Текст книги "Napalm and Silly Putty"

Автор книги: Джордж Карлин

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

The police in Los Angeles said recently that some man had been stabbed in the San Pedro area. Believe me, I know how painful that can be; I was once bitten there by a dog. It’s especially painful when you go to the bathroom.

Doesn’t Jonesboro sound to you like a place where everyone has a drug habit?

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Dom\Desktop\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\Napalm_body-contents.html” l “TOC-58” ??DOG MOMENTS #4 ?

Gimme a New One

I love my dog. I love all my dogs. Every dog I ever had, I still love ’em. And in my life, believe me, I have had me a bunch of goddamn dogs. Because you keep on gettin’ a new one, don’t ya? It’s true. As life goes on, you keep gettin’ one new dog after another. That’s the whole secret of life. Life is a series of dogs.

Sometimes you can get a dog that looks exactly like the one you had before. It’s true. If you shop around a little, you can find you a dog identical to your former dog. You just bring the dead one into the pet shop, throw him up on the counter, and say, “Gimme another one of these.” And, by God, they’ll give you a carbon copy of your ex-goddamn dog. And that’s real handy, because then you don’t have to go around your house changin’ all the pictures.

That’s the nice thing about dogs. They don’t live too long, and you can go and get a new one.

Doggie Nose Best

Most people know the best size dog to have is a knee-high, midsize dog. It’s the ideal pet. Because whenever some nice lady comes to visit you, the first thing that dog does is put his nose right in her crotch.

“Hi, Mrs. Effington.”

“Hi, Stuart, how’s the . . . oooooh! Ooooooh! What a friendly dog. Oooohhhh! You know, I’ll bet he smells my dog.”

“I’m not sure, Mrs. Effington. Judgin’ by where he’s placed his nose, I’d say he’s got a completely different animal in mind. You don’t by any chance own a pussy, do ya?”

“No. I mean . . . well, no!”

Some people get embarrassed by that nose-crotch behavior. The dog owner will often fall all over himself trying to save face.

“Stop that, Bongo! Stop it! I’m awfully sorry, Marzell. He’s usually so polite. You musta not bathed.”

Not me, folks; I never apologize. I’m a fun-lovin’ guy. I say, “Get in there, Bongo! Get yourself some of that. Sniff it out. Listen, Marzell, would you mind spreadin’ your legs a little bit, so he can get some sniffin’ room? Plant your feet about three feet apart, would ya? That’s it. Good. Air that thing out. Okay! So, how’s everything goin’ down at the church? Good. All right, Bongo, now go around back and sniff that other thing. Sorry, Marzell, there’s two smells he likes, and one of ’em’s in the back. What’s that? You gotta go? Well, I’m awfully sorry. Listen, before you go, you wouldn’t be willin’ to let Bongo have about thirty seconds on your leg, would ya? No, I didn’t think so. Okay, no problem. You take care, and tell the reverend Bongo says hello.”

Those dogs are really great. They help to break the ice when a new neighbor comes to call.

“Hi, we’re the Belchingtons. Ooooooh! What’s his name?”

“Ballsniffer. He’s a crotch hound. Lemme know if you wanna get circumcised; he’s on duty ’round the clock.”

Give the Little Dog a Big Hand

When they show a dog on TV, do you try to get your dog to look at him? Don’t you want your dog to see the dog on TV? I do.

“Look at the doggie! Look at the dog! Over there! On TV! Look!”

He won’t look. Even if you try to twist his head around and point it toward the TV, he won’t look.

“Over there! Turn your head! Look! On TV! Look at the dog! Goddamn it, you asshole! Look at the fuckin’ dog!!”

They never look where you want. If you point at something, they just stare at your hand. You try to show them something interesting, and they think you’re showing them your hand.

“There he goes again, showing me his hand. Why does he do that? I guess he’s really proud of it. Uh-oh! Now he’s twisting my head around. Owww! Jeez, what did I do now?”

“Well, for one thing you completely missed the dog on TV.”

A Cracker Jack Meal

A long time ago I had a little dog named Tippy. And one time when I was doin’ drugs, I fed Tippy a whole bunch of Cracker Jack, because that’s what I was havin’. Cracker Jack and tap water. Seemed like a reasonable meal to me. And even though Tippy was a little dog, she ate about two boxes of Cracker Jack. And the next day, when I took her out for a walk, she squatted and strained and grunted and shook, and you know what? By God, instead of taking a shit, she took a Cracker Jack! Right in front of my eyes I saw fully formed, undigested Cracker Jack coming out of my dog!

