Dave Barry

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.

Admit it, sport-utility-vehicle owners! It's shaped a little differently, but it's a station wagon! And you do not drive it across rivers! You drive it across the Wal-Mart parking lot!

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

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.

As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula.

Because of the level of my chess game, I was able - even against a weak opponent, such as my younger brothers or the dog - to get myself checkmated in under three minutes. I challenge any computer to do it faster.

Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.

Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth.

Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business.

Congress, after years of stalling, finally got around to clearing the way for informal discussions that might lead to possible formal talks that could potentially produce some kind of tentative agreements...

Don't you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don't even have to be true!

Experts tell us that if the Millennium Bug is not fixed, when the year 2000 arrives, our financial records will be inaccurate, our telephone system will be unreliable, our government will be paralyzed and airline flights will be canceled without warning. In other words, things will be pretty much the same as they are now.

Have you noticed that whatever sport you're trying to learn, some earnest person is always telling you to keep your knees bent?

I recently had my annual physical examination, which I get once every seven years, and when the nurse weighed me, I was shocked to discover how much stronger the Earth's gravitational pull has become since 1990.

I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base.

If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would have made them cute and furry.

If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you'd find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from The Beverly Hillbillies.

If you were to open up a baby's head -- and I am not for a moment suggesting that you should -- you would find nothing but an enormous drool gland.

In fact, just about all the major natural attractions you find in the West -- the Grand Canyon, the Badlands, the Goodlands, the Mediocrelands, the Rocky Mountains and Robert Redford -- were caused by erosion.

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!'

It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.

It is a good idea to "shop around" before you settle on a doctor. Ask about the condition of his Mercedes. Ask about the competence of his mechanic. Don't be shy! After all, you're paying for it.

It is a scientific fact that your body will not absorb cholesterol if you take it from another person's plate.

Karate is a form of marital arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.

Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.

Like many members of the uncultured, Cheez-It consuming public, I am not good at grasping modern art.

Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators.

Magnetism is one of the Six Fundamental Forces of the Universe, with the other five being Gravity, Duct Tape, Whining, Remote Control, and The Force That Pulls Dogs Toward The Groins Of Strangers.

Males have a lot of trouble not looking at breasts. What is worse, males cannot look at breasts and think at the same time. In fact, scientists now believe that the primary biological function of breasts is to make males stupid. This was proved in a famous 1978 laboratory experiment wherein a team of leading male psychological researchers at Yale deliberately looked at photographs of breasts every day for two years, at the end of which they concluded that they had failed to take any notes. "We forgot," they said. "We'll have to do it over."

MEGAHERTZ: This is a really, really big hertz.

My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.

Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.

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.

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.

Snowboarding is an activity that is very popular with people who do not feel that regular skiing is lethal enough.

Talking about golf is always boring. (Playing golf can be interesting, but not the part where you try to hit the little ball; only the part where you drive the cart.)

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.

The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.

The function of RAM is to give us guys a way of deciding whose computer has the biggest, studliest, most tumescent MEMORY. This is important, because with today's complex software, the more memory a computer has, the faster it can produce error messages. So the bottom line is, if you're a guy, you cannot have enough RAM.

The information encoded in your DNA determines your unique biological characteristics, such as sex, eye color, age and Social Security number.

The Internet is a giant international network of intelligent, informed computer enthusiasts, by which I mean, "people without lives." We don't care. We have each other...

The Internet: Transforming Society and Shaping the Future Through Chat.

The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates.

The major parties could conduct live human sacrifices on their podiums during prime time, and I doubt that anybody would notice.

The only kind of seafood I trust is the fish stick, a totally featureless fish that doesn't have eyeballs or fins.

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.

We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.

Scientists tell us that the fastest animal on earth, with a top speed of 120 ft/sec, is a cow that has been dropped out of a helicopter.

You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, "My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!"

I figured out why I'm not getting seriously rich. I write newspaper columns. Nobody ever makes newspaper columns into Major Motion Pictures starring Tom Cruise. The best you can hope for, with a newspaper column, is that people will like it enough to attach it to their refrigerators with magnets shaped like fruit.

'You scratch my back, and I'll suck blood out of yours' - that is the insect motto.

There are no seeing eye cats, of course, because the sole function of cats, in the Great Chain of Life, is to cause harm to human beings.

If God had wanted us to spend our time fretting about the problems of home ownership, He would never have invented beer.

Drug testing is very big in football. This is because football players are Role Models for young people. All you young people out there want to grow up and have enormous necks and get knee operations as often as haircuts. That's why the people in charge of football don't want you to associate it with drugs. They want you to associate it with alcohol.

