not as exacting on this point as it once was. Today it's often considered acceptable to have lots of people go to the grave or Leavenworth with you.

You must still be careful about motive, however. It shouldn't look as though you need to cause trouble to attract attention. It's always rude to remind others of inadequacies, especially your own.

And you should never cause trouble out of anger. If you are mad at someone and you shoot him, real trouble will result. But you'll also lose that person's friendship. The more courteous thing to do would be to slap him with a huge lawsuit. That way you'll enjoy the trouble and he'll enjoy the publicity. Thus the wheels of polite society are oiled.

Nor should you ever create trouble for a 'cause'. Planting pipe bombs is no end of fun, but planting them in order, say, to free Croatia from Yugoslav political control looks to calculating. Also, having a cause gives others impolite thoughts about how empty your life must be otherwise.

Four Rules for Men Trying to give Women What they Want

Rule 1: Be A Husband to All Women
No matter how liberated she is, every woman still wants a husband. No one
knows why, but it's true. Even Jane Fonda has a husband, of a sort.

Being a husband to all women is, biologically, a daunting proposition. Locker-room claims to the contrary, most of us find it's all we can do to service just one woman, let alone the whole SEX. However, it is the privately help opinion of most women that their spouses aren't much good for this anyway. There are other more characteristic and less physically taxing ways of playing the husband.

Even if you live alone, you should put your feet up on the furniture, smoke stinky cigars, and never take the garbage out. Identify with the role. Try to be a husband at all times. Refer to any woman within earshot as 'the old lady', ask every woman you meet, "When's dinner?" and go right up to women you've never seen before in your life and tell them they've put on weight.

Rule 2: Provide Orgasms
Another of women's grievances is that male sexual techniques do not result in satisfactory female climaxes. Men must therefore be certain to provide orgasms to any females with whom they are allowed intimate contact.

I wish I could be more specific, but I cannot. Although I am in favor of feminism, I am still only a man and, frankly, does not know anything about where female orgasms come from. However, women seem to get a lot of what they like at cute little shops with names like 'Things 'n Stuff.' Maybe, next time you're at the mall, you should check it out.

Rule 3: Be a He-Man
He-men used to do things like fly jet fighter planes and climb Mt. Everest. They did these things to impress timorous and admiring women. Once women stopped being timorous and admiring, it was the secret hope of all us he-men that we could stop flying jet-figher planes and climbing Mt. Everest and spend the rest of our lieves in a cozy restaurant with nothing more dangerous than a bad oyster for miles around. Unfortuantely we just look to cute in our flight suits and parkas for women to let us stop. This is why Margaret Thatcher had to invade the Falklands.

Rule 4: Be Helpful
Men have always been expected to be helpful to women. The same is true now, but the mode of helpfulness has changed with changing sex roles. One example will suffice. In the past, a man was expected to give his seat on a bus to a woman. Today it would be much more courteous for him to give her his job.

WHY MEN AND WOMEN GET ALONG SO WELL

Continued research has disclosed new sex-linked traits in adult humans. Latest findings from one of the renowned lab indicate the following differences which will help you to tell men and women apart in the dark without resorting to the sort of behavior that Miss Manners finds
objectionable.

 

Relationships:

First of all, a man does not call a relationship a relationship - he refers to it as "that time when me and Suzie was doing it on a semi-regular basis". When a relationship ends, a woman will cry and pour her heart out to her girlfriends, and she will write a poem titled "All Men Are Idiots". Then she will get on with her life. A man has a little more trouble letting go. Six months after the break-up, at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, he will call and say, "I just wanted to let you know you ruined my life, and I'll never forgive you, and I hate you, and you're a total floozy. But I want you to know there's always a chance for us". This is known as the "I Hate You/I Love You" drunken phone call, that 99% of all men have made at least once. There are community colleges that offer courses to help men get over this need; alas, these classes rarely prove effective.

Making friends:

A woman will meet another woman with common interests, do a few things together, and say something like, "I hope we can be good friends." A man will meet another man with common interests, do a few things together, and say nothing. After years of interacting with this other man, sharing hopes and fears that he wouldn't confide in his priest or psychiatrist, he'll finally let down his guard in a fit of drunken sentimentality and say something like, "You know, for someone who's such a jerk, I guess you're OK."

Sex:

The average man would prefer having sex every evening, or every morning, or maybe both if he's under 30. The average woman would like to have sex non-stop all weekend, once a month. Women prefer 30 - 45 minutes of foreplay. Men prefer 30 - 45 seconds of foreplay. Men consider driving back to her place as part of the foreplay.

Maturity:

Women mature much faster than men. Most 17-year-old females can function as adults. Most 17-year-old males are still trading baseball cards and giving each other wedgies after gym class. This is why high school romances rarely work.

Handwriting:

To their credit, men do not decorate their penmanship. They just chicken-scratch. Women use scented, colored stationary and they dot their "i's" with circles and hearts. Women use ridiculously large loops in their "p's" and "g's". It is a royal pain to read a note from a woman. Even when she's dumping you, she'll put a smiley face at the end of the note.

Bathrooms:

A man has at most six items in his bathroom - a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of Dial soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn. The average number of items in a typical woman's bathroom is 437. A man would not be able to identify most of these items.

