Dave Barry - Bad Habits

How can you defend yourself? One excellent method is to get a vicious dog. You don’t want a large dog, such as a German shepherd, because large dogs are so accustomed to getting respect that they have completely forgotten how to attack. They rely entirely on deep growls and snarls, which are useless against an intruder wearing earplugs or a Sony Walkman. So what you want to get is a small, insecure dog, such as

a miniature French poodle, which knows how stupid it looks and consequently hates everybody. If you want it to be really vicious, you should give it a silly haircut and make it wear a fake-jewel collar and sit in your lap. After a few days of this, it will attack anything that moves, including you, but this is a small price to pay for peace of mind.

You can also defend yourself with guns. The U.S. Constitution says that the government cannot stop you from owning a gun. The courts have interpreted this to mean that the government can stop you from owning a gun, so you’d better check your local laws before you buy one. If you do get a gun, you should join your local Gun Fondlers Club and learn the Rules of Gun Safety, which are:

1. Never load your gun.

2. Never clean your gun.

3. Never even take your gun out of the box.

4. Never point your gun at anything or anybody except your vicious little dog if it really gets out of line.

If you don’t want to own a gun, you can take up karate, a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world. They can also break boards, which could be very useful if an intruder enters your home and tries to hide behind your spare lumber so the dog can’t get at him. I like the idea of learning to break boards with my bare hands. It’s a skill I might be able to use on my bushes.

Fishing is an excellent way to relax and contemplate the beauty of nature and get in touch with your inner self and maim and kill fish. Many people would be much happier if they went fishing. Take Secretary of State Alexander Haig. He seems awfully tense. I think he should take four or eight years off, buy several hundred six-packs, and go fishing. Al would probably shoot the fish with a bazooka, but what the heck, as long as he doesn’t start a nuclear war or something.

It’s okay to kill fish. It’s not like hunting, where you kill friendly brown-eyed woodland creatures like Bambi and Thumper who talk in squeaky little voices. Fish are bad. They go to the bathroom in public waters, and they eat teenagers, as was demonstrated in the fine nature movies Jaws I and Jaws II. Besides, fish can’t feel anything. I know this because I took a fish apart once, in biology class. The idea was that I would find a little fish heart and a little fish stomach and a little fish nervous system, like the diagram in the biology textbook. I found none of these things. All I found was glop. Fish are nothing but little bags of glop swimming around with fish heads in front, so don’t waste your pity.

IMPORTANT NOTE: When I talk about fish, I am not talking about whales. Whales are mammals: they have feelings and can talk to each other, just like you and me. The only difference between whales and humans is that whales mate for life. Some evil foreign persons, such as the Japanese and the Russians, kill whales. The Japanese use them to make efficient automobiles, which they force Americans to buy so American auto workers will lose their jobs. The Russians don’t do anything with their whales. They just use whaling as an excuse to get away from Russia for a couple of months.

If you want to fish, you have to decide whether to catch freshwater fish or saltwater fish. The main saltwater fish are tuna, swordfish, catamaran, eel, oyster, snook, snipe, wahoo, giant clam, and serpent. To catch them, you have to go to the Bermuda Triangle in a small boat for several days. If you need more information on this subject, read The Old Man and the Sea, a book by Ernest Hemingway, a famous dead writer. In the book, the old man battles a huge fish for a long time, after which the fish tips the boat over and kills everybody except Ishmael. No, wait, that’s Moby-Dick. Anyway, if you catch a big fish, the government requires you to have your picture taken with the fish hanging next to you in case it was stolen. Then you can take it home and either stuff it and hang it on your wall or, if you have any taste at all, just throw it in the garbage.

The main freshwater fish are bass, bream, guppy, carp, frog, muskellunge, piccolo, and crappie. Some people claim there are also trout, but this Is a mythical fish, like the Loch Ness Monster. Nobody in recorded history has ever even seen a trout, let alone caught one. I went “trout fishing” once, with my friend Neil and his uncle Bruce. We’d wander around these streams, and every now and then Uncle Bruce would point to a shallow pool of water that any fool could see contained absolutely no fish. “That’s where the trout will be,” he’d say, and Neil and I would stand there and not catch fish for several hours while Uncle Bruce went back to the tent to drink. I believe his marriage was in trouble.

Some people still believe in trout. You’ll see them out by streams on the first day of trout season, standing shoulder to shoulder. The humorous thing is that they think the way to catch these mythical trout is to wave long strings with fuzzy hooks around in the air. I mean, they hardly ever even put them in the water, for heaven’s sake. If there were such a thing as a trout, the only way it would get caught is if it leaped out of the water an grabbed a hook as it flew by.

If you want to fish for fish that actually exist, you’ll need either bait or lures. The best bait is worms, which you can find almost anywhere worms are found. All you do is impale the worm on the hook, wait for the little worm screams to die down, and toss it in the water. The fish will come around and nibble on it until it’s gone, then they’ll give the hook a gentle tug to let you know it’s time to send another worm down.

You can also use artificial lures, which are brightly colored plastic or metal things with hooks on them that are scientifically designed so they appear to fish to be brightly colored plastic or metal things with hooks on them. Fish love lures. They gather together in little lure-appreciation groups, called “schools,” and howl with laughter as the lures go by. It’s their major form of entertainment, and they don’t want to lose it, so every now and then they draw lots and the loser has to bite the lure and get caught. This encourages the fishermen to continue.

I think everybody should have a career. Careers give you money and a place to go during weekdays when there’s nothing good on television.

No doubt many of you young people out there would like to have careers, but can’t find good jobs to start your careers with. Believe me, things are much better now than they used to be. In the Middle Ages, for example, the only good jobs were king and nobleman, and there were very few openings. So most people had to settle for serf or barbarian. The help-wanted sections in the Middle Ages newspapers looked like this:

SERF WANTED—Must have experience sleeping with goats and whacking at soil with stick. Must have own stick. Goats provided.

BARBARIANS WANTED—Looting, some pilfering. Must get along well with other members of horde. Apply at tent of Howard the Unusually Large.

These jobs offered little opportunity to advance. If you were really good at serf, you might work yourself up to peasant, but that was about it. If you were really good at barbarian, after twenty years the head barbarian would give you a gold watch, then kill you and take it back.