Radio’s Air Heads

   If you don’t listen to radio talk shows, you really should, because it gives you a chance to reassure yourself that a great many people out there are much stupider than you are. Here’s how these shows go:
   HOST: Hi, this is “You Get to Talk on the Actual Radio,” the show where You Make a Difference. I’m your host, Hubert Spankle, going under the radio name David Windsor Castle, which sounds better. Today I thought we’d talk about President Reagan’s economic plan. What do you think about it? Let’s go to the phones and find out. Hello, you’re on the air.
   CALLER: Hello, David?
   HOST: This is David. Go ahead.
   CALLER: Am I on the radio now?
   HOST: Yes, you are. Go ahead.
   CALLER: Go ahead and talk?
   HOST: Yes. Go right ahead and talk.
   CALLER: I’m so nervous.
   HOST: Don’t be nervous. Go right ahead and talk. Right now. Just talk.
   CALLER: Well, I just wanted to tell you what happened to my husband. He was riding the lawn mower, which we just got at Sears—can I say Sears?—well, let’s just say we just got it at a major department store, and believe me it wasn’t cheap, and he was driving it near the kitchen window, and all of a sudden he crashed right through the septic tank, and he disappeared right into the ground, and the firemen had to come and get him out, and I spent three hours going over the lawn tractor with Lysol—can I say Lysol?—and it still doesn’t smell what you’d call attractive, not to mention my husband, and I think they ought to make those septic tanks stronger, because a lot of people have lawn tractors, and ...
   HOST: I certainly hear what you’re saying. What do you think of President Reagan’s economic plan?
   CALLER: President Reagan’s what?
   HOST: His economic plan.
   CALLER: Well, I really haven’t been too involved in it, because we live in the suburbs, which is why we got the lawn tractor, but we had no idea that our septic tank ... HOsT: Thanks for your views. Let’s see how some of our other listeners feel about President Reagan’s economic plan. Hello, you’re on the air.
   CALLER: Hello, Frank?
   HOST: No, this is David Windsor Castle, and you’re on “You Get to Talk on the Actual Radio.” What’s on your mind?
   CALLER: What’s on my mind is I’m trying to get hold of Frank, because I just found out that Denise ...
   HOST: Excuse me, but this is a radio show, and there is no Frank here. CALLER: Well, when he gets there you better tell him that Denise found out about what’s been going on at the Jolly Goat Motel. Somebody sent her pictures of Frank, Louella, Preston, and the trained snakes, and the last I heard Denise was buying a gun, so he’d better ...
   HOST: Okay, let’s see if any of our other listeners have anything to add about President Reagan’s economic plan. Hello, you’re on the air.
   CALLER: Yeah, I’m calling about that lady with the septic tank. It just so happens I make septic tanks, and there’s no way u can make one collapse with just a lawn tractor unless the guy who’s riding it weighs about six hundred pounds. Why didn’t you ask her how much her husband weighs? I bet he’s a real lard bucket. You see these guys out on their lawn tractors, flab hanging down almost to the ground, and it makes you want to puke.
   HOST: Let’s go to another caller. You’re on the air.
   CALLER: Hi. I’d like to talk about President Reagan’s economic plan.
   HOST: Thank God.
   CALLER: It seems to me that people are being too quick to criticize the President’s plan, before it has had a chance to ... Oh no!
   (In the background is the sound of a door lock being shot open with a .35 7
   magnum.)
   CALLER: Denise!
   (More shots, screams)
   HOST: Well, that concludes today’s version of “You Get to Talk on the Actual Radio.” Tune in tomorrow, when we’ll explore the situation in the Middle East.

What To Ban On Video

   I keep reading these stories about these towns that want to ban video arcade games, as if these games were part of the International Communist Conspiracy. You know:
   POND SCUM, ARKANSAS—The town council in this small pig-farming community voted tonight to ban video arcade games on the grounds that they are a threat to the moral fiber of the town’s youth. “The youths in this town barely got any moral fiber left to speak of, and I blame these here video games,” charged Council President Lionel B. Sparge. “When I was a youth, Pond Scum didn’t have no video games, and we found plenty to do. For example, we’d stand around and spit.
   I agree with the people who want to ban video games. These games definitely destroy your moral fiber. At least they destroy my moral fiber. I have this video game that I play all the time on my personal home computer, which I keep back in a back bedroom. I don’t allow my two-year-old son to get near it, because it might destroy his moral fiber, and also he tends to pull the plug right when I’m in an important phase of my game, such as when the aliens materialize out of hyperspace.
   So what has happened is that my son has been going through all these critical stages of growth and development out in the living room, and I’ve missed most of it. Not that I mind all that much, really, since if you want to participate in my son’s growth and development you have to read him these profoundly dull children’s books with names like Let’s Go to a Condiments Factory and Tommy the Toad Vacuums the Carpet. So I’ve left his development pretty much in the hands of my wife, with instructions that she should call me if he reaches any new developmental stages so I can come out to the living room and watch him for a few minutes.
   And I’m not the only one whose moral fiber is being destroyed. It is a proven scientific fact that video games are also corrupting American youth. In a recent experiment, scientific researchers exposed a group of teenaged boys to an arcade game, and found that all of them had unclean sexual thoughts. Of course, the researchers got the same result when they exposed the boys to coleslaw, an alpaca sweater, and “The MacNeil-Lehrer Report,” but that is beside the point. The point is that we should all write letters to our elected officials and urge them to ban video games.
   And while they’re at it, they should also ban golf. Golf is similar to video games in that it is a monumentally useless activity that people become obsessed with and waste a lot of money on, but it has the added drawback of encouraging people to wear really stupid clothing, such as pants that can be seen with the naked eye from other galaxies. I strongly suspect that if our nation’s youth continue to play video games, many of them will eventually graduate to golf, so I say let’s kill two birds with one stone and ban them both.
   Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “How, in a free country such as this, can we ban video games and golf, yet continue to permit stamp-collecting?” You’re absolutely right, and I’m only sorry I didn’t think of it myself. It would be hard to conceive of an activity more useless than stamp-collecting, except maybe water-skiing or the Rose Bowl parade, so I suppose these things will have to be banned too, along with fraternal organizations, music, tropical fish, racquetball, and any activity whatsoever involving Ed McMahon. Also, anybody attempting to operate a beauty pageant should be shot without trial.
   Of course, this is only a partial list of the useless, fiber-destroying activities that should be banned, and I’m sure you’ll think of plenty more when you write to your elected officials. The important thing isn’t so much what you want to ban; it’s the fact that you participate in the banning process. That’s what democracy is all about.

