Free Republic

My 10 rules to make this a better world Saturday, May 22nd, 2004 Okay, here are the rules: 1. If there's a line, you get at the end of the line, and you wait your turn. 2. You own ONE place in the line. You do NOT have the right to invite friends to join you in the line. This is rude to the people behind you, who got there before your friends and will now have to wait longer. If you want to be with your friends, you can join them at the back of the line. And, no,...

Don't mean to be rude? Read rules DAVE BARRY OK, here are the rules: 1. If there's a line, you get at the end of the line, and you wait your turn. 2. You own ONE place in the line. You do NOT have the right to invite friends to join you in the line. This is rude to the people behind you, who got there before your friends, and will now have to wait longer. If you want to be with your friends, you can join them at the back of the line. And, no, it's not enough to...

The Source of America's Discontent DAVE BARRY Posted on Sun, May. 02, 2004 Before we get to today's column, I have an important announcement regarding outsourcing. ''Outsourcing'' is a business expression that means, in layperson's terms, ''sourcing out.'' It's a trend that started years ago in manufacturing, which is a business term that means ``making things.'' You youngsters won't believe this, but there was a time when Americans actually made physical things called ''products'' right here in America. Workers would go to large grimy buildings called ''factories'' where they would take a raw material such as iron ore and perform...

Laid off? Don't blame Barbie DAVE BARRY Posted on Sun, Apr. 25, 2004 Every now and then, on this crazy planet we call ''Earth,'' you come across a story so darned heartwarming that you need to take a prescription antacid. This is such a story. I found out about it from alert reader David Rankin, who sent me the Jan. 3 front page of the Sevier County, Tenn., Mountain Press (''Sevier County's Daily Newspaper''). On it is an article by J.J. Kindred about a Danville, Va.,-based textile company called ''Dan River,'' which was closing its Sevierville plant, and laying off...

Today's Consumer Topic Is: Buying a New TV. Buying a TV today is complicated. It's not like in the 1950s, when I was a boy and the glaciers were receding and electricity had just been invented. Back then there was only one kind of TV, which was a refrigerator-sized mass of walnut with two knobs and a tiny screen. In fact, some of the early TVs had no screen at all: People would just sit and stare at the walnut. That's how starved we were for entertainment. I remember when we got our first TV. Dad set it up, then...

Give Wedding Advice a Shot DAVE BARRY It's wedding season again. You can tell because the average bridal magazine currently weighs more than the average bride. Bridal magazines are massive because they carry enormous amounts of advertising designed to convince the bride-to-be that her wedding will be a hideous disaster if it costs less than a nuclear aircraft carrier. ''If your parents have any money left over for retirement, you have FAILED'' -- that is the message to brides from the U.S. wedding industry. There are no magazines for grooms, of course. The groom's sole wedding responsibility is to arrive...

I probably shouldn't admit this to you younger readers, but when my generation was your age, we did some pretty stupid things. I'm talking about taking CRAZY risks. We drank water right from the tap. We used aspirin bottles that you could actually open with your bare hands. We bought appliances that were not festooned with helpful safety warnings such as ''DO NOT BATHE WITH THIS TOASTER.'' But for sheer insanity, the wildest thing we did was -- prepare to be shocked -- we deliberately ingested carbohydrates. I know, I know. It was wrong. But we were young and foolish,...

April 15 is lurking around the corner, so if you haven't yet filed your federal tax return, it's time to set aside a few hours, gather together your financial records, and flee the country. Or, if you like to ''walk on the wild side,'' you can stay here and attempt to do your taxes. As usual, there are some ''new wrinkles'' in the tax laws this year, to guard against the danger that some taxpayer, somewhere, will actually understand them. For openers, we have a new Internal Revenue Service commissioner, replacing former Commissioner Charles Rossotti, who, in what the IRS...

Death, Taxes, Airline Food DAVE BARRY Miami Herald Sun, Mar. 21, 2004 April 15 is lurking around the corner, so if you haven't yet filed your federal tax return, it's time to set aside a few hours, gather together your financial records, and flee the country. Or, if you like to ''walk on the wild side,'' you can stay here and attempt to do your taxes. As usual, there are some ''new wrinkles'' in the tax laws this year, to guard against the danger that some taxpayer, somewhere, will actually understand them. For openers, we have a new Internal Revenue...

Forget Mars, Just Open the Refrigerator Mar. 14, 2004 I'm a pretty good housekeeper. Ask anybody. No, wait: Don't ask my wife. She and I disagree on certain housekeeping issues, such as whether it's OK for a house to contain dirt. Also smells. If NASA scientists really want to know about life on Mars, instead of sending up robots that keep finding rocks, they need to send my wife, and have her take a whiff of the Martian atmosphere. If there's a single one-celled organism anywhere on the planet, she'll smell it. And if the other astronauts don't stop her,...

