the center for the easily amused
heat.net - where I play my games!
the hamster dance-'nuff said
the cow dance-pretty much like the hamster dance
Drugwar An addictive(literally) game.
Bad-day Oooh! I'm having a BAAAD Day!
Small You'll figure it out.
Water There is condensation on your hard drive. I swear. Use this to drain it.
Dave Barry just happens to be my favorite author.
I am absolutely not making this incident up; in fact I have it all on videotape. The tape is from a local TV news show in Oregon, which sent a reporter out to cover the removal of a 45-foot, eight-ton dead whale that washed up on the beach. The responsibility for getting rid of the carcass was placed on the Oregon State Highway Division, apparently on the theory that highways and whales are very similar in the sense of being large objects.
So anyway, the highway engineers hit upon the plan--remember, I am not making this up--of blowing up the whale with dynamite. The thinking is that the whale would be blown into small pieces, which would be eaten by seagulls, and that would be that. A textbook whale removal.
So they moved the spectators back up the beach, put a half-ton of dynamite next to the whale and set it off. I am probably not guilty of understatement when I say that what follows, on the videotape, is the most wonderful event in the history of the universe. First you see the whale carcass disappear in a huge blast of smoke and flame. Then you hear the happy spectators shouting "Yayy!" and "Whee!" Then, suddenly, the crowd's tone changes. You hear a new sound like "splud." You hear a woman's voice shouting "Here come pieces of...MY GOD!" Something smears the camera lens.
Later, the reporter explains: "The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere." One piece caved in the roof of a car parked more than a quarter of a mile away. Remaining on the beach were several rotting whale sectors the size of condominium units. There was no sign of the seagulls who had no doubt permanently relocated to Brazil
This is a very sobering videotape Here at the institute we watch it often, especially at parties. But this is no time for gaiety. This is a time to get hold of the folks at the Oregon State Highway Division and ask them, when they get done cleaning up the beaches, to give us an estimate on the US Capitol.
Recently I had a simple, foolproof idea for eliminating the drug problem in this country. It came to me while I was making spaghetti sauce. I use an ancient Italian spaghetti-sauce recipe that has been handed down through many generations of ancient Italians, as follows: 1.Buy some spaghetti sauce 2.Heat it up Sometimes I add some seasoning to the sauce, to give it a dash of what the Italians call "joie de vivre" (literally, "ingredients"). I had purchased, from the supermarket spice section, a small plastic container labeled "Italian Seasoning". My plan was to open this container and sprinkle some seasoning into the sauce.
Already I can hear you veteran consumers out there chortling in good-natured amusement.
"You complete moron," you are chortling. "You actually thought you could gain access to a product protected by MODERN PACKAGING??"
Yes, I did, and I certainly learned MY lesson. Because it turns out that Italian Seasoning has joined the growing number of products that, For Your Protection, are packaged in containers that you cannot open unless you own a home laser cannon.
This trend started with aspirin. Years ago--ask your grandparents-- aspirin was sold in bottles that had removable caps. That system was changed when consumer safety authorities discovered that certain consumers were taking advantage of this loophole by opening up the bottles and--it only takes a few "bad apples" to spoil things for everybody--ingesting aspirin tablets.
So now aspirin bottles behave very much like stinging insects in nature movies, defending themselves against consumer access via a multilevel security system:
1.There is a plastic wrapper to keep you from getting at the cap.
2.The cap, which is patented by the Rubik's Cube company, cannot be removed unless you line an invisible arrow up with
an invisible dot while rotating the cap counterclockwise and simutaneously pushing down and pulling up.
3.In the unlikely event that you get the cap off, the top of the bottle is blocked by a taut piece of extremely feisty foil made from the same inpenetrable material used to protect the Space Shuttle during atmospheric re-entry.
4.Underneath the foil is a virtually unremovable wad of cotton the size of a small sheep.
5.As a final precaution, there is no actual aspirin underneath the cotton. There is only a piece of paper listing dangerous side effects, underneath which is...
6.... a second piece of paper warning you that the first piece of paper could give you a papercut.
Even this may not be enough security for the aspirin of tomorrow. At this very moment, packaging scientists are working on an even more secure system, in which the entire aspirin container would be located inside a live sea urchin.
With aspirin leading the way, more and more products are coming out in firecely protective packaging designed to prevent consumers from consuming them. My Italian Seasoning container featured a foil seal and a fiendish plastic thing that I could not remove with my bare hands, which meant of course that I had to use my teeth. These days you have to open almost every consumer item by gnawing on the packaging. Go to any typical consumer household and you'll note most of the products--food, medicine, compact discs, appliances, furniture--are covered with bite marks, as though the house is infested with crazed beavers. The floor will be gritty with little chips of consumer teeth. Many consumers are also getting good results by stabbing their products with knives. I would estimate that 58 percent of all serious household accidents result from consumers assaulting packaging designed to improve consumer safety.
Anyway, I finally gnawed my seasoning container open, no doubt activating a tiny transmitter that triggered an alarm in some Spice Security Command Post (WHEEP! WHEEP! INTRUDER GAINING ACCESS TO ITALIAN SEASONING IN SECTOR 19!).
While I was stirring my spaghetti sauce, it occirred to me that if we want to eliminate the drug problem in this country, all we have to do is:
1.Make all drugs completely legal and allow them to be sold in supermarkets ("Crack? Aisle 6, next to the Sweet'n Low")
2.Require that the drugs be sold in standard consumer packaging.
My reasoning is that if physically fit, clear-headed consumers can't get into thesse packages, there's no way that strung out junkies can. Eventually they'll have to give up trying to get at their drugs and become useful members of society, or at least attorneys.
I realize that some of you may have questions about this plan. Your most likely concern is: "If dangerous and highly addictive narcotics are sold freely in the supermarkets, will the packages be required to have Nutritional Facts labels, like the ones that helpfully inform consumers of the protein, carbohydrate, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium, and Iron content of Cool Whip Lite?"
Of course they will. Even though, if my plan works as expected, an addict would be unable to consume his heroin purchase, he still has the right to know, as an American consumer, that if he DID consume it, he'd be getting only a small percentage of his Daily Requirement of dietary fiber. This is just one of the many benefits we enjoy as residents of this Consumer Paradise. My head aches with pride.
Dave Barry