Running :)

"Running. You should, of course, wear a specially designed $200 Running Garment made from a synthetic material that has a name like the leader of a hostile reptilian alien invasion force in a space movie, such as "Gore-Tex". The beauty of these materials is that they actually "breathe". Really. At night, if you listen carefully to your closet, you'll hear your garment in there, breathing and occasionally chuckling softly at some synthetic joke it heard from your dress slacks."

Chapter: Running. 'Stay Fit & Healthy Until You're Dead', Dave Barry

14 Degrees Centipede :)

From "Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need":

"Another well-known Paris landmark is the Arc de Triomphe, a moving monument to the many brave men and women who have died trying to visit it, which we do not recommend because it's located in the middle of La Place de La Traffic Coming from All Directions at 114 Miles Per Hour."

"Finland is also home to the sauna, which is a wooden box in which you subject your body to extreme heat, which causes you to become very relaxed, unless of course the door gets stuck, in which case it causes you to become lasagna."

"Modern-day Denmark is a tourism wonderland, boasting a year-round average temperature of 14 degrees Centipede (108 degrees Richter)."

"Although it is now covered with agriculture, Kansas was at one time very historic. It was the on-scene location of the "Wild West", where "longhorns" riding "six-shooters" used to "rustle up" some "varmints". This era eventually ended due to a shortage of quotation marks."

"Louisiana was discovered by the Cajuns, a dynamic group of people who came down from Canada and decided to stay after they forgot where they had parked."

How to Act While Going Through Security :)

This is one of Barry's best!  'Dave Barry's only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need':
..................................................................................................

Security personnel are on the lookout for people who fit the Profile of Suspected Terrorists, which is as follows:

Profile of Suspected Terrorists

Sex: Male
Age: 15 through 74
Looks Suspicious?: Yes
 
As a smart traveller who wishes to avoid the inconvenience of being taken into a small airless interrogation room and having electrical wiring attached to your various genitals, you should make every effort to avoid fitting this profile. This mean that if you are, for example, a male, you should try to deflect the security personnel's attention away from this fact via such techniques as:

• Wearing a dress.
• Periodically remarking out loud to nobody in particular: "I certainly have a lot of body hair, for a woman!"

Page 42.

Barry Time Again :)

"Everybody should have a pet. Pets give you all the love and devotion of close relatives, but you can lock them in the basement for hours at a time if they get loud or boring. The pets, I mean. 

Have you ever wondered why people have pets? Neither have I.  I suspect it's because pets are easy to talk to. I spend hours talking to my dog explaining my views on world affairs. She always listens very attentively although I'm not sure she understands me. If I could hear what she's thinking, it would probably go like this: 

ME: The situation in the Middle East certainly looks serious.
MY DOG: I wonder if he's going to give me some food.

ME: It is unfortunate that an area so vital to the economic well-being of the world is so politically unstable.
MY DOG: Maybe he'll give me some food now.

ME: The Russians certainly are making it difficult for our government to achieve a lasting Mideast peace.MY DOG: Any minute now he might go into the kitchen and get me some food.

" Page 16, 'Bad Habits' by Dave Barry

Finally, a book dedicated to me

Some of you may not like Dave Barry's humour, but you got to appreciate his honesty:

Book dedication for 'I'll Mature when I'm Dead, Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood':

"This book is dedicated to everybody who buys this book. Without you, I would have to get an actual job."

:)

The Legendary Outlaw Flight Attendant

From 'Dave Barry is not Making This Up', Chapter 'Hell on Wings' -

"...It's a very good thing for society in general that I am not a flight attendant, because I would definitely kill somebody no later than my second day. Recently, I sat on a bumpy, crowded flight and watched a 40-ish flight attendant, both arms occupied with a large stack of used dinner trays, struggling down the aisle, trying to maintain her balance, and a young man held out his coffee cup, blocking her path, and in a loud, irritated voice said, quote: "Hon? Can I get a refill? Like maybe today?"

Hon.

She smiled - not with her eyes - and said, "I'll be with you as soon as I can, sir."

Sir.

Oh, I'd be with him soon, all right. I'd come up behind him and strangle him with the movie-headphone cord. "Is that tight enough for you, sir?" would be the last words he'd ever hear. Then I'd become a legendary outlaw flight attendant. I'd hide in the overhead luggage compartment and watch for problems, such as people flying with small children and making no effort to control them, people who think it's cute when their children shriek and pour salad dressing onto other passengers.

When this happened BANG the luggage compartment would burst open and out would leap: the Avenging Flight Attendant of Doom, his secret identity concealed by a mask made from a barf bag with holes in it. He'd snatch the child and say to the parents, very politely, "I'm sorry, but FAA regulations require me to have this child raised by somebody more civilized, such as wolves." If they tried to stop him, he'd pin them in their seats with dense, 200-pound airline omelets."

Read This First :)

Another Dave Barry classic :)

"Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you undoubtedly will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver.

Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE.

YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND SET IT TO "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS, RIGHT?

AND YOU'RE JUST STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT???

WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK ALL THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?

We're sorry. We just get a little crazy sometimes, because we're always getting back "defective" merchandise where it turns out that the consumer inadvertently bathed the device in acid for six days. So, in writing these instructions, we naturally tend to assume that your skull is filled with dead insects, but we mean nothing by it. OK?

From 'Dave Barry's Greatest Hits'

Coffee? Tea? Weasel Spit?

From Dave Barry Talks Back, the best I have read so far.

"….So I was getting on a plane in Seattle, and I was feeling a touch nervous because that very morning a plane was forced to make an emergency landing at that very airport after a window blew out at 14,000 feet and a passenger almost got sucked out of the plane headfirst.

This is the kind of thing that the flight attendants never mention during the Preflight Safety Demonstration, although maybe they should. I bet they could put on a very impressive demonstration using an industrial vacuum cleaner and a Barbie doll, and we passengers would NEVER take our seat belts off, even when the plane landed. We'd walk out into the terminal with our seats still strapped to our backs.

Anyway, the good news is that the passenger in Seattle was wearing his seat belt, and the other passengers were able to pull him back inside, and he's expected to make a complete recovery except for no longer having a head. This will definitely limit his ability to enjoy future in-flight meals ("Would you like a dense omelet-like substance, sir? Just nod your stump.")

Ha, ha! I am just joshing of course. The man retained all his major body parts. But just the same I don't like to hear this type of story because I usually take a window seat, because I want to know if a wing falls off. The pilot would never mention this. It is a violation of Federal Aviation Administration regulations for the pilot to ever tell you anything except that you are experiencing “a little turbulence.”

You frequent fliers know what I’m talking about. You’re flying along at 500 miles an hour, 7 miles up, and suddenly there’s an enormous shuddering WHUMP. Obviously the plane has struck something at least the size of a Winnebago motor home-in fact sometimes you can actually see Winnebago parts flashing past your window-but the pilot, trying to sound bored, announces that you have experienced “a little turbulence.” Meanwhile you just know that up in the cockpit they’re hastily deploying their Emergency Inflatable Religious Shrine.

Here’s what bothers me. You know how, during the Preflight Safety Demonstration, they tell you that in the event of an emergency, oxygen masks will pop out of the ceiling? My question is: Who wants oxygen? If I’m going to be in an emergency seven miles up, I want nitrous oxide, followed immediately by Emergency Intravenous Beverage Cart Service, so that I and my fellow passengers can be as relaxed as possible. (“Wow! Those are some beautiful engine flames!”)