May 21 (TJILC #1)

[Nate the Great]

Well, as long as it's Barry Bashing Fishing Day (call your local congressperson!), here's another one. Once again, this is paraphrased and mutated, hardly an exact quote...

One day I was sitting around and I started to wonder why I never fish anymore. Then I realized that it's because I hate fishing. I hate sitting out in a rank, slime-encrusted boat for hours wearing a giant invisible sign that says EAT ME in mosquito language and impaling my fingers on nasty little hooks, and even if you accomplish your objective, all you're left with is ... this FISH, gasping, dying, looking at you with whichever eyeball is on your side, and you can almost hear him say in a tired but very sarcastic fish-voice, "Well, I hope that was fun for YOU, Mister Sportsperson."

[Zeke]

I too am a huge Dave Barry fan. Some samples from my quotefile....

In 1877, inventor Thomas Alva Edison leaned over a device and recited "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in a loud and clear voice. Nothing happened, because the device was a pencil sharpener. Embarrassed, Edison vowed that one day he would invent an electric light so he could see what the hell he was doing.

You may feel that there is something twisted about the values of a guy who can be more committed to a bunch of transient athletes than he is to his own wife. But you have to consider the larger picture, from the guy's point of view: His wife may be a warm, loving, and loyal person, but THERE IS NO WAY SHE WILL EVER MAKE THE PLAY-OFFS.

It is at times like this that we should remember the words of President John F. Kennedy, who, in his stirring inaugural address, said: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask whether your country has been inhaling paint-thinner fumes."

At this time France was experiencing its glory years under Louis XIV, who became known as the "Sun King" because he was more than 2 million miles in circumference.

Men and women have different financial priorities. Women have to recognize that men want certain things that may not seem important to women, and men have to recognize that women are insane.

Alaska was originally a large place located way the hell past Canada, but this proved to be highly inconvenient for mapmakers, who in 1873 voted to make it smaller and put it into a little box next to Hawaii right off the coast of California, where it is today.

And one of his shortest and sweetest....

The 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote (for men).

[Nate the Great]

Good Edison joke. Reminds me of a Dave Barry joke about Alexander Graham Bell. Well, actually two of them. Again, too lazy for exact quotes:

One day Bell fashioned a crude electronic device and spoke into it. Everybody thought he was an idiot and he would've died in poverty if Edison hadn't invented the second telephone years later.

Alexander spoke into the telephone, "Watson I need you," but had to leave a message with the his secretary since Watson was out solving a case with Sherlock Holmes. This kept happening for years.

And another about men and women:

Men and women often have different financial priorities. For example, the man might want to buy a thoroughbred racehorse and the woman might want to buy food. They need to compromise. In this example they could buy a thoroughbred racehorse and then eat it.

And a short list of Barry-inspired rockband names:

The Flaming Booty Moths
Italic Squirrels
The Shaking Turkey Wattles

[mudshark]

Hawley Smoot.

[Nate the Great]

That's Smoot Hawley.

"I have no idea what this means, but I just love looking at it in big bold letters. THE SMOOT-HAWLEY TARIFF."

"Gold and silver were known as the Pokemon cards of the fifteenth and sixteenth century."

"Now if you're one of those people who think that people who are enthusiastic in an organized way about Corvairs are several drawers short of a filing cabinet, let me assure you that you are correct."

"It goes without saying that ANY word processor you purchase should be able to generate a line of italic squirrels."

"For example, the owner of an establishment called 'Ye Olde Shoppe' would be forced to fork over $150,000. In extreme cases, such as 'Ye Olde Barne Shoppe, the owner would simply be taken outside and shot."

"The main reason why the western landscape is so rugged is because bad guys richocheted so many bullets off of it."

"There is a lump of blankets next to me in the bed that's absolutely motionless, except for occasional attempts to spit into a tissue. I think it MIGHT be my wife, but the only way to find out would be to prod her, which I wouldn't do even if I had the strength because if it was my wife, and she were alive, if I prodded her, it would kill her."

"My wife was raised in a small Midwestern town and she still believes that it's possible to get things repaired. That's why I wish you could've seen the look on it's [a broken TV's] face, when , with my wife weakened by the flu, I prodded it up at the end of the alley, execution-style, and one of the Jonathan's [the contractors] hurled a piece of Homeowner Project from fifty feet away deep into the very heart of its picture tube. It made a sound that I'm sure our other appliances would not soon forget."

"Have you any idea how much damage can be inflicted on the human body by a frozen cornish game hen?"

Hamlet: O didst' thine vespered' dreams 'ere burnt the day? Nor cans't thou find'st not plums in frinkle-whey?
Gertrude: What?
It went on like this for scene after scene, act after act until the main characters, driven insane by the fact that they're all speaking gibberish, kill themselves.