Well, you know me, I’m a practical guy. I kept waitin’ for the little surprise to come out, hopin’ it wouldn’t be a whistle or a bird call. I figure there’s a certain amount of basic hygiene you can’t ignore.

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Dom\Desktop\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\Napalm_body-contents.html” l “TOC-59” ??NOT EXACTLY MARTHA STEWART ?

Did your dog ever eat a whole bunch of brightly colored balloons, and when he took a shit it turned out to be real festive looking? Or maybe at Christmas he’d eat some tinsel off the tree and take a dump near the manger, and it would glisten with light from the yule log, filling your heart with Christmas spirit? Isn’t it great?

Dogs are a constant source of entertainment. Did you ever have a dog who ate cat turds? Some of them do. Some dogs will eat cat turds. Of course, you gotta have a cat; you can’t be goin’ down to the supermarket and buyin’ cat turds.

But it’s true. Sometimes a dog will eat cat turds. Don’t let him lick your face that day. Get him a bottle of Listerine, and make him gargle. Pour it down his throat and tell him to howl. Then you can let him lick you.

One more thing about dog chow, and this includes a little household hint that’ll help you keep your lawn neat and clean. Feed your dog rubber bands. Just mix ten or eleven rubber bands in with his food. He won’t care. He’ll eat anything as long as it’s mixed in with something he likes.

Feed him a bunch of rubber bands, and then when he takes a shit, you’ll notice there’s a handy little rubber loop stickin’ out of one end of the turd. Then, all you gotta do is pick up the loop, swing that turd around, and throw it in the next yard. Tell your neighbor it’s a new thing: flying lawn food.

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Dom\Desktop\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\Napalm_body-contents.html” l “TOC-60” ??HAVE A NICE DAY ?

I don’t have nice days anymore. I don’t bother with that. I’m beyond the nice day; I feel I’ve outgrown the whole idea. Besides, I’ve already had my share of nice days. Why should I be hogging them all? Let someone else have a few.

Naturally, everyone still wants me to have one. Every person I meet wants me to have a nice day. Especially clerks.

“Have a nice day.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wanna gimme my fuckin’ change, please? I’m triple-parked!”

Some of them are really insistent.

“I said have a nice day! Do it!”

“All right, all right! I’ll give it a shot.”

That’s the trouble with “Have a nice day.” It puts all the pressure on you. Now you have to go out and somehow arrange to have a positive experience. All because of some loose-lipped clerk.

Have a nice day, indeed! Maybe I don’t feel like having a nice day. Maybe—just maybe—I’ve had twenty-seven nice days in a row, and I’m ready for a crappy day. You never hear that, do you?

“Have a crappy day!”

“Why, thank you. Right back at ya! And to your wonderful family as well!”

A crappy day; that would be easy. No trouble at all. No planning involved. Just get out of bed and start moving around.

I think what bothers me most about the whole “nice day” thing is that word “nice.” It’s a weak word. It doesn’t have a lot of character. Nice.

“Isn’t he nice? He is so nice. And she’s nice too! Isn’t that nice? How nice they are!”

I don’t care for it. It’s like “fine.” Another weak word.

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

Bullshit! Nobody’s fine. Hair is fine.

“How’s your hair?

“Fine.”

That makes more sense to me.

Some guys are “great”! You ever meet those guys?

“This is great! Isn’t this great? Goddamn, this is great! Look, they’re gonna kill that guy! Isn’t that great?”

Not me. I’m not nice, I’m not fine, I’m not great. People ask me how I am, I don’t give them any superlatives; nothing to gossip about. I tell them I’m “fairly decent.” Or “relatively okay.” I might say, “I’m moderately neato.” And if I’m in a particularly jaunty mood, I’ll tell them, “I’m not unwell, thank you.”

That one always pisses them off. Because they have to figure it out for themselves.

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Dom\Desktop\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\Napalm_body-contents.html” l “TOC-61” ??HELLO-GOODBYE ?

We have so many ways of saying hello. Howdy, hi there, how are ya, how ya doin’, how’s it goin’, how do ya do, what’s new, what’s goin’ on, whaddaya think, whaddaya hear, whaddaya say, whaddaya feel, what’s happenin’, what’s shakin’, que pasa, what’s goin’ down, and what it is?