Subtract Those Ads

   I strongly suspect that the people who appear in television commercials are imported from the planet Jupiter. I can think of no other way to explain their behavior. Take, for example, the commercials for Coca-Cola in which an extremely interracial group of people gathers on a hillside, holding candles, and sings:
   I’d like to teach the world to sing In perfect har-mo-nee I’d like to buy the world a Coke And keep it com-pa-nee.
   This is not the way native Earth people behave. Native Earth people do not gather interracially on hillsides for any purpose other than to watch motorcyclists leap over cars. And native Earth people, at least the ones I know, see no connection whatsoever between Coca-Cola and world harmony. In fact, I’m willing to bet statistics would show that Coca-Cola sales and world tension have both been increasing steadily for the past thirty years or so.
   Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying Coca-Cola causes world tension. I happen to be very fond of Coca-Cola. It tastes fine, and it makes an excellent industrial cleanser. I’m just saying the people in Coca-Cola’s commercials either are deranged or come from another planet.
   And it’s not just Coca-Cola commercials. You can watch commercials for days and never see anything approaching normal human behavior. I think that, in the interest of honesty, the government ought to pass a law requiring companies to use regular Earth people in their commercials. Here’s how they would behave:

Commercials For Men’s Hair Darkeners

   (The commercial opens with a white-haired man and a dark-haired man standing in an office.)
   WHITE-HAIRED MAN: I’M worried that the boss won’t give me that Big Promotion.
   DARK-HAIRED MAN: That’s because you look too old. Here, take this hair-darkening stuff home and smear it in your hair every night.
   WHITE-HAIRED MAN: Thanks a million. I’ll try it.
   (The scene shifts to the boss’s office, several weeks later. The formerly white-haired man now has extremely dark, glossy hair. He looks as though he has a wet cat on his head.)
   BOSS: I called you in here to tell you I’ve decided to give you ... My God, what’s that on your head?
   FORMERLY WHITE-HAIRED MAN: My hair. I’ve been smearing stuff on it every night.
   BOSS: It looks like a wet cat.
   FORMERLY WHITE-HAIRED MAN: What did you want to see me about? Boss: Uh, nothing. On your way out, ask my secretary to send in somebody who looks distinguished.

Commercials For Headache Remedies

   (A woman is sitting at a table on which are four bowls. She is facing many bright lights. From behind the lights, a faceless man is talking to her.)
   FACELESS MAN: Mrs. Jones, do you have a headache?
   WOMAN: Yes, and those lights aren’t helping one bit.
   FACELESS MAN: Which of these leading pain relievers do you think has the most laboratory-proven pain-killing ingredient?
   WOMAN: You mean aspirin, right? Why do you guys always dream up these elaborate names for aspirin? Why don’t you just call it aspirin? And why are you hiding behind those lights?
   FACELESS mAN: Look, this leading brand has only 450 milligrams of laboratory-proven pain-killing ingredient. And this brand has only 450
   milligrams. And this brand has only ...
   WOMAN: Shut up! Just shut up! Isn’t it bad enough that I have a headache? Do I also have to sit here in front of a bunch of hot lights and listen to some idiot blither about milligrams? I’m going to go home and take some aspirin.

Commercials For Smoker’s Tooth Polish

   (Two people are standing at a cocktail party, smoking cigarettes.)
   FIRST SMOKER: Say, I have an idea: Why don’t you exhale some cigarette smoke through this white handkerchief?
   SECOND SMOKER: That sounds like a swell idea. (He blows some smoke through the handkerchief.)
   FIRST SMOKER: Look at that brown glop. Imagine what that’s doing to your teeth.
   SECOND SMOKER: My teeth? What about my lungs, for God’s sake? I’ve got to quit.
   (The first smoker coughs violently and spits something disgusting into the handkerchief.)

Commercials For Stove-Top Stuffing

   (A woman and her husband are shopping in a supermarket. A man with a microphone approaches them.)
   MAN WITH MICROPHONE: Mrs. Brown, which do you think your husband would rather have for dinner: potatoes or Stove-Top Stuffing?
   WOMAN: I don’t see where that’s any of your business.
   MAN WITH MICROPHONE: Well, Mr. Brown?
   HUSBAND: Geez, I don’t know. Stove-Top Stuffing, I guess.
   MAN WITH MICROPHONE: Well, Mrs. Brown, what do you think of that?
   WOMAN: I think that if my husband is going to go around telling perfect strangers that he doesn’t like the food I cook, then he can cook his own damn food.

Commercials For Wisk

   (Two men are talking at a party, as their wives listen.)
   FIRST MAN: I’m feeling really wrung out lately.
   SECOND MAN (jeeringly): That’s because you’ve got ring around the collar. Ha ha.
   (The first man shakes his head sadly, then walks away.)
   SECOND MAN: What’s with him?
   SECOND MAN’S WIFE: His mother just died, you idiot.

