It takes a minimum of six people, working in close harmony, to successfully flush a nautical toilet. That's why those old ships carried such large crews.

They have a lot of trouble with pronunciation, because they can't move their jaw muscles, because of malnutrition caused by wisely refusing to eat English food, much of which was designed and manufactured in medieval times during the reign of King Walter the Mildly Disturbed.

We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.

If you answered, ''Spin the Bottle,'' then I frankly do not want to know any more about your childhood.

Like all writers, my greatest inspiration, my ultimate muse, is a deadline.

People don't think of writers as sex objects. The women who write to me and suggest that we ought to have sex usually turn out to be, like, eighty. And their letters always end with, "Just joking."

The whole thing about whether you smoke marijuana or not is so ridiculous. That and whether you protested the Vietnam War. Give me a break. Especially the marijuana thing.