You know my favorite? “How’s your hammer hangin’?” That’s a good one, isn’t it? Doesn’t work too well with women, though. Unless you’re talking to a lady carpenter. Then it’s perfectly acceptable.

I’ve always wanted to use that one on a high church official.

“Good evening, Your Holiness. How hangs thy hammer?”

So far, I haven’t had the opportunity.

There’s one form of saying hello that bothers me. It’s when a guy says, “Are they keepin’ you busy?” It’s like he thinks someone has the right to come around and give me odd jobs.

Whenever a guy says, “Are they keeping you busy?” I always tell him, “Well, your wife is keeping me pretty busy!” And that seems to hold him for about a half an hour.

Of course, we also have many ways to say good-bye. Bye-bye, so long, see you later, ta-ta, be cool, take it easy, stay loose, hang in, take care, and keep on truckin’. You know my favorite? “Don’t get run over.” Well, I find some people need practical advice.

Occasionally, someone will say to me, “Have a good one!” I just laugh and say, “I already have a good one. Now I’m looking for a longer one!” And that seems to hold them for about a half an hour.

Then there are all the foreign ways we say good-bye. Some people when they leave you, they think they have to get fancy. They whip an “arrivederci” on you. Or an “au revoir.” Some guys say, “adios.” Or the American version, “Adios, motherfucker!”

In Hawaii they say, “aloha.” That’s a nice one. It means both “hello” and “good-bye.” Which just goes to show, if you spend enough time in the sun you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.

Do you ever get in a rut with your manner of saying good-bye and find yourself using the same phrase, over and over? And you begin to feel a little stupid?

For instance, if you’re leaving a party, and you have to say goodbye to five or six people standing in a group, you say, “Okay, hey, take it easy. Okay, hey, take it easy. Okay, hey, take it easy. Okay, hey, take it easy. Okay, hey, take it easy. Okay, hey, take it easy.” And you feel like a goddamn moron.

You know what I do? Every month, whether I need to or not, I change the way I say good-bye; I start using a different phrase. People like that. They notice that little extra effort. They’ll say to me, “Pardon me, but didn’t you used to say ‘Okay, hey, take it easy’?”

And I say, “Yes I did. But not anymore. Now I say, ‘Farewell! Farewell, till we meet again. May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house!’” That’s a strong one, isn’t it? People will remember you if you talk like that.

Sometimes, for a joke, you can combine several ways of saying good-bye that don’t seem to go together. Like “Toodle-oo, go with God, and don’t take any wooden nickels.” Then people don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

Or you can choose to say good-bye in a realistic manner. “So long, Steve. Don’t let self-doubt interfere with your plans to improve your life.”

Well, some people need practical advice.

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Dom\Desktop\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\Napalm_body-contents.html” l “TOC-62” ??LOVE AND REGARDS ?

Have you noticed that quite often when you leave someone they ask you to relay an affectionate message to someone else? They’ll say, “Give my love to Klaus. Tell Klaus Rebecca sends her love.”

Do you mind that? Do you mind being used that way? The awesome responsibility of carrying Rebecca’s love to Klaus? Suppose you don’t see Klaus? What do you do with Rebecca’s love? Carry it around? Give it to someone else?

“Wilhelm! I can’t find Klaus, here’s some of Rebecca’s love.”

Suppose Wilhelm doesn’t know Rebecca? Can he legally accept her love? Especially when it was originally intended for Klaus?

Or suppose you give Wilhelm Rebecca’s love for Klaus, and then you run into Klaus, what do you give him? All you had was Rebecca’s love, and you’ve already gone and given that to Wilhelm. Can you reasonably ask Wilhelm to give back Rebecca’s love? Maybe he’s gotten used to it by now. Can Klaus sue Wilhelm? Can Wilhelm be arrested? Can you be arrested for transporting love across a state line?

All right, back to reality. Just for the sake of argument, let’s leave Wilhelm out of this altogether. Suppose Rebecca gives you her love to give to Klaus, and you do see Klaus, what form should the love take? Can you risk giving Klaus a tongue kiss? Which brings up another possibility: maybe Klaus is gay. Klaus doesn’t want Rebecca’s love, Klaus wants Wilhelm’s love! If Klaus tells you to give his love to Wilhelm, just tell him, “Bullshit, Klaus. You give your own love to Wilhelm. I’m going to find Rebecca!”