Low Finance

A Matter Of Life And Debt

   First of all, let me assure you that we are not in a depression. The key economic indicator of a depression is that you suddenly start seeing a lot of primitive black-and-white newsreel films of people wearing old-fashioned hats and overcoats and forming lines in the streets of major cities to obtain bread. So far, all the lines of people have been videotaped in color, which is the sign of a stable economy. Also, the people have not been lining up for bread. They have been lining up for cheese, which the government has several million tons of.
   Some of you are no doubt wondering why the government has so much cheese. It’s because of the Strategic Dairy Products Act, which was passed in 1947 to guarantee that the nation never becomes dependent on some unreliable foreign power, such as France, for its cheese supply. So for years the government has been paying huge sums of money to dairy farmers for cheese that winds up sitting in government warehouses as a permanent reminder to the cheese-making nations of the world that we are a strong, self-reliant people.
   The problem is that after a few years the cheese hardens to the consistency of formica, and the government has to get rid of it. The original plan, developed by Alexander Haig, was to drop the cheese from Air Force bombers onto rebel troops in El Salvador, but military analysts pointed out that the rebels might be able to melt it down and eat it, so the government decided instead to give it to poor people here in the United States. But this should not be taken as a sign that we are in a depression.
   What we are in is a recession. The key economic indicator of a recession is that government economists go around announcing that the economy is improving. The truth, of course, is that government economists don’t have the slightest notion what the economy is doing; if they did, they would have decent jobs. But they keep trying. Every few days they come out with some economic statistic and attempt to explain it, using charts and pointers, to the news media:
   WASHINGTON—The U.S. Treasury’s Bureau of Calculations announced today that the rate of increase of the Average Price of Things that People Buy So They Can Make Them into Other Things and Sell Them for More Money Than They Paid for Them was slightly lower than might otherwise have been expected. “It is a very, very hopeful sign,” said government economist Elwood Welt, once he located the room where the press conference was held. “To be perfectly frank, we had feared that the rate of increase would be something like 6.67 percent, when in fact it was 6.53 percent, so we here at the Bureau of Calculations are extremely pleased and hopeful and will probably take the rest of the day off.
   Government economists are always hopeful, for two reasons:
   1. They have jobs.
   2. If they aren’t hopeful, the President will fire them.
   So government economists go around with big smiles on their faces all the time. For the past thirty years, presidents increased spending deficits like clockwork, and the government economists smiled. Then Ronald Reagan said he was against big spending and deficits, and the government economists smiled. Now it turns out that spending and deficits are still going up, and the government economists are still smiling. Phyllis George would be a good government economist.
   The big question, of course, is, What can we, as citizens, do for the government during the recession? Well, for one thing, it would be a big help if we would stop being unemployed in such large numbers. A lot of us have managed to get ourselves unemployed lately, and some of us are guilty of extremely high interest rates. As a result, we are making it very difficult for government economists to remain hopeful. So far they have managed to pull it off, but it’s only a matter of time before they start to feel depressed:
   WASHINGTON—The U.S. Treasury’s Bureau of Calculations announced today that the nation’s economy is going to hell in a hand basket and probably will never get better. “I’m so sorry, but I just can’t feel hopeful about anything anymore,” said government economist Elwood Welt, clutching a fifty-pound block of government surplus cheese. “We’ve tried everything. We’ve tried coming up with new statistics, and more recently, we’ve started using more color charts, but the truth is we are all very depressed about the economy and will probably take the rest of the day off.”

Full-Service Bankruptcy

   What makes international finance so fascinating is that, thanks to the miracle of modern electronic banking, you are linked financially with billions of people you don’t even know, which means the actions of a deranged scum-bucket politician in some country you never even heard of could cause you to lose your home and your life’s savings and wind up living in a cardboard refrigerator carton and licking discarded candy wrappers for nourishment. This has caused some people to be concerned about their banks. The banking industry has responded with reassuring television commercials, wherein a man wearing a reassuring suit says:
   “We’re the nation’s banks, and we’re not the least bit worried about anything, which is why we’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to let you know that nobody is worried about anything. Here, for example, is an extremely solid bank. Just look at this momma.” (Here he kicks the bank.) “You’re talking solid masonry construction. And on top of that, your deposits are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States Government, the same organization that gave so many of you shots for swine flu. This means that if anything goes wrong with the banking system, your elected representatives will fly back from Switzerland or France or wherever they are, and they’ll hold press conferences and call each other names, and eventually they’re bound to come up with a nifty plan to get your money back. So there’s nothing to worry about, nothing at all. Forget we even brought it up. Thank you.”
   To illustrate how you are connected to international finance, let’s look at how the banking system works. First, people like yourself deposit money in banks. The banks put the money in their safes, where the amounts gradually increase thanks to the sound banking practice of never lending money tO people like yourself. Eventually the bankers at the smaller banks get nervous about having all that money around, so they transfer it to gigantic international banks in New York, in return for which they receive very attractive desk calendars. At this point, the gigantic international bankers are sitting around, wondering what to do with the money, when officials of a country such as Poland pull up in a taxi, race into the bank without paying the driver, and apply for a loan:
   BANKERS: And just how much money did you have in mind?
   POLISH OFFICIALS: We were thinking in terms of one million trillion dollars in small bills. BANKERs: That’s a great deal of money for us to lend to people who have horribly mismanaged their country’s economy for years and whose authority depends on the armed oppression of the Soviet Union. What assurance do we have that you can repay us?
   POLISH OFFICIALS: We’re willing to sign our names to several pieces of paper.
   BANKERS: Would tens and twenties be okay?
   The Polish officials flee back to Poland with the money, all of which immediately disappears into the black market in exchange for Elton John records. After maybe five years, the international bank sends Poland a letter:
   Dear Poland:
   This is just a friendly note to remind you that, according to our records, you now have a past due balance of $832,674,709,908,772.54. Although we value you as a customer, continued tardiness in payment on your part could force us to precipitate an international banking crisis.
   Warmest regards,
   Your Gigantic Full-service International Bank
   So the Poland officials telephone the bank collect and, shouting to be heard over the Elton John record playing in the background, claim the check is in the mail.
   Over the years, this process has been repeated with so many countries that virtually all the money originally deposited in U.S. banks is now in the hands of foreign street vendors, which is why your local bank is willing to give you calculators and toasters if you’ll deposit more money. This can’t go on, of course. Already, some banks have taken drastic corrective action in the form of lending more money to foreign countries so they can make their interest payments. But this may not be enough; we may soon see a day when the United States Government, fed up with the incredible stupidity of the international bankers, finally steps in and gives them enormous amounts of money taken from taxpayers, which is only fair, because the taxpayers were the ones who got the toasters.

The Net May Be Gross

   The reason that you are not extremely wealthy, of course, is that you do not carefully keep track of your finances. John D. Rockefeller carefully kept track of his finances, and he ended up with so much money that he started giving it away in bales, and many of his offspring became governors. For a while there, we barely had enough states for Rockefellers to be governors of. So if you want your offspring to be governors, you should drive down to your local office-supplies store and get yourself a little accountant-style notebook and immediately start writing down your expenses:
   Accountant-style Notebook—$7.97
   Gas Used to Get to Store for Accountant-style Notebook—$1.14
   Depreciation on Car—$4.34
   Parking—$0.25
   Beef Jerky Purchased at Convenience Store on Way Home—$0.49
   Damage to Fender Caused by Uninsured Motorist While Car Was in Convenience Store Parking Lot—$385.62
   Knife Wound Suffered in Argument—$1,830.88
   Legal Fees—$12,757.21
   See? You’re on your way to riches. Not only do you know exactly where your money is going, but all these items are tax-deductible, provided you were talking to your lawyer when you ate the beef jerky.
   When you get home, you should sit down and try to figure out what your major assets are. There are two kinds of assets: “liquid” assets are the ones you have already spent, and “solid” assets are the ones you still have. In our household, our major asset is roughly $4,000 worth of pennies under the furniture. These pennies are a fairly solid asset, because to get them we would have to crawl around and stuff them into those little wrappers you get at the bank, and the bank probably wouldn’t accept them anyway, because of the high floor-lint content. Our other major solid assets are:
   $42.13 worth of U.S. postage stamps that we bought only recently but cannot use because the Postal Commission raises the rate every two or three days. $3,024.56 worth of aquarium supplies, from when my wife and I went through our Tropical Fish Phase, which culminated in our discovery that they are called “tropical” fish because they can survive only in the tropics, which we do not live in. A pure-bred German shepherd dog for which we paid $300, or roughly $50 per brain cell. $80 worth of rolls of undeveloped photographic film, which we don’t want to have developed because we can’t remember whether they contain any memorable pictures, but which we don’t want to throw away in case they contain any memorable pictures. We’ve had these rolls for years now, and we often take them off the shelf and settle down in front of a crackling fire to look at them and reminisce. “Remember this roll of film?” we say. $200 worth of random keys.
   Your only remaining financial responsibility is to balance your checkbook. Every month, you send out a batch of checks to various people, and every month the bank gets hold of these checks somehow, smears them with bank-style graffiti, and sends them back to you. The obvious question, of course, is, What are you supposed to do with them? My wife ignores them. She merely tosses the bank envelope, unopened, into a drawer, and walks away, laughing a carefree laugh. So far, she has gotten away with it, but I’m fairly sure that someday the Bank Inspector will show up with guns and attack dogs and make her stay in her room until she balances her checkbook. So I always balance mine. Here’s the system I use:
   1. On a large, flat surface, such as a washing machine or floor, arrange all the checks in a tasteful, numerical pattern.
   2. With a sharp pencil, put little check marks next to all the numbers on the bank statement and all the numbers in your checkbook.
   That’s all there is to it. You could avoid even this much work if you could prevent the bank from getting hold of your checks and sending them back to you. One way to do this would be to write, in large letters at the top of each check, the words DO NOT LET THE BANK GET HOLD OF THIS CHECK. If everybody did this, we would all save thousands of hours we now waste balancing checkbooks, and we would probably have come up with a cure for the common cold by now.

Anti-Insurance Policy

   I have been under almost constant attack by life-insurance salesmen for most of my adult life. I was first attacked when I was in college, by this guy named Charlie. One day he was a normal college student, no different from the rest of us, and the next day he was a life-insurance salesman. It was as if the Moonies had got him. All of a sudden, he was wearing wing-tipped shoes and acting very concerned about my Financial Security. At the time, my idea of Financial Security was to have enough money to buy a pizza with extra cheese, but Charlie thought I should have at least six hundred thousand dollars’ worth of life insurance, so that when I died my dependents would be rich.
   To be honest, I didn’t care what happened to my dependents, because I didn’t have any. But Charlie was obsessed with my dependents: he’d sit in my room, hour after hour, and fret about them, until finally, to ease his mind, I bought some life insurance, and he went away. As soon as I was safely in another state, I cashed in my insurance and used the money to go sailing in the Virgin Islands with some friends who had not had the foresight to buy life insurance for their dependents, and thus had a more difficult time coming up with the money. So my life insurance turned out to be a good investment.
   All life-insurance salesmen believe that no matter who you are, or what your financial situation is, you need more insurance. So unless you wear elaborate disguises and sleep in old refrigerator cartons, sooner or later a life-insurance salesman will come to your home, calling you by your first name a lot and subtly hinting that you’re going to die. Suppose your name is John. Here’s how your insurance salesman will attack you:
   INSURANCE SALESMAN: John, I just stopped by to chat about your Financial Security. John, our records indicate that you’re going to die someday and leave your dependents penniless and they’ll end up out on the street eating garbage in the cold. I just thought we should chat about that, John. YOU: Well, I certainly appreciate it, but I already have eight million dollars’ worth of life insurance, and my only dependents are these tropical fish.
   INSURANCE SALESMAN: Frankly, John, in these inflationary times, eight million dollars just isn’t going to buy all that much tropical-fish food. And I’m not even talking about the cost of fish-tank filters, John. YOU: But they’re just fish, for God’s sake. I just can’t see buying more insurance for fish. But thanks anyway.
   INSURANCE SALESMAN: John, not long ago I was sitting in a room just like this, talking with a man, just like you, who thought he didn’t need more insurance. I left his house, and the next day he was struck by lightning and run over by a bulldozer and his body was eaten by ants, and within a matter of days his fish had all developed fin rot, all because he didn’t think he needed more insurance. So, John, if I were to leave your house tonight and something like that were to happen to you, I’d never forgive myself. So I’ll just unroll my sleeping bag here and cook some freeze-dried food, of which I have a three-week supply, while you think about it, John. And another thing, John. John John John John John.
   Finally, of course, you will buy insurance. As the salesman leaves, he will put a secret mark on the door to alert other insurance salesmen that yours is a good house to stop at, and soon they will be at your door in droves. If you want them to go away, either you have to shoot them, which is illegal in some states and which doesn’t always work anyway, or you have to buy more insurance.
   So the only real solution to the problem is to convince the salesman that you are a bad risk. Put a sign outside your house that says: CAUTION: RADIOACTIVE RABID LEPROSY VICTIM WITH SMALLPOX. This won’t stop a really successful salesman from entering, but it will slow him down. When he knocks on the door, hide in the bedroom and have a friend, wearing a surgical mask, escort him into the living room. Then follow this script:
   INSURANCE SALESMAN: Is John home?
   YOUR FRIEND: Yes, but I think he’s dead. Let me check. John? Are you dead? YOU: Not yet. Who is it?
   YOUR FRIEND: A visitor. YOU: Oh, goody. Send him in. I haven’t had a visitor since poor old Wesley Bumpers came to see me last week. Speaking of whom, I wish you’d get him out of here. He’s beginning to spoil.
   INSURANCE SALESMAN: Perhaps I’ve picked a bad time. YOU: Not at all. Come on in. (Here you cough violently, and toss a bucket of giblets into the living room.)
   INSURANCE SALESMAN: I just realized I’m late for an important appointment in Belgium. I’ll stop by later. (Holding his breath, he barges out the door.)
   If this approach doesn’t work, you should try vicious dogs.

Build Your Own Mess

   You young couples out there who dream of having your own houses someday have probably read a lot of depressing articles about housing costs. You know:
   WASHINGTON—The American Institute of People who Keep Track of These Things released a study today showing that by 1990 the average single-family house will cost eleven million dollars, not counting drapes, and that the only people who will be able to afford houses will be members of the Saudi Arabian royal family and major drug dealers.
   Well, cheer up, young couples: You can have your own house. All you need is a large sum of money. The best source of money is your parents. You can get almost anything you want from your parents, provided you’re not afraid to whine. I remember when I was twelve and really needed a BB gun. My parents didn’t want me to have one, on the grounds I might shoot my brother. But I put together a string of about thirty-five days during which I was without question the most sniveling, obnoxious child in the entire world. It got to the point where, to preserve their sanity, my parents had to either give me a BB gun or hire someone to kidnap me. They eventually elected to buy me a BB gun, mainly because it was cheaper. I was so grateful I didn’t shoot my brother for three or four days.
   Anyway, your parents probably have a bunch of money rotting away in things like savings accounts and investments and pensions and insurance and retirement homes. So what you should do is follow your parents everywhere—to the supermarket, to work, to parties—tugging at their sleeves and saying “I wanna house.” Sooner or later, because they love you, they’ll give you some money. Or flee to Brazil.
   If you can’t get money from your parents, you may be able to get some from a bank. The trouble is that banks prefer to give money to people who already have a lot of it. If you walk into a bank looking like a poverty-stricken young couple whose own parents won’t give them money, the loan officer will drum his fingers impatiently and try to get you out of his office so he can get back to increasing the prime rate. So you want to look wealthy. Wear tuxedos and evening gowns, and act as though you could not care less whether you get any money:
   LOAN OFFICER: May I help you? YOU: Yes. We’d like to grab a quick bite of pheasant while Jacques fuels the Mercedes. Could we have a table please?
   LOAN OFFICER: I’m sorry, but this is a bank. YOU: A bank? How very quaint. Is it for sale? I should think it would be gobs of fun to have a cozy little bank like this. Our others are so huge.
   LOAN OFFICER: Uh, no, I’m afraid it’s not for sale. But I could give you a loan. Would $300,000 do? YOU: Thanks awfully, but we’re all set for today.
   LOAN OFFICER: How about $450,000? Please, take it. We can sign the papers later.
   If you can’t get money from your parents or a bank, you can build your own house. Anybody can build a house. My father is a Presbyterian minister who knows only the basics of carpentry, and he built the house I grew up in. The only problems are that the house took him about thirty-five years to finish and in many ways looks like it was built by a Presbyterian minister who knows only the basics of carpentry. Also some of the windows have BB-gun holes.
   Here is how to build a house:
   1. Find some land. You can find empty land all over the place, particularly along interstate highways. Pick out a nice batch of land and watch it for a few days: If nobody seems to be doing anything with it, you can assume it’s okay for you to build a house there.
   2. Dig a ditch in the shape of the house. If you run into a lot of rocks and stuff, forget the ditch, You’re going to put a house on top of it anyway, so nobody will know the difference.
   3. Get several thousand boards at a lumberyard and nail them together so they form a house. (NOTE: Do not do this at the lumberyard.)
   If you don’t want to go to all this trouble, you can just put up a crude hut made of animal skins or mud and twigs. No matter what you build, you’ll be able to sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few years, when you need the money to get your children to stop following you around saying “I wanna house.”

God Needs The Money

   Here are three types of people you should not trust:
   People who tell you God told them to tell you to send them money. You know the guys I mean. They get on television and say: “God told me He wants you to send me some money, say $100, or even just $10, if that’s all you can afford, but in all honesty I must point out that God is less likely to give you some horrible disease if your gift is in the $100 range.”
   The theory here seems to be that God talks only to the guys on television. I always thought that if God needed money all that badly, He would get in touch with us directly.
   My wife gets a lot of letters from people who say God told them to tell her to send them money. She got a great one recently from Brother Leroy Jenkins, who is evidently one of the people God goes to when He needs a lot of money. Leroy is very straightforward:
   The Lord spoke to me to have you send a one-time large gift. Will you send me $1,000, or $500, or $100, or even $5,000 ... If you are not able to send all of the $1,000, $500, $100 or $5,000 now, send as much as you can, and make a vow to the Lord that you will send an offering of $20 (or at least $10) each month.
   Notice you make the vow to the Lord, but you send the money to Leroy. Leroy doesn’t specify what he plans to do with it, but he does tell you to send it to him at the Walden Correctional Institution in South Carolina, where he is serving a twelve-year term for criminal conspiracy. I imagine God advised him to get a good lawyer.
   People who say they want to do things for the Public. I have yet to locate the Public: All I ever see is people. Nevertheless, some people are certain there’s a Public out there somewhere, sort of like the Lost Continent of Atlantis, and they keep trying to do things for it. Generally, these things consist of taking money away from people to help the Public, or passing laws prohibiting people from doing things that most people see nothing wrong with, but that are not in the Public Interest. For example:
   The federal government helps the Public by taking ever larger amounts of money away from most people. The theory is that if the government didn’t step in, people would spend the money on things they want, which would cause inflation, which would be bad for the Public. So the government takes the money and (surprise!) spends it. Most states protect the Public by limiting people to only one telephone company, electric company, and so on. This is Good for the Public. It is not to be confused with monopolies, which are Bad for the Public. Your really enlightened states protect the Public by prohibiting everybody but the state from operating liquor or gambling businesses. These businesses are considered Bad if people operate them, but Good if the state does, even though the only real difference is that state liquor stores have high prices, poor selection, and all the charm of unwashed junior-high school locker rooms; and state gambling games offer sucker odds and idiot advertisements that appeal most to people who can least afford to throw money away.
   I want to clarify one point: When I talk about “people,” I am not talking about “the People” with a capital “P,” as in “Power to the People” and other such slogans, which are bandied about by people who really mean “Power to Me and a Few of My Friends Who Know What Is Good for the People.” Generally, these people merely want to get control over property that is already owned by people, only not the right ones.
   People who say they are doing things in Your Interest. Don’t trust anybody who says he’s doing something in Your Interest, except maybe your mother. Let’s face it: most people do what they do because they enjoy it or make money from it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But most people feel obligated to pretend all they ever think about is helping the human race, especially you. Life-insurance salesmen, for example, tend to carry on as though the only reason they sell life insurance is that they feel it is more beneficial than the priesthood. Advertisements work the same way. The Chrysler Corporation wants me to buy a Chrysler not because it sells Chryslers, but because it wants to Help America. Mobil isn’t trying to sell petroleum products: it’s trying to Solve the Energy Crisis. And so on.
   So there you have it: a list of people not to trust. You should be grateful you have someone like me, working for the Public Good, with Your Interest in mind. God wants you to send me some money.

Health Habits

Exercising Your Rights

   Let’s talk about exercise and your body. First, the bad news. You cannot have a really swell body, like the one belonging to Victoria Principal. Victoria is the actress from the famous television show “Dallas” who appears in newspaper and television advertisements wearing a stretch garment that, if not occupied by Victoria Principal, would contract to the size of a gum wrapper.
   In the television commercial, Victoria walks around a health club striking various bodily poses and saying something. You can’t hear what she’s saying, because when you see this particular commercial your brain tends to devote all available nervous-system resources to your eyes, but the gist of it is that if you join a health club and exercise a lot you will look like Victoria Principal or one of the major hunks of manhood behind her.
   This is a lie, of course. Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has decided that only a select few people can look like Victoria Principal or the hunks, and you are not one of them. These select people are destined to have swell bodies even if the only exercise they get is eating Slim Jims and drinking cheap whiskey. Certain other people can exercise constantly and eat nothing but grapefruit rinds, but they will still have the bodies of water buffalo.
   This is probably for the best. Think how dull the world would be if we did not have wide variations in our bodily formats. We’d be like ants. If you’ve ever taken a good, close look at a batch of ants, you’ve probably noticed that they’re all equally attractive. You never see any fat ants, or buxom ants, or lean, sinewy ants. They all have identical, perfect little ant bodies, and consequently they find each other boring. Put yourself in their position: how would you feel if you lived in a world where every member of the opposite sex had a perfect body? You’d crave something different. You’d start casting a speculative glance toward the larvae, or even the pupae. If you were a male ant, you might even make a pass at, say, a queen termite, despite the fact that she is about sixty times your size, lays thirty-five thousand eggs a day, and tends to devour her sexual partners. Or is that spiders? No matter. The mere fact that you would even consider making a pass at a termite is proof of my point, which, if I recall it correctly, is that Mother Nature wants us all to be different, which means that if you are basically a squat person, you can exercise all you want, and you will still be basically a squat person.
   This does not mean you shouldn’t exercise; it merely means that you should understand the real reason you should exercise, which is to prepare your body for the pain you’ll inevitably have to endure when you become older. Let’s say you’re in your mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Most of the time you feel pretty good, right? The only time you feel really lousy is when you attend a major party and ingest huge quantities of alcohol and wake up the next day naked in an unfamiliar city. But as you grow older, you’re going to start feeling more aches and pains caused by the inevitable afflictions of age, such as arthritis, the Social Security Administration, condescending denture-adhesive commercials, children who call only when they want to borrow money for down payments on houses much nicer than the one you live in, etc. You need to prepare your body for this pain. This is why exercise is so important.
   Take joggers. You see them running along the street, clearly hating every second of it, and you say, “What’s the point?” Ha. Years from now, you’ll struggle to adjust to the aches and pains of growing older, whereas the joggers, who have been in constant agony for fifteen or twenty years, will be able to make the transition smoothly, unless they’ve committed suicide.
   So don’t delay. Start an exercise program today, the more painful the better. If you don’t like to jog, buy the exercise book that Jane Fonda, the noted critic of capitalism, sells for $17.95, and do the exercises in it. Or just hit yourself repeatedly in the head with it.

Programs For The Unfit

   Okay! Today’s the day you start on your physical-fitness program, the program that’s going to make you slender, healthy, and attractive, like the people in cigarette advertisements.
   Step one is to take your pulse, because a healthy heart is the key to physical fitness. If your heart is healthy, you can continue to collect Social Security long after your other major organs have become senile and are wandering around aimlessly with no idea what bodily functions they are supposed to perform. The best way to understand the relationship between your heart and your health is to examine an actual heart. You cannot, of course, examine your own heart, unless you have a high threshold of pain, so instead you should trot down to the grocery store and ask the butcher for some surplus hearts from an assortment of animals—a cow, a pig, a fish, an earthworm, etc. Most butchers will be happy to give you the hearts for free, just to get you to go away.
   Now take your hearts home, spread them out on a clean, level surface, such as a Ping-Pong table, and examine them closely. You’ll notice that the hearts differ in size, but they have one important thing in common: the animals they were removed from are all dead. This tells us that hearts are extremely important for physical fitness. Now place your hearts in Tupperware containers and store them in your freezer in case your children ever need them for science-fair projects or practical jokes.
   Now you’re ready to take your pulse. The traditional method is to locate the major artery that goes through your wrist and press your thumb against it. The only potential drawback to this method is that you might squash the artery flat with your thumb, causing the blood to back up so that eventually your arm explodes like a party balloon. A safer way is to drink gin and tonic until you can actually hear your pulse pounding in your head, then walk or crawl to a nearby store and tell the salesperson you want to buy a stopwatch so you can count the number of pounds per minute:
   YOU: I want a stopwatch.
   SALESPERSON: We don’t sell stopwatches. This is a grocery store. You (picking up an eggplant): Oh yeah? Then what do you call this?
   SALESPERSON: That’s an eggplant. Say, you’re the guy who was in here earlier asking for fish hearts. Are you drunk or something?
   YOU: Certainly not. As any idiot can plainly see, I’m taking my pulse.
   SALESPERSON: With an eggplant? Why don’t you just squash your thumb against your artery like everybody else? You (with great dignity): If I wanted a squash, I would have selected a squash, wouldn’t I? I’ll take this eggplant, and make it snappy.
   Next, using a stopwatch or an eggplant, count the number of times your head pounds in a minute; if you’re a healthy person, this should be a two—or three-digit number. Now you’re ready to start your exercise program. Turn on your television and watch one of those programs in which people in skimpy outfits leap around in time to recorded music under the direction of a cheerful leader.
   Notice I say you should watch the program: under no circumstances should you actually do the exercises, because all that leaping around will reduce your brain to tapioca pudding. You’ll wind up like the people on the television programs, smiling vacantly and doing whatever the cheerful leader tells you to:
   LEADER: Okay! Let’s kick those legs up high! Great! Now let’s bend way over! Terrific! Now let’s all say “I pledge allegiance to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.”
   EXERCISERS: I pledge allegiance to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
   LEADER: Okay! Now let’s all hop on one foot and put our fingers in our noses’. Great! Now let’s all take out our checkbooks and ...
   After your exercise program, take your pulse again, then go into the kitchen and prepare a large, nutritious breakfast. You may not feel hungry, especially after all the pulse-taking, so to boost your appetite, think about how important good nutrition is to your heart. Think about what will happen to you if you don’t take good care of your heart. Think, as you chew your food, about what happened to the cow, the pig, the fish, and the earthworm whose hearts are sitting in Tupperware containers only a few feet away from your breakfast, sheathed in frozen slime. This should give you all the incentive you need to eat a hearty breakfast, after which you’ll be ready to face the day or go back to bed.

Jogging For President

   Lately, I have noticed large numbers of people staggering along the sides of major highways, trying to get in shape. I think they have the right idea: most of us Americans are out of shape. I know for a fact that I am.
   When I was in high school, my friends and I were in terrific shape. Our bodies were fine-tuned machines. We would routinely drink quarts of warmish beer, then perform feats of great physical prowess. For example, during the Halloween Dance we carried a 1962 Volkswagen all the way up the front steps of Pleasantville High School, right into the lobby. I bet we couldn’t do that today. I bet you couldn’t, either.
   Now I grant you that most of us no longer feel any great need to drink warm beer and carry Volkswagens into high schools, but the point is that if some emergency arose, if for some reason involving national security we had to carry a Volkswagen into a high school, we couldn’t do it. We’d go a few steps, then we’d drop the Volkswagen and collapse on the ground, gasping and heaving, and that would be the end of our national security. So I figure it’s time to get in shape.
   But jogging is not the way to do it. For one thing, jogging kills your brain cells. The Army has known this for years; it forces recruits to jog every day, on the theory that some of them will lose so many brain cells that they will eventually reenlist. Your really dedicated joggers know it, too; in fact, it’s one of the main reasons they jog. The idea is that if you’re troubled about your job or world affairs, you go out and jog until you’ve killed whatever brain cells are responsible for those thoughts. The problem is that you may also kill the brain cells that remember your name and address, in which case you keep right on jogging, sometimes for days. This is what has happened to the people you see jogging along major highways, the ones with vacant expressions on their faces: they left home as nuclear physicists, heart surgeons, corporation presidents, and so on, but after a few hours most of them have library paste for brains.
   Remember Jimmy Carter? Every day at the White House he used to wake up at the crack of dawn, develop some brilliant plan to save the economy, then head out for his morning jog. His aides would find him stumbling around hours later, sweaty and confused, his economic plan gone forever. Jimmy might have stood a chance in the 1980 elections if he had run against another jogger, but instead he faced Ronald Reagan. Ron has his horses jog for him and thus is able to preserve what brain cells he has, although I suspect his horses are fairly stupid.
   My other objection to jogging is that even if you manage to jog yourself into shape, you still don’t look all that great. I mean, look at marathon runners: they appear gaunt and desperately hungry, like refugees wearing numbers. They’re always snatching scraps of food from spectators and stuffing them (the scraps of food) into their mouths. If you were to toss, say, a side of raw beef into their path, they’d all dive for it, teeth bared, and that would be the end of the marathon.
   So I have rejected jogging as a way to get in shape. In fact, I was about to give up altogether when I discovered body-building magazines. Body-building magazines are published for people, mostly male, whose idea of being in shape is to have muscles the size of lawn tractors. You’ve probably seen these magazines: they’re full of pictures of people who have smeared Vaseline all over their bodies and are wearing bathing suits no larger than a child’s watchband; they are trying to smile in a relaxed manner but end up with more of an intense grin, because they have enormous muscles lunging out from all over their bodies, and Lord only knows how many bizarre chemical substances coursing through their veins.
   These people obviously do not jog—I doubt they ever leave their gymnasiums, for fear their muscles will lunge out and kill innocent bystanders—but they are obviously in terrific shape. At least they look as if they’re in terrific shape, which is the important thing. If Jimmy Carter had spent his time body-building instead of jogging, he would be president today. His aides would have carried him into the presidential debates and propped him up against his lectern, and when it was time for him to make his opening statement, he would have just stood there, Vaseline shimmering on his muscles, grinning intensely at the audience. Who would have dared to vote against him?
   So I’ve been reading body-building magazines, hoping to pick up some tips on getting in shape. The idea seems to be to lift a lot of heavy objects until you get dense. Density is much sought-after in the body-building world. For example, Muscle Digest magazine, in its October issue, refers to one promising body builder as “one of the most dense body-builders in senior level competition.” Evidently this is considered high praise.
   So I plan to lift heavy objects, starting with my typewriter and working up to a 1962 Volkswagen, until I get fairly dense, after which I intend to smear Vaseline on my body and maybe run for president.

A Cold Cure? Who Nose?

   I say we give the medical community two more weeks to cure the common cold, and, if it doesn’t, we turn the problem over to a more competent outfit, like the Sony Corporation. Sometimes I wonder what the medical community is thinking. We give it buddles of money to buy office furniture and white coats and other medical devices, and all it seems to want to do is invent obscure new operations nobody you know or I know ever needs:
   CHICAGO—A team of surgeons at the Warpfinger Medical Institute here has successfully implanted a tiny electronic device into the right tonsil of a fifteen-year-old boy. “We don’t really know why we did it,” said a spokesman. “We just had this tiny electronic device and this fifteen-year-old boy, so we figured, whY not? Next week we’re going to install the battery.
   Meanwhile, millions of people are out here getting common colds and generally making the world a tackier place to live in. You have two kinds of cold victims: your nose blowers and your snorters. For overall ability to make you want to walk out of restaurants, I’d have to give the edge to the nose blowers. And they are everywhere. Americans think nothing of public nose-blowing. They encourage it in their young. My fourth-grade teacher once spent two hours instructing us on nose-blowing. She never married.
   As far as I can tell, the only groups trying to do anything useful about the common cold are the cold-remedy companies that advertise on TV:
   (The scene opens in a pleasant suburban home. The husband walks in through the front door and speaks to his wife, who is wearing a bathrobe and lying on the floor.)
   HUSBAND: Are you ready to go visit my father at the Home for Sickly Old People?
   WIFE: I don’t think I can, dear. It’s this darn cold. I have a fever of 112
   degrees and I can no longer move anything on the left side of my body.
   HUSBAND: Here, try some Phlegm-B-Gone.
   WIFE: Phlegm-B-Gone?
   HUSBAND: Phlegm-B-Gone.
   (The scene shifts to an impressive office with a big desk. On a shelf behind the desk is a huge collection of books. It is actually the complete Hardy Boys series, but the camera doesn’t get close enough for you to realize this. A medical-looking actor, wearing a white coat, is standing in front of the desk, holding a clipboard.)
   MEDICAL-LOOKING ACTOR: Medical tests show that Phlegm-B-Gone, a collection of medical ingredients, is extremely medical when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care. Get back on your feet with Phlegm-B-Gone.
   (The scene shifts to the Home for Sickly Old People.)
   WIFE: Gosh, that Phlegm-B-Gone, with a collection of medical ingredients, is great! I’m back on my feet again with only a slight limp!
   HUSBAND: I’m beginning to feel a little feverish. How about you, Dad? ... Dad? ... Dad?
   Some people think the way to avoid colds is to eat a lot of vitamin C, something on the order of nine billion pentagrams a day. My wife believes in this approach. She’s always choking down vitamin C pills, which are the size of toaster-ovens. She gets colds anyway. My approach is to drink large quantities of beer. It seems to work. Since I started drinking large quantities of beer, I have not had one cold that I remember clearly.

Male Delivery Room

   NOTE: If you are a little kid, and your parents have not yet told you about sex and where babies come from, do NOT read this column, because it contains a lot of stuff you would kill to find out.
   Things go in and out of fashion. Take water. For years, water was unfashionable, something to wash bird droppings off the car with. Today, water is fashionable, something to be advertised on national television by great men such as Orson Wells. (I use “great” not in the sense of “superior” but in the sense of “Considerably larger than Zanesville, Ohio.”) So today you’ll see people paying $2.50 and more for fancy-looking six-packs of water. Five years ago, these people would have been considered stupid. Today, they are considered fashionable. Stupid, but fashionable.
   Another example is babies. They were out of fashion during the seventies. Young couples were too busy. They’d say: “Should we have a baby? Should we embark on this great human adventure, which brings with it great responsibility, but also great joy and fulfillment? Nah, let’s play tennis.”
   But babies are back in fashion. In the past year or two, many a couple has decided to sacrifice material things for the chance to create a new life, a life capable of love and hate, a life capable of dreams and desires, a life capable of excreting things in large volumes from three or four orifices at the same time.
   But before you decide to have a baby, let me warn you, particularly you males: They have changed the rules.
   When your parents had you, the responsibilities of childbirth were clearly defined:
   THE WOMAN went to the doctor regularly, read a lot about pregnancy, made sure she ate the right foods, kept track of the baby’s growth inside her, bought baby clothes and furniture, told the doctor when contractions began, timed them, made sure she got to the hospital on time, went to the delivery room, went through labor, and had the baby.
   THE MAN smoked Cigarettes.
   This system is obviously fair, and it worked well for years. But somewhere along the line, some sinister granola-oriented group got to the medical community and the women’s magazines and convinced them that the man should become more involved. That’s right, men: they want you right there in the delivery room when it happens. Not only that, they want you to go to classes at which people openly discuss pregnancy.
   I found all this out the hard way.
   Let me assure you that I want to play a responsible role in my wife’S pregnancy. I am willing to pace for hours in the waiting room with the other fathers-to-be and old copies of National Geographic. I am willing to go to classes on how to pace in the waiting room. But at our classes we don’t talk about pacing: we talk about what goes on inside a pregnant person’s body. I don’t want to know what goes on inside a pregnant person’s body. I don’t want to know what goes on inside my own body. I think if the Good Lord had wanted us to know what goes on inside our bodies, He would have given us little windows.
   Another thing we do at our classes is practice breathing. That’s right: breathing. The idea is the man helps the woman breathe steadily and imagine she’s on a beach; this takes her mind off her labor and helps her relax. They haven’t told us men how we’re supposed to relax. I can see it now: my wife will be breathing steadily, imagining she’s on a beach; I will be breathing shallowly, imagining I am lying on the delivery-room floor, because I am lying on the delivery-room floor.
   I could go on: I could tell you about how the women in the class talk about really personal things in hearty, cheerful tones while we males stare intently at various ceiling tiles. But you’ll find out anyway, if you haven’t already.
   At our last class, the leader said we’re going to see a film soon. I just know my wife will have to drive us home afterward.

Tale Of The Tapeworm

   The human body is an amazing machine. Mine is, anyway. For example, I regularly feed my body truly absurd foods, such as Cheez Doodles, and somehow it turns them into useful bodily parts, such as glands. At least I assume it turns them into useful bodily parts; otherwise, there must be a huge wad of Cheez Doodles hidden away in my body somewhere, and eventually it will have to be removed in a major and fairly disgusting operation.
   I learned about the human body in high school biology class, which covered everything except sex. Sex was covered in health class, which mainly involved how many different kinds of venereal disease there are (fourteen million); how high school students get venereal disease (merely by holding hands firmly); and whether it is a good idea for high school students to get venereal disease (no). These days, of course, high school students learn about the more positive aspects of sex, which is why so many of them have vacant smiles.
   In biology, we learned about all the different systems of the body, mainly so we could find out how many things could go wrong with them. My biology teacher would describe, in loving detail, the many diseases we could get, and we students would imagine we were getting them. I went home with a new disease every night.
   I was particularly susceptible to parasitic worms. The teacher was always telling us about these little worms that were trying to get into our bodies, often disguised as pieces of pork, so they could be parasites. We spent several classes on tapeworms, which get into your intestines. When I was writing this column, I decided to brush up on tapeworms (we should all brush up on tapeworms from time to time), so I looked them up in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which says:
   “Tapeworms ... occur worldwide and range in size from