Federal deficit: Meet the other white meat Posted on Sun, Mar. 07, 2004 DAVE BARRY TODAY'S TOPIC IS: Famous Hollywood Celebrities Having Sex With Squid! Actually, that is not today's topic. I'm just trying to attract readers to today's actual topic, which is: the federal budget deficit. WAIT! Come back! This is an important topic! Especially if you are a young person, or belong to a future generation yet unborn. Boy are YOU in for a surprise in a few decades! Ha ha! To help you understand what I am talking about, here's an explanation of the federal budget deficit...

It's All Downhill From Here DAVE BARRY Feb. 29, 2004 I haven't attempted to ski for years, but recently I decided to take another stab at it. I was hoping they'd done something about the gravity problem. Gravity is the biggest drawback to skiing. Without gravity, it would be a carefree activity: You'd put on your skis, head for the slopes and just . . . hover for a while. Then it would be time for ''aprs ski'' (French for ''no longer skiing''). Instead, you have gravity. Huge amounts of it. Ski areas are located smack dab on top of...

With All Due Respect, Yer a Ding Dong DAVE BARRY It is time for another rendition of ''Ask Mister Language Person,'' the only grammar column approved for internal use by the Food and Drug Administration; the grammar column that puts the ''dip'' in ''diphthong,'' the ''vern'' in ''vernacular,'' and the ''dang'' in ''dangling participle.'' Today we shall commence right at the outset by starting with our first question, which concerns vocabulary: Q. What does ''decimate'' mean? A. This often-misunderstood word is an anterior cruciate predicate that should be used in conjugal phrases, as follows: ''Noreen was totally decimated when she...

My fellow and gal Americans: For the past few months, as I have traveled around this great nation talking about my campaign for president, the one question I have heard most often from the voters, in these troubled times, is: ``President of what?'' Ha ha! Such kidders, those voters! But seriously: According to my team of policy advisors, it is now 2004, which means this November the American people will go into the voting booth and cast ballots for the leader of our nation, except in Florida, where they will become confused and attempt to produce urine samples. But that...

My fellow and gal Americans: For the past few months, as I have traveled around this great nation talking about my campaign for president, the one question I have heard most often from the voters, in these troubled times, is: “President of what?” Ha ha! Such kidders, those voters! But seriously: According to my team of policy advisors, it is now 2004, which means this November the American people will go into the voting booth and cast ballots for the leader of our nation, except in Florida, where they will become confused and attempt to produce urine samples. But that...

In my family, we are nautical people. We have the sea in our veins. I do not speak metaphorically: Sometimes we find actual eels in our underpants. That's how nautical we are. And so a few weeks ago, we set out on a sea voyage from Fort Lauderdale, knowing that it would be five days, and roughly 153 meals (included), before we would reach our destination: Fort Lauderdale. We sailed aboard a cruise ship, which had one of those cruise-ship names, like the Majestic Vagabond Restaurant of the Seas. She is a fine vessel, a tad larger than Connecticut, boasting...

MERRIMACK, N.H. - There was an unusually exciting campaign event here Saturday night for Sen. John Edwards, who -- to refresh your memory -- is one of the ones with good hair. The event -- which, in retrospect, probably could have used a little more planning -- was held at a bowling alley. The original idea was that Sen. Edwards himself would bowl. Having candidates do demeaning things that have nothing to do with their qualifications for being president is a key part of our election process. Another example is the pancake breakfast, where candidates must flip pancakes while being...

MANCHESTER, N.H. - I finally caught up with the campaign of Gen. Wesley Clark. Actually, Gen. Clark caught up with me: I was briefly captured by his clot. Every major candidate travels inside a surrounding clot of advisors, lackeys, media, etc. If you stand anywhere in Manchester for 15 minutes, one of these things will go past. Often the clot is so dense that you can't see the candidate: You just see this mass of people moving briskly along. Anybody could be inside. Osama bin Laden could be running around New Hampshire inside a candidate clot right now, undetected. So...

MANCHESTER, N.H. - It's crazy here. There are Democratic presidential contenders racing all over the Granite State, wooing the living snot out of the voters. You can't go to the mall here without having to shake hands with, at bare minimum, Joe Lieberman. Why the wild wooing? In a word, Iowoo. I mean, Iowa. The caucuses there shook up the Democratic race, producing two big surprise winners, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Sen. John Edwards of North Or Possibly South Carolina. In exit polls, many Iowans said they'd decided on these men ``because they are both named John.'' One...

Des Moines – It's caucus day, the day when hundreds of thousands of Iowa voters, finally getting their chance to respond to months and months of campaign rhetoric, will stay home. I'm not kidding. Officials here are predicting a "record turnout," but it turns out that "record turnout" means "at least 75 percent of the voters will not be turning out." I blame the political attack ads. Every time you turn on the TV out here, there's an announcer saying something like: "What do we REALLY know about Howard Dean's role in the JFK assassination?" You watch 17 of these...