To defend Western Europe we have to let the Pentagon buy all these tanks and guns and things, and the Pentagon is unable to buy any object that that costs less than a condominium in Vail. If the Pentagon needs, say, fruit, it will argue that it must have fruit that can withstand the rigors of combat conditions, and it will wind up purchasing the FX-700 Seedless Tactical Grape, which will cost $160,000 per bunch, and will have an 83 percent failure rate.

The reason gas stations sell food, of course, is that the supermarkets are busy cashing checks. The supermarkets have to cash checks because the banks are busy mailing unsolicited credit cards to everybody in the Western Hemisphere. The result is that very few people fix cars.

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.

Back in the old days, most families were close-knit. Grown children and their parents continued to live together, under the same roof, sometimes in the same small, crowded room, year in and year out, until they died, frequently by strangulation.

I realise 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.

It is never okay to throw away veteran underwear. A real guy checks the garbage regularly in case somebody - and we are not naming names but this would be his wife - is quietly trying to discard his underwear, which she is frankly jealous of, because the guy seems to have a more intimate relationship with it than with her.

It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million guy sperm cells, each one wriggling in its own direction, totally confident it knows where it is going, to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.

Childbirth, as a strictly physical phenomenon, is comparable to driving a United Parcel truck through an inner tube.

A guy could have one major limb lying on the ground a full ten feet from the rest of his body, and he'd claim it was 'just a sprain'.

We humans do not need to leave Earth to get to a hostile, deadly, alien environment; we already have Miami.

My mother used to say to me: "Son, it's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick." I think that still makes a heck of a lot of sense, even in these troubles times.

You should do your own car repairs. It's an easy way to save money and possibly maim yourself for life.

"Look closely at Central America, and try to imagine what would happen if this vital region were to fall into Communist hands. What would happen is a lot of Communists would be stung repeatedly by vivious tropical insects the size of mature hamsters.

The ACLU is always yakking about the Constitution, and most of us are getting mighty tired of it. I mean, if the Constitution is so great, how come it was amended so many times? Huh?

The only flaw in the Hinckley trial is that it left a lot of people with the impression that psychiatrists are just a bunch of bearded voodoo doctors who espouse confusing and wildly contradictory theories that have nothing to do with common sense. This is totally unfair. Many psychiatrists are clean-shaven.

Classical music gradually lost popularity because it is too complicated: you need twenty-five or thirty skilled musicians just to hum it properly. So people began to develop regular music.

There are many silly superstitions about lightning, and as a result many people - maybe even you - are terrified of it. You shouldn't worry. Thanks to modern science we now know that lightning is nothing more than huge chunks of electricity that can come out of the sky, anytime, anywhere, and kill you.

Over the next hundred years or so football saw a great many major innovations and refinements that are too boring to even think about. Along the way professional football came into being so that the largest and most violent college players would have a way to earn money other than simply demanding it from innocent civilians.

When you get right down to it, the Safety Lecture is a silly idea. I mean, if the passengers really thought the plane was going to crash, they wouldn't get on it in the first place, let alone learn how to get an adequate oxygen supply on the way down.

Tokyo is huge. Something like 15 million people live there, and my estimate is that at any given moment, 14.7 million of them are lost. This is because the Tokyo street system holds the world outdoor record for randomness. A map of Tokyo looks like a tub of hyperactive bait. There is virtually no street that goes directly from anywhere to anywhere.

I hate rap music, which to me sounds like a bunch of angry men shouting, possibly because the person who was supposed to provide them with a melody never showed up.

On the Japanese news, if the announcers had happy faces and perky voices, I knew that meant good news, such as that Japanese scientists had discovered a way to make VCR's even more difficult for Americans to program; whereas if the announcers had serious voices and frowny faces, it meant bad news, such as the worsening eel shortage.

We should enact an 'e' tax. Government agents would roam the country looking for stores whose names contained any word that ended in an unnecessary 'e,' such as 'shoppe' or 'olde,' and the owners of these stores would be taxed at a flat rate of $50,000 per year per 'e.' We should also consider an additional $50,000 'ye' tax, so that the owner of a store called 'Ye Olde Shoppe' would have to fork over $150,000 a year. In extreme cases, such as 'Ye Olde Barne Shoppe,' the owner would simply be taken outside and shot.

I'm a middle age white guy, which means I'm constantly reminded that my particular group is responsible for the oppression of every known minority PLUS most wars PLUS government corruption PLUS pollution of the environment, not to mention that it was middle-age white guys who killed Bambi's mom.