Groceries:

A woman makes a list of things she needs and then goes to the store and buys these things. A man waits till the only items left in his fridge are half a lemon and something turning green. Then he goes grocery shopping. He buys everything that looks good. By the time a man reaches the checkout counter, his cart is packed tighter that the Clampett's car on Beverly Hillbillies. Of course, this will not stop him from going to the 10-items-or-less lane.

Going out:

When a man says he is ready to go out, it means he is ready to go out. When a woman says she is ready to go out, it means she WILL be ready to go out, as soon as she finds her other earring, finishes putting on her makeup...

Cats:

Women love cats. Men say they love cats, but when women aren't looking, men kick cats.

Offspring:

Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and soccer games and romances and best friends and favorite foods and secret fears and hopes and dreams. A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

Dressing up:

A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the garbage answer the phone, red a book, get the mail. A man will dress up for: weddings, funerals.

David Letterman:

Men think David Letterman is the funniest man on the face of the Earth. Women think he is a mean, semi-dorky guy who always has a bad haircut.

Clothes:

Men don't discard clothes. The average man still has the gym shirt he wore in high school. He thinks a jacket is "just getting broken in" about the time it develops holes in the elbows. A man will let new shirts sit on the shelf in their original packaging for a couple of years before
putting them to use, hoping they'll become more comfortable with age. Women think clothes are radioactive, with a half-life of one year. They exercise precautions to avoid contamination by last year's fashions.

Laundry:

Women do laundry every couple of days. A man will wear every article of clothing he owns, including his surgical pants that were hip about eight years ago, before he will do the laundry. When he is finally out of clothes, he will wear a dirty sweatshirt inside out, rent a U-Haul and take his mountain of clothes to the laundromat. Men always expect to meet beautiful women at the laundromat. This is a myth.

Weddings:

When reminiscing about weddings, women talk about "the ceremony". Men talk about "the bachelor party".

Shoes:

The average man has 4 pairs of footwear: running shoes, dress shoes, boots, and slippers. The average woman has shoes 4 layers thick on the floor of her closet. Most of them hurt her feet.

Socks:

Men wear sensible socks. They wear standard white sweatsocks. Women wear strange socks. They are cut way below the ankles, have pictures of clouds on them, and have a big fuzzy ball on the back.

Nicknames:

If Gloria, Suzanne, Deborah and Michelle get together for lunch, they will call each other Gloria, Suzanne, Deborah and Michelle. But if Mike, Dave, Rob and Jack go out for a brewsky, they will affectionately refer to each other as Bullet-Head, Godzilla, Peanut Brain and Useless.

Eating:

A woman will generally admire an ornate desert for the artistic work it is, praising its creator and waiting a suitable interval before she reluctantly takes a small sliver off one edge. A man will start by grabbing the cherry in the center.

Car repair:

The average man thinks his Y chromosome contains complete repair manuals for every car made since World War II. He will work on a problem himself until it either goes away or turns into something that "can't be fixed without special tools". The average woman thinks "that funny thump-thump noise" is an accurate description of an automotive problem. She will, however, have the car serviced at the proper intervals and thereby incur fewer problems than the typical male.

Trust:

The average woman would really like to be told if her mate is fooling around behind her back. This same woman wouldn't tell her best friend if she knew the best friends' mate was having an affair. She'll tell all her OTHER friends, however. The average man won't say anything if he knows that one of his friend's mates is fooling around, and he'd rather not know if his mate is having an affair either, out of fear that it might be with one of his friends. He will tell all his friends about his own affairs, though, so they can be ready if he needs an alibi.

Driving:

A typical man thinks he's Mario Andretti as soon as he slips behind the wheel of his car. The fact that it's an 8-year-old Honda doesn't keep him from trying to out-accelerate the guy in the Porsche who's attempting to cut him off; freeway on-ramps are exciting challenges to see who has The Right Stuff on the morning commute. Does he or doesn't he? Only his body shop knows for sure. Insurance companies understand this behavior, and price their policies accordingly. A woman will slow down to let a car merge in front of her, and get rear-ended by another woman who was busy adding the finishing touches to her makeup.

Shopping:

It's no coincidence that L.L. Bean, Sears, and Roebuck were all men. Men don't like to shop. If a man can't foist the job off on some woman, he will grit his teeth and plan the outing as he would a jungle expedition. He wants a map of the store showing where he has to go to get item X in color Y in the correct size, which he doesn't know. Even then it takes him half an hour to get there from the entrance. When he's finally accomplished his mission, he'll discover that he forgot his checkbook. Women shop to relax.

OXYMORON

(Conjoining contradictory terms)

Sound of Silence
Deafening Silence
Dream Reality
Clear As Mud
Near Miss
Military Intelligence
Led Zeppelin
Perfectly Wrong
Weather Forecast
Icy Hot
Same Difference
Sun Shower
Plastic Straw
Wicked Good
Divorce Court
Postal Service
Pretty Ugly
Real Phony
Jumbo Shrimp
House Ethics
Cold as Hell
Void Where Prohibited
Plastic Silverware
TV News
Studying Together
Budget Resolution
Senatorial Courtesy
Government Worker
Small Fortune
Required Elective
Luxury Bus
Bittersweet
Peppermint
War Games

Next update on 1st January, 2006

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