Now, sometimes people don’t quite want you to give their love to someone else; they only want you to give their “regards.” That’s all they’re sending that day. Regards. That’s not as important as love, is it? No. By the way, do you always relay the type of affection the sender intends? I don’t. Generally, I wait till the last minute and then decide what the other person deserves.

For instance, Susan might say to me, “Give my love to Dave.” Well, I might not feel Dave is deserving of Susan’s love. Dave might be one of those people who piss me off. I’ll probably just give him a few regards; keep him in his place. I feel it’s my decision. After all, I’m the one who’s doing all the work.

And if I really don’t like the recipient, I might reduce the level of affection by an even greater degree. Susan might say, “Give all my love to Dave and tell him I can’t wait to see him again so I can hold him in my arms, kiss his sweet, soft lips, and make love to him all night.” And I’ll say, “Dave! Susan says hello.” Screw Dave! That’s what he gets for pissing me off.

Then there are the recipients who try to anticipate what degree of affection they’re going to receive.

“Did Susan send her love?”

“No, Dave. She only sent her regards.”

“That’s funny, usually she sends her love.”

“Well, not this time. In fact, she specifically told me, ‘Don’t give Dave any of my love.’ It seems she’s running short of love and has to be careful whom she gives it to. However, she did say she’s overstocked with regards and wants you to have a whole bunch of them. So, be satisfied, Dave. Take your regards, and get the fuck out of my life!”

Well, he should damn well be satisfied with regards; it’s a lot better than simply being sent someone’s “best.” There are some people who just send you their best.

“Give my best to Dave.”

“Your best what, Susan? If this is your best, perhaps you’d better keep it to yourself.”

And yet, receiving someone’s “best” is better than simply being “remembered to,” isn’t it? That’s the lowest of all. Hardly worth even telling the poor person.

“Remember me to Dave.”

“Okay.”

“Dave? You remember Susan?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she remembers you, too.”

That’s it, my job is done. I’m off now to find Tex, so I can tell him Billy Bob said “Howdy.”

One final thing. There are times when someone wants you to convey more than simply love. They want you to give someone “a big hug and kiss.” Now they’ve got you trafficking in sex.

“Give Joachim a big hug and a kiss for me.”

Usually it’s women. I find that women are a bit more expressive at times like these. And sometimes they’re really explicit.

“Bye-bye, Elena. Drive carefully. Give Flaco a nice blow job for me. And don’t forget to lick his asshole!”

“Okay, Belinda. But next time let’s get Klaus to take care of that!”

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Dom\Desktop\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\Napalm_body-contents.html” l “TOC-63” ??EXPRESSIONS I QUESTION ?

There are many expressions we take for granted. We use them all the time, yet never examine them carefully. We just say them as if they really made sense.

Legally drunk . Well, if it’s legal, what’s the problem? “Leave me alone, officer, I’m legally drunk!”

You know where you can stick it . Why do we assume everyone knows where they can stick it? Suppose you don’t know? Suppose you’re a new guy, and you have absolutely no idea where you can stick it? I think there ought to be a government booklet entitled Where to Stick It . Now that I think of it, I believe there is a government booklet like that. They send it to you on April 15.

Undisputed heavyweight champion . Well, if it’s undisputed, what’s all the fighting about? To me, “undisputed” means we all agree. Here you have two men beating the shit out of one another over something they apparently agree on. Makes no sense.

It’s the quiet ones you gotta watch . Every time I see a television news story about a mass murderer, the guy’s neighbor always says, “Well, he was very quiet.” And someone I’m with says, “It’s the quiet ones you gotta watch.”

This sounds like a very dangerous assumption. I’ll bet anything that while you’re busy watching a quiet one, a noisy one will kill you.

Suppose you’re in a bar, and one guy is sitting over on the side, reading a book, not bothering anybody. And another guy is standing up at the front, bangin’ a machete on the bar, screamin’, “I’m gonna kill the next motherfucker who pisses me off!”

Who you gonna watch?

Lock him up and throw away the key . This is one you hear a lot from men. Men like to talk that way; it makes ’em feel tough. A guy sees a rapist on the TV news, he says, “You see that guy? They oughta lock him up, and throw away the key.”

This is really stupid. First of all, every time the guy’s gotta take a shit, you’re gonna have to call the locksmith. If he’s in prison thirty years, even if he’s eatin’ government cheese, it’s gonna cost you a fortune.