You should never pick up a newspaper when you're feeling good, because every newspaper has a special department, called the Bummer Desk, which is responsible for digging up depressing front-page stories with headlines like DOORBELL USE LINKED TO LEUKEMIA and OZONE LAYER COMPLETELY GONE DIRECTLY OVER YOUR HOUSE.

The books all say that barracuda rarely eat people, but very few barracuda can read, and they have far more teeth than would be necessary for a strictly seafood diet. Their mouths look like the entire $39.95 set of Ginsu knives, including the handy Arm Slicer.

I don't know what the new Ford will be called. Probably something like the 'Ford Untamed Wilderness Adventure.' In the TV commercials, it will be shown splashing through rivers, charging up rocky mountainsides, swinging on vines, diving off cliffs, racing through the surf, and fighting giant sharks hundreds of feet beneath the ocean surface -- all the daredevil things that cars do in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, where nobody ever drives on an actual world. In fact, the interstate highways in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, having been abandoned by humans, are teeming with deer, squirrels, birds, and other wildlife species that have fled from the forests to avoid being run over by nature-seekers in multi-ton vehicles barreling through the underbrush at 50 miles per hour.

Cooking was invented in prehistoric times, when a primitive tribe had a lucky accident. The tribe had killed an animal and was going to eat it raw, when a tribe member named Woog tripped and dropped it into the fire. At first the other tribe members were angry at Woog, but then, as the aroma of burning meat filled the air, they had an idea. So they ate Woog raw.

I assume you are on the Internet. If you are not, then pardon my French, but vous �tes un big loser. Today EVERYBODY is on the Internet, including the primitive Mud People of the Amazon rain forest. In the old days, when the Mud People needed food, they had to manually throw spears at wild boars; whereas today they simply get on the Internet, go to www.spear-a-boar.com and click their mouse a few times (the Mud People use actual mice). Within three business days, a large box is delivered to them by a UPS driver, whom they eat.

I have not felt remotely cool for a long time, thanks largely to the relentless efforts of my teenage son, whose goal in life is to make me feel 3,500 years old. We'll be in the car, and he'll say, 'You wanna hear my new CD?' And I, flattered that he thinks his old man might like the same music he does, will say 'Sure!' So he increases the sound-system volume setting from '4' to 'Meteor Impact,' and he puts in a CD by a band with a name like 'Pustule,' and the next thing I know gigantic nuclear bass notes have blown out all the car windows and activated both the driver- and passenger-side air bags, and I'm writhing on the floor, screaming for mercy with jets of blood spurting three feet from my ears. My son then ejects the CD, smiling contentedly, knowing he as purchased a winner. On those extremely rare occasions when I like one of his CDs, I imagine he destroys it with a blowtorch.

I probably should never have been there anyway, and it served me right when the two alert police officers fired up their siren, pulled me over, and pointed out that my car's registration had expired. I had not realized this, and as you can imagine I felt like quite the renegade outlaw as one of the officers painstakingly wrote out my ticket, standing well to the side of the road so as to avoid getting hit by the steady stream of passing unlicensed and uninsured motorists driving their stolen cars with their left hands so that their right hands would be free to keep their pit bulls from spilling their cocaine all over their machine guns. Not that I am bitter.

In some versions of my original contest column I had proposed, in a lighthearted manner, that we reduce the deficit by 'selling unnecessary states such as Oklahoma to the Japanese.' This caused a number of Oklahomans to send in letters containing many correctly spelled words and making the central lighthearted point that I am a jerk. They also sent me official literature stating that Oklahoma has enormous quantities of culture in the form of ballet, Oral Roberts, etc., and that the Official State Reptile -- I am not making this up -- is something called the 'Mountain Boomer.' So I apologize to Oklahoma, and as a token of my sincerity I'm willing to sell my state, Florida, to the Japanese, assuming nobody objects to the fact that Japan would suddenly become the most heavily armed nation on Earth.

What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.

Without computers, the government would be unable to function at the
level of effectiveness and efficiency that we have come to expect.
This is because the primary function of the government is -- and here I
am quoting directly from the U.S. Constitution -- 'to spew out paper.'

In the past decade or so, the women's magazines have taken to running home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption that men know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is look at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job requiring them to transfer to another home.

Stuffwise we are not a lean operation. We're the kind of people who, if we were deciding what absolute minimum essential items we'd need to carry in our backpacks for the final, treacherous ascent to the summit of Mount Everest, would take along aquarium filters, just in case.

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.

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.

To you taxpayers out there, let me say this: Make sure you file your tax return on time! And remember that, even though income taxes can be a �pain in the neck,� the folks at the IRS are regular people just like you, except that they can destroy your life.

The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put inside boxes.