Most guys believe that they're supposed to know how to fix things. This is a responsibility that guys have historically taken upon themselves to compensate for the fact that they never clean the bathroom. A guy can walk into a bathroom containing a colony of commode fungus so advanced that it is registered to vote, but the guy would never dream of cleaning it, because he has to keep himself rested in case a Mechanical Emergency breaks out.
Dave BarryPeople who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
Dave BarryAsk not what your country can do for you. Ask whether your country has been inhaling paint-thinner fumes.
Dave BarryI've been checking with people back in South Florida to see if Hurricane Dennis is going to whack my house, and the consensus of the experts seems to be: No, it will not, unless it does, in which case, yes. So I'm feeling really calm over here in London.
Dave BarryWashington is nicknamed "The Evergreen State" because it sounds better than "The Incessant Nagging Drizzle State."
Dave BarryAsk any real estate broker to name the three most important factors in buying a property, and he'll say: "Location, location, location." Now ask him to name the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he'll say: "Location, location, location." This tells us that we should not necessarily be paying a whole lot of attention to real estate brokers.
Dave BarryYou cannot paint the exterior of your house. You have to take the paint chip down to show the paint-chip Nazis.
Dave BarryPuns 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.
Dave BarryWe journalists... are also extremely impressed with scientists, and we will, frankly, print just about any wacky thing they tell us, especially if it involves outer space.
Dave BarryBill Clinton, who, to his credit, has established a clear and consistent foreign policy, which is as follows: Whenever the president of the United States gets anywhere near any foreign head of state, living or dead, he gives that leader a big old hug. This has proven to be an effective way to get foreign leaders to do what we want: Many heads of state are willing to sign any random document that President Clinton thrusts in front of them, without reading it, just so he will stop embracing them.
Dave BarryYou should definitely have a travel agent. Why go through all the hassle of dealing with airlines, hotels, and rental-car agencies yourself, only to see the arrangements get all screwed up, when with just a single phone call you can have a trained professional screw them up for you?
Dave BarrySign at a Kentucky appliance store: Don't kill your wife. Let our washing machine do the dirty work.
Dave BarryIn fact, when you get right down to it, almost every explanation Man came up with for anything until about 1926 was stupid.
Dave BarryAmerican 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 BarryThe Spanish government, having run completely out of money, secretly sold the Pyrenees to China, and is now separated from France only by traffic cones.
Dave BarryThus the white men and Native Americans were able, through the spirit of goodwill and compromise, to reach the first in what would become a long series of mutually beneficial, breached agreements that enabled the two cultures to coexist peacefully for stretches of twenty and sometimes even thirty days, after which it was usually necessary to negotiate new agreements that would be even more mutual and beneficial, until eventually the Native Americans were able to perceive the vast mutual benefits of living in rock-strewn sectors of South Dakota.
Dave BarryA short distance away is the Tidal Basin, ringed by cherry trees that every year produce flowers, an event to which Washingtonians react as though it were the Second Coming of Christ.
Dave BarryWhen your Super Bowl guests arrive, they should find a mound of potato chips large enough to conceal a pony sitting in front of the television. For nutritional balance, you should also put out a bowl of carrot sticks. If you have no carrot sticks, you can use pinecones, or used electrical fuses, because nobody will eat them anyway. This is no time for nutritional balance: This is the Super Bowl, for God's sake.
Dave BarryFortunately the boat we rented had a motor in it You will definitely want this feature on your sailboat too, because if you put up the sails, the boat tips way over, and you could spill your beer.
Dave BarryI want to gag sometimes when I see who "we" are recommending that people vote for, and not just as a libertarian.
Dave BarryWe decide to start with the best-known sight of all, the one that, more than any other, exemplifies what the Big Apple is all about: the Islip Garbage Barge.
Dave BarryIf Peter was nine, and a new boy came to St. Norbert’s Home for Wayward Boys who said he was ten, why, then, Peter would declare himself eleven. Also, he could spit the farthest. That made him the undisputed leader.
Dave BarryIn Los Angeles, the jury in the Reginald Denny Beating trial, after much thinking, concludes, that Person A is not necessarily trying to kill Person B just because Person A happens to very deliberately bash Person B's skull in with a brick. The verdict is applauded by scientists at the Tobacco Institute.
Dave BarryBack then, the entire Internet consisted of two slow, boxcar-sized UNIVAC computers about 50 feet apart, connected by a wire. It would take one of these computers an entire day to send an email to the other one, which would immediately delete it, because it was a Viagra ad.
Dave BarryPeople 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."
Dave BarryBan walking sticks in wilderness. Hikers that use walking sticks are more likely to chase animals.
Dave BarryAirline food is not intended for human consumption. It's intended as a form of in-flight entertainment, wherein the object is to guess what it is, starting with broad categories such as "mineral" and "linoleum."
Dave BarryMeetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
Dave BarryWhat, exactly, is the internet? Basically it is a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a 'modem', can make a noise like a duck choking on a kazoo
Dave BarryIt was Public Art, defined as art that is purchased by experts who are not spending their own personal money.
Dave BarryLeonard Aster thanked Fighting Prawn and the Mollusk tribe for their hospitality. “You mean,” said Fighting Prawn, “for not killing you?” “Yes,” said Leonard. “It was very gracious of you.” “Do you,” said Leonard, “I mean, does you tribe, shake hands?” “No,” said Fighting Prawn. “We kiss on the lips.” “Oh,” said Leonard, looking very alarmed.
Dave BarryFor Dad, the perfect Father's Day would be one in which he didn't even realize that it was Father's Day, because nobody was making him appreciate gifts he didn't want, or read greeting cards filled with lame Father's Day poetry.
Dave BarryIf you answered, ''Spin the Bottle,'' then I frankly do not want to know any more about your childhood.
Dave BarryThere are a number of people without whom I could not have written this book, but I hope you don't hold that against them. They are all fine people, and they had no idea how it would turn out.
Dave BarryThe obvious and fair solution to the housework problem is to let men do the housework for, say, the next six thousand years, to even things up. The trouble is that men, over the years, have developed an inflated notion of the importance of everything they do, so that before long they would turn housework into just as much of a charade as business is now. They would hire secretaries and buy computers and fly off to housework conferences in Bermuda, but they'd never clean anything.
Dave BarryEarnest is our dog. She senses instantly that something is wrong, and guided by that timeless and unerring nurturing instinct that all female dogs have, she tries to lick my ears off.
Dave BarryI liked making people laugh, and I decided I was an atheist early on. My Dad was all right with that. We argued about it all the time, but it was good-natured. He was the most open-minded human being I've ever known.
Dave BarryDogs need to sniff the ground; it's how they keep abreast of current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are especially urgent, are often continued in the next yard.
Dave BarryThe other major kind of computer is the "Apple," which I do not recommend, because it is a wuss-o-rama New-Age computer you basically just plug in and use.
Dave BarryIf you tell most people what libertarians think, they immediately assume that you cannot mean it all the way, that you're really just taking a position for argument's sake.
Dave Barry