Second, where do you throw the key? Right out in front of the jail? His friends’ll find it! How far can you throw a key? Fifty, sixty feet the most. Even if you hold it flat on its side and scale it, whaddaya get? An extra ten feet, tops! This is a stupid idea that needs to be completely rethought.

Down the tubes . That’s one you hear a lot. People say, “This country is goin’ down the tubes.” What tubes? Have you seen any tubes? Where are these tubes? And where do they go? And how come there’s more than one tube? It would seem to me for one country all you need is one tube. Does every state have to have its own tube? One tube is all you need.

But a tube that big? Somebody would have seen it by now. Somebody would’ve said, “Hey Joey! Lookit the fuckin’ tube! Big-ass fuckin’ tube, over here!” You never hear that. You know why? No tubes! We don’t have tube one. We are, sorry to say, tubeless.

Takes the cake . “Boy, he really takes the cake.” Where? Where do you take a cake? To the movies? You know where I would take a cake? Down to the bakery, to see the other cakes. And how come he takes the cake? How come he doesn’t take the pie? A pie is easier to carry than a cake. “Easy as pie.” A cake is not too hard to carry, either. “Piece of cake.”

The greatest thing since sliced bread . So this is it? A couple of hundred thousand years . . . sliced bread? What about the Pyramids? The Panama Canal? The Great Wall of China? Even a lava lamp, to me, is greater than sliced bread. What’s so great about sliced bread? You got a knife, you got a loaf of bread. Slice the fuckin’ thing!! And get on with your life.

Out walking the streets . This is another one you hear from men. Some guy sees a rapist on the news. Same rapist as before; only this time he’s being released. The guy says, “You see that? You see that guy? They’re lettin’ him go! Now, instead of bein’ in prison, he’s out walkin’ the streets!”

How do we know? How do we know he’s out walkin’ the streets? Maybe he’s home bangin’ the baby-sitter. Not everybody who gets a parole is out walkin’ the streets. A lot of times they steal a car. We oughta be glad. “Thank God he stole a car. At least he’s not out walkin’ the streets.”

Fine and dandy . That’s an old-fashioned one, isn’t it? You say to a guy, “How are ya?” He says, “Fine and dandy.” Not me. I never say that. You know why? Because I’m never both those things at the same time. Sometimes I’m fine. But I’m not dandy. I might be close to dandy. I might be approaching dandy. I might even be in the general vicinity of dandyhood. But not quite fully dandy. Other times, I might indeed be highly dandy. However, not fine. One time, 1978. August. For about an hour. I was both fine and dandy at the same time. But nobody asked me how I was. I coulda told ’em, “Fine and dandy!” I consider it a lost opportunity.

Walking papers . Some guy gets fired, they say, “Well, they gave him his walkin’ papers today.” Lemme ask you something. Did you ever get any walking papers? Seriously? Believe me, in my life I got fired a lot of times. I never got any walkin’ papers. I never got a pink slip, either. You know what I would get? A guy would come around to my desk and say, “Get the fuck outta here!!” You don’t need paper for that.

The riot act . They keep saying they’re going to read that to you. Tell the truth, have you heard this thing at all? Ever?

It’s especially a problem when you’re a kid. They like to threaten you.

“You wait’ll your father comes home. He’s gonna read you the riot act!”

“Oh yeah? Well, tell him I already read it myself! And I didn’t like it! I consider it wordy and poorly thought out. If he wants to read me somethin’, how about The Gentleman’s Guide to the Golden Age of Tongue-Kissing?

More than happy . I’ll bet you say that sometimes. I’ll bet you say, “Oh, I’d be more than happy to do that.” How can you be more than happy? To me, this sounds like a dangerous mental condition. “We had to put Laszlo under physical restraint; he was . . . well, he was more than happy.”

One more of these expressions: In your own words. You hear it in classrooms. And courtrooms. They’ll say, “Tell us . . . in your own words . . .” Do you have your own words? Personally, I’m using the ones everybody else has been using. Next time they tell you to say something in your own words, say, “Nigflot blorny quando floon.”

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Dom\Desktop\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\Napalm_body-contents.html” l “TOC-64” ??SHORT TAKES ?

I don’t hear much of that elevator music anymore. What’s going on?

IT’S TIME TO START SLAPPING PEOPLE

Don’t you think there were probably a lot of singers with great voices who never got famous because they were too ugly to stand up and be seen in public?

I can’t wait to see one of those actor-assholes who drive race cars get killed on TV.

