Napalm and Silly Putty

SHORT TAKES

Why was brown excluded from the rainbow? And where did indigo come from? I was taught there were three primary colors and three secondary colors. What’s with this indigo shit?

After the hurricane is gone, where do people put all that plywood?

Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

Watching television these days, I often wonder what happened to the “vertical hold” knob. I miss that.

Don’t you hate when a rock band comes onstage and apparently the drummer has decided that somehow it’s cool to wear a funny hat?

There’s a store near my house with a sign that says, Unfinished Furniture. I must go in there. I’m looking for a nice three-legged table.

If you live long enough, everyone you know has cancer.

I once was dancing with a woman who told me she had a yeast infection. So I asked her to bake me a loaf of bread.

Why don’t these people who live in hurricane-prone areas just keep some batteries on hand at home? Seems like a simple thing to me. There’s too much last-minute shopping.

I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I’m listening to it.

Why don’t network TV shows have a warning that says “Caution: You are about to watch a real piece of shit.” Actually, they could just leave it on the screen all the time.

All music is the blues. All of it.

I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer’s disease where they slowly began to recover other people’s lost memories.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

You know what they ought to have on planes? A passenger voice recorder. So we could hear all the screaming when a plane goes down. I’m not really interested in the cockpit recorder; the pilots are always talkin’ a bunch of technical shit anyway. But the passengers! That would be fun.

When you rub your eyes real hard do you see that checkerboard pattern? What is that?

“Coming soon to a theater near you.” Actually, there is no theater near you. Look around your street. Is there a theater near you?

Attention certain women: Transporting children is not a license to drive slowly.

I saw a sign that said, Coming Soon—a 24-Hour Restaurant. And I thought, Well, that’s unusual. Why would they open and close it so quickly? At least try it for a week or two, and see if you can build a clientele.

Why is it when the two main characters in an action movie have their big climactic fight it always turns out that both of them are really good fighters? Just once, wouldn’t you like to see a fight between two leading male characters where one of them gets the shit completely beat out of him in about eight seconds? Especially the hero.

I’ve noticed my flax bill is not too high.

Would someone please explain to me the supposed appeal of having grandchildren? People ask me, “Are you a grandfather yet?” as if it’s some great thing. I’m sure it has its charms, and I imagine some dull-witted people want to see their genes passed along just for the sheer novelty of the idea. But overall, I don’t get it.

It’s been on my mind for some time, but I’ve never said it publicly. So here goes: “Vo-do-de-o-do and a scoddie-woddie doo-dah day.” Thank you.

Boy, am I glad to finally be rid of that fuckin’ Mother Teresa.

Masturbation is not illegal, but if it were, people would probably take the law into their own hands.

It used to be you got a tattoo because you wanted to be one of the few people who had a tattoo. Now you get a tattoo because you don’t want to be one of the few people who don’t have a tattoo.

Just when I discovered the meaning of life, it changed.

People in Washington say it’s not the initial offense that gets you in trouble, it’s the cover-up. They say you should admit what you did, get the story out, and move on. What this overlooks is the fact that most of the time the cover-up works just fine, and nobody finds out a thing. I would imagine that’s the rule rather than the exception. My advice: Take a chance. Lie.

The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other going in opposite directions.

Hotel fun: Smoke a big fat joint and then watch a complex spy movie with a lot of characters and plot twists. Then a few weeks later at a different hotel, smoke another joint and watch the same movie. It’s like seeing a whole new film. But the real fun is that about every fifteen minutes something happens in the plot that you seem to know already. It’s an odd feeling. By the way, this exercise can probably be repeated indefinitely with the same movie. As long as the grass holds out.

This is just one more way of starting a sentence with the word “this” and ending it with the word “that.”

Odd Slang: A woman who fucks a priest is said to have “taken a ride on the holy pole.”