"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster."
- T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935), Report on Mesopotamia, August 22, 1920 Sunday Times
"We don't need the Americans' intervention. We know who to elect. Not like them -- they elected a moron."
- Manar an-Najar, Gaza soap factory worker, quoted in Reuters 1/5/2005
"It may be now accepted as a principle that any weak saddle-colored nation that happens to be situated near us and also happens to possess a lot of mahogany or hemp or cocoanuts or gold mines had better look out. We have our moral eye on such people and are likely to introduce American morality at any moment."
- William E. Woodward (1874-1950)
oooh, that's a goodie, I've never heard of him...
Gives new meaning to Cynic
"I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture, and kill them." -
Stanley Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket
(another cynic)
"I wish they had listened more carefully to what we were saying."
Hans Blix (1928- ), UN weapons inspector, referring to the US government wiretap of his office in Manhattan.
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door."
Paul Beatty (1962- )
"In fact, I have the new equation right here:
9/11 + 'x' (where 'x' equals 'whatever we say') = Shut the **** Up."
- Jon Stewart, 1/13/2005 Daily Show, responding to the repeated White House catch-phrase "9/11 has changed the equation."
Sheesh
BTW Berry quit the Miami Herald. He should be our Humorist Lauterate
Dave Barry? When did that happen... she asks... knowing full well she could look it up.
I'll look it up he says: knowing full well that she is giving me something to occupy this rainy Sunday.
Here's Auto-Dave the automatic Column Writer:
1. Enter the name of a town:
2. Enter a plural noun, the weirder the better:
3. What does your answer to (2) do that makes them so weird?
4. Something you'd say to someone to make them want to leave
5. Give me an insult:
6. Enter one of your friend's names:
7. Enter a really stuffy, formal (male) name:
8. Enter a slang (male) nickname:
9. Enter four things that always go together:
10. What would you say to your boss if you won the lottery:
11. What do you say when someone cuts you off in traffic:
12. What do you say to someone when you recognize them as the person who cut you off:
13. You are female, your husband cheated on you, and the court rules that you can do only one thing to him, so: You his
14. Complete the sentence:
I would really enjoy
the bullies who used to beat me up in high school
15. How do you plan to spend your retirement: (Note: your answer must be a phrase containing at least one space)
16. What should we do to solve the garbage crisis?
17. What is your standard procedure for unclogging toilets?
18. Complete the sentence: Governments are supposed to
19. Complete the sentence: Desk-bound employees spend a great deal of time typing with one hand and holding a in the other...
20.What would be a good bumper sticker for someone that you hate?
Posted on Sun, Jan. 02, 2005
The last word, for now; humorist gives jokes a rest
By DAVE BARRY
There comes a time in the life of every writer when he asks himself -- as Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Hemingway all surely asked themselves -- if he has any booger jokes left in him.
For me, that time has come. I've been trying to entertain newspaper readers since the '60s, when I wrote ''humor'' columns for the Haverford College News. I put ''humor'' in quotation marks because when I go back and read those columns today, I don't get any of the jokes. But at the time, they were a big hit with my readership, which consisted pretty much of my roommates.
After college, I got a job as a reporter at the West Chester, Pa., Daily Local News, where I was also allowed to write humor columns. I thought they were pretty good, but after my third one, an editor took me aside and told me -- this is an absolutely true quote -- ''you used to be funnier.''
That was more than 30 years ago, and since then, hardly a week has gone by during which somebody has not told me that I used to be funnier. I sometimes got discouraged, but I kept at it, year after year, the past 22 of them at The Herald. Why didn't I give up? I'll tell you why: I have no useful skills.
Also, this job has been a lot of fun. Here are just a few of the things that, as a professional humor columnist, I have actually been paid to do:
I picked up my son, Rob, at his junior high school in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. (Rob, now 24, claims he has forgiven me. Although, to be safe, I'm still in the federal witness protection program.)
After I wrote a column suggesting that opera might be fatal to humans, I was invited to Eugene, Ore., to participate in the Eugene Opera's performance of the Puccini opera Gianni Schicchi. I played the part of a corpse.
An Air Force pilot took me for an F-16 fighter-jet ride, during which -- while hurtling through the brilliant-blue sky high above the Straits of Florida at faster than the speed of sound -- I threw up.
After I made fun of North Dakota, the city of Grand Forks, N.D., invited me up there one January, and, in a deeply moving (also deeply cold) ceremony attended by a crowd of dozens, the mayor of Grand Forks, Mike Brown, dedicated a new sewage-lifting station in my honor. (Mayor Brown's official proclamation very eloquently compared my work to the production of human excrement.)
I went on the David Letterman show and demonstrated to a nationwide television audience that it was possible to set fire to a pair of hair spray-soaked men's underpants using a Rollerblade Barbie doll. (To my knowledge, Rollerblade Barbie is the only Barbie ever recalled as a fire hazard, although I am not taking credit.)
These were all fun things to write about. But many of my favorite columns were suggested by you readers, an amazingly alert group. If an important news event occurs -- a toilet exploding, for example; or a boat being sunk by a falling cow; or a cow exploding -- I can count on my readers to let me know about it. On the other hand, if I write something that turns out -- despite my relentless fact-checking -- to be inaccurate, such as that Thomas Jefferson invented the atomic bomb, I will receive dozens of letters, often very irate, correcting me. I cherish those letters most of all.
So this is a great job. And yet I'm quitting it, at least for now. I want to stop before I join the horde of people who think I used to be funnier. And I want to work on some other stuff.
So for the next year, I won't be writing regular columns, though I hope to weigh in from time to time if something really important happens, such as a cow exploding in a boat toilet.
At some point in the next year, I hope to figure out whether I want to resume the column. Right now, I truly don't know.
So in case I don't get to say this later: Thanks to all you editors for printing my column, and thanks especially to all you readers for reading it. You've given me the most wonderful career an English major could hope to have. I am very grateful.
And I'm not making that up.
panzade wrote:I'll look it up he says: knowing full well that she is giving me something to occupy this rainy Sunday.
<smooch>
Sorry it is raining there and thanks loads, Panzade, for looking it up. I'm glad Barry says he'll keep his hand in if something remarkably weird happens (can hardly wait) and I'm especially glad he wasn't fired.
"I've been trying for some time to develop a life style that doesn't require my presence."
Garry Trudeau (1948- )
"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
Arthur C. Clarke (1917- )
I wonder how he fared in the Sri Lanka disaster?
Piffka--
According to the January
Ansible issue, all is well:
Arthur C. Clarke issued a statement following the horrific tsunami disasters in South/Southeast Asia: `I am enormously relieved that my family and household have escaped the ravages of the sea that suddenly invaded most parts of coastal Sri Lanka, leaving a trail of destruction.' Read it all at
http://www.clarkefoundation.org/.
Thanks, Noddy. I'm glad to hear that he & all his family & staff are safe. Very interesting website.