Why do women wear evening gowns to nightclubs? Why don’t they wear nightgowns?

I think many years ago an advanced civilization intervened with us genetically and gave us just enough intelligence to develop dangerous technology but not enough to use it wisely. Then they sat back to watch the fun. Kind of like a human zoo. And you know what? They’re getting their money’s worth.

After you die, your “stuff” becomes your “personal effects.”

GOD BLESS US ALL. RIGHT IN THE MOUTH

I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.

People ask me if I have an e-mail address, and I say, “www.fuckyou.com@blowme/upyourass.” And they seem to understand.

Message to the Denver Nuggets regarding Columbine High School: There’s no reason to cancel a sporting event just because some kids kill each other. Try to concentrate on basketball and leave the life-and-death shit to someone else.

Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.

Baseball bats are now the preferred weapon for many drug gangs and others who have a business need to administer behavioral reminders. They’re cheap, lethal, legal, untraceable, and hey! It’s the national pastime.

Dying must have survival value. Or it wouldn’t be part of the biological process.

Why is it that, when making reference to something in the past, people often think they have to say, “I hope I’m not dating myself”? Listen, if you’re so embarrassed by your age there’s a simple solution: open a vein.

I don’t have hobbies, I have interests. Hobbies cost money. Interests are free.

With all the presidential administrations we’ve had, I’m sure that by now there must have been at least one person who, besides being in the cabinet, was also in the closet.

I don’t like it when I’m in an audience and the emcee tells us to give someone a welcome specific to that city: “Let’s all get together and give this little lady a nice Toledo welcome.” I’ve often thought if I were from Toledo it would be fun now and then to give someone a Baltimore welcome, just to break the emcee’s balls. Or maybe slip in an exotic Budapest welcome when no one is expecting it. One thing I would never do is give someone a Dallas welcome. That’s what JFK got. Dallas welcomes don’t last too long.

You rarely see an elderly midget. Apparently their life spans are shorter too.

A PEAR IS A FAILED APPLE

You keep hearing that society’s greatest tasks are educating people and getting them jobs. That’s great. Two things people hate to do: go to school and go to work.

We busy ourselves with meaningless gestures such as Take Our Daughters to Work Day, which applies primarily to white, middle-class daughters. More help for the wrong people.

People seem to think that if there’s some problem that makes them unhappy in this country, all they have to do is stage a big march and everything will change. When will they learn?

Complaint: Where did this dumb-ass Sammy Sosa thumping-your-chest, kissing-your-fingers, flashing-the-peace-sign nonsense come from? What’s that stupid shit all about? Geraldo does a variation on it. It strikes me as pretentious, meaningless, pseudoreligious bullshit.

I don’t know about you, but I really have no problem with atrocities. What’s the big deal? Lighten up.

Can placebos cause side effects? If so, are the side effects real?

When hundreds of people are killed in an airplane crash I always wonder if maybe there wasn’t one guy, a little behind schedule that day, who ran down the last few hundred yards of the airport concourse to make the plane on time. And when he finally sat down in his seat, out of breath, he was really glad he made it. And then an hour later the plane goes down. What goes through his mind? Do you think maybe in those last few moments, as he plunges to the Earth he wishes he’d had a heart attack while running through the airport?

Why do they bother with a suicide watch when someone is on death row? “Keep an eye on this guy. We’re gonna kill him, and we don’t want him to hurt himself.”

I notice at Jewish weddings they break a glass. You ever been to an Irish wedding? Glasses, bottles, mirrors, tables, chairs, arms, legs, the band instruments, and the groom’s neck. We don’t fuck around. Mazel tov!

? HYPERLINK “file:///E:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Dom\Desktop\1791_NapalmSillyPutty%5B1%5D\Napalm_body-contents.html” l “TOC-65” ??HOW SOON IS INTERMISSION? ?

I recently attended an avant-garde play. Here’s what it said in the program:

An Anteater, a Tire Iron and a Blue Hat?by Zal Fenchley

Act One

SCENE 1 Laura’s living room, several weeks later.

SCENE 2 Easter, aboard a Turkish woman’s thigh.

SCENE 3 Deep within the colon of a woolly mammoth. 16,376 B.C.

SCENE 4 Inside a sailor’s shorts during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Act Two

SCENE 1 On a French sidewalk, six feet from escargot vomit.

SCENE 2 Inside a condom in Haifa. Jewish New Year.