Ill Humor, page 2 Then there's Joan Collins (who does frighten me). She went to court to prove that the booklike object she delivered to her publishers was too a book, despite her editor's protests that even by today's loose publishing standards it wasn't. The jury decided that it was a book in the eyes of the law, and she got to keep the million dollar advance she's already spent.
Can somebody explain this to me? And if she'd lost the case, could she have gotten a book deal out of it?
Can I sue them all and get a book deal, if I find a comedy expert who will stipulate that my final manuscript is humorous? If I get my sense of humor notarized, can I have Dennis Miller's career? Why not?
Speaking of best-selling authors who got book contracts because America knows who they are from watching television, I don't think SEINFELD is funny. A half an hour he spends trying to find his car. A half an hour he spends trying to order Chinese food. Where's the drama? Where are the aliens? I don't get it, and I have a notarized sense of humor.
Speaking of aliens, what is it exactly that makes Steve Forbes an "outsider?" (Oh right, the flat tax. I forgot.) Cereals are advertised as being "part of a complete breakfast." What, pray tell, is a "complete breakfast?"
Which is it? "Kewpon" or "coopon?" "Ennvelope or awnvelope?" If I'm so smart, why aren't I rich?
Here's another conundrum for the millennium --
When I was a kid, my mother used to say, "Clean your room." Modern mothers, I've noticed, say, "I need you to clean your room."
Everybody's doing this! Even in your place of employment, I'll bet, your boss no longer says, "Jenkins, I want that contract on my desk by five o'clock!" I'll bet he or she says instead, "Jenkins,I need you to have that contract on my desk by five o'clock!" I don't understand this at all, but I'll bet it has something to do with therapy. Furthermore, I'll bet that if you say, "I need you not to fire me," it will have no effect on your employment, especially if you and your boss have an unhealthy co-dependent relationship.
Speaking of therapy, why does everybody need "closure" all of a sudden? Why do our feelings need "validating?" If we get our emotions stamped at a shopping mall, do we get an hour's worth of free rage?
Why are all cigarette lighters suddenly childproof? Were children spontanously combusting? Or is this an instance of non-smokers trying to force tobacco addicts to cease their vile habit by denying them the means of ignition? Again: I am clueless.
I don't know about you, but I spend a couple hours a day seething in gridlock (And why is that? Whatever happened totelecommuting?). That's bad enough, but the only entertainment available to me, besides tape recordings of popular music and talk radio, are the bumper stickers on the cars around me.
For many years, as you no doubt know, Christians have been in the habit of displaying little silver fish on their bumpers. This has always annoyed me, as does any public yet anonymous profession of personal belief -- including "Think globally, act locally," and that whole random-acts-of-kindness business.
Then I noticed a variation on the fish on bumpers. It had legs, with the name "Darwin" written underneath. Okay, I thought, that's cute, that's a legitimate reaction to those who choose to plaster evidence of their devotion on a moving vehicle. But now I see more of this fish-with-legs things on cars than the fish without! Skepticism, when displayed everywhere on moving vehicles, is just as annoying as faith. Why is that?
I need all of you to take these things off your cars now, all right? And one more thing: once and for all, is Leonard Nimoy Spock or not? What the hell are we supposed to think? I need to experience a sense of closure. And notarize it of course.
