Dave Barry - Bad Habits

Lightning is especially attracted to people on golf courses, but if it cannot find a golf course, it will attack anyone wearing loud clothing. Your best bet is to dress conservatively and spend the rainy season (September through July) in bars. If you are struck by lightning, do not panic, because there is always a chance you are not dead. Many people who get struck by lightning go on to lead happy, productive, somewhat hairless lives.

The Weather Bureau also sends up satellites that take photographs of the Earth from several hundred miles up. These photographs provide vital information. For example, if a photograph shows that there are clouds over Boston, an experienced meteorologist can determine that the weather in Boston is cloudy. He can then alert the Boston area to be ready to do whatever it does in the event of cloudiness.

The only other users of satellite weather photographs are television weathermen, who use them to stand in front of when they give their reports:

ANCHORMAN: And now, to fill up five minutes of valuable television time with information that any moron could get by merely looking out the window, here is our Channel 14 Insight News Team Weatherman. I understand you have good news for us, Fred.

WEATHERMAN: Indeed I do, Bob. That low-pressure system that was threatening to bring rain to the Channel 14 viewing area this weekend has instead turned into a hurricane and veered westward, destroying much of Guatemala, so I’m predicting fair skies for the Channel 14 viewing area.

ANCHORMAN: Hey, terrific.

WEATHERMAN: Now let’s take a look at our satellite weather photograph. As you can see, we have clouds over some areas, but we have no clouds over other areas, which would indicate that our Channel 14

viewers either do or do not have clouds over their areas, depending on what areas they are in.

ANCHORMAN: Speaking of the satellite weather photograph, Fred, we have a letter here from eleven-year-old Gregory Sumpster of Port Weasel. Gregory wants to know why you show the same photograph night after night, and why it is identical to a photograph taken over the Philippines in 1972 that appears on page 113 of Gregory’s earth science textbook, except that the one you show has a crude map of the Channel 14 viewing area superimposed on top of it.

WEATHERMAN: Ha ha. Good question, Gregory Sumpster of Port Weasel. I’m always pleased to know that my viewers are interested in the science of meteorology, even when those viewers turn out to be picky little snots such as yourself. I’ll see if I can come up with an answer to your very interesting question and wrap it around a rock and throw it through your bedroom window late some night.

If you want to become a rich, pretentious snot—and who doesn’t?—you should learn about wine. Alternatively, you can buy polo ponies, but the wine approach is better because you won’t have to spend your weekends shoveling huge quantities of polo-pony waste out of the rec room. Also, you can be pretentious about wine almost anywhere, whereas your finer restaurants and opera houses generally do not admit polo ponies.

The study of wine is called “oenology,” which sounds like an unnatural sex act.

POLICE OFFICER: Your honor, we caught this person committing oenology with a parking meter.

JUDGE: Lock him up.

Some people believe wine is still made by peasants who crush the grapes with their bare feet, leaving toenails and other disgusting, disease-ridden peasant-foot debris in the wine. This is, of course, nonsense. Today’s winemakers crush the grapes with modern, hygienic machines, and add the disease-ridden peasant-foot debris later. The end product is a delicate and complex collection of subtly interacting chemicals that, if bottled properly, aged just right and decanted carefully, rarely tastes as good as cream soda.

Which leads us to two critical facts:

Few people are really all that fond of wine. Almost nobody can tell the difference between good wine and melted Popsicles without reading the label.

These facts make it much less expensive for you to become a pretentious wine-oriented snot, because they mean you don’t really need to buy good wine: all you need is good wine bottles. You can get these in any of the finer garbage cans. Fill them with cheap wine, the kind that comes in three-gallon containers with screw-on caps and names like Zambini Brothers Fruit Wine and Dessert Topping. Some people make a big fuss about which foods go with white wine and which with red, so buy a wine that could be taken for either.

When company comes for dinner, grab a bottle at random and make an elaborate, French-sounding fuss about how you chose it to complement your menu. Say: “I chose the Escargot ‘63 rather than the Gareon ‘72 because the bonjour of the sil vous platt would bring out the plume de ma tante of the Cheez Whiz without being too strident for the chili dogs.” This brings up a third critical fact: You can use any sort of blather to describe wine.

Another good time to be pretentious about wine is when you dine out, but the trick is to do it without spending much money. Use this technique: Glance scornfully at the wine list, then ask the waiter for a wine you know does not exist. Say “We’ll start with the Frere Jacques

‘68, preferably from the north side of the vineyard.” When he says they don’t have it, look at him as though he had asked permission to put his finger in your nose, then order the most expensive wine on the list.

When he brings it to your table, examine the label for spelling and punctuation errors. Next smell the cork: if you don’t like it, order the waiter to take it back and splash a little cologne on it.

Finally, take a largish mouthful of wine, swill it around your mouth for a while, swallow it, tell the waiter it won’t do, and demand another bottle. Keep this up until you have a lot of trouble getting the cork near enough to your nose to smell it. Then tell the waiter you wouldn’t dream of eating at a restaurant with an inadequate wine cellar, and march out in a dignified manner, by which I mean without making advances toward the cigarette machine.

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.

Also, the wheel does not cure the common cold, whereas beer does. This was proved in a recent experiment in which scientists placed two groups of cold sufferers in a bowling alley. One group was given all the beer it could drink, while the other group was given only water. After two or three weeks, the beer drinkers exhibited no cold symptoms whatsoever, in fact couldn’t even stand up; whereas the water drinkers had all gone home.

Beer can also be used to halt the nuclear arms race. Right now the missile negotiators drink coffee, so after three or four cups they get very snappish, which leads to increased international tension:

RUSSIAN NEGOTIATOR: As I understand your proposal, you wish us to remove our Thundersquat missiles from Hungary, and in return you will ... Would you please stop that?

AMERICAN NEGOTIATOR: Stop what?

RUSSIAN: Tinkling your spoon against your saucer. All morning long it’s tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. You sound like the collar on a flea-infested dog. I can barely hear myself negotiate.

AMERICAN: Is that so? Did it ever occur to you that I might be tinkling my saucer so that I will not have to listen to you snort the same wad of mucus back up your nose every twenty-five seconds precisely by my watch? You cling to that wad as if it had great sentimental value.

RUSSIAN: Not at all. Let me get rid of it right now. (He blows his nose on the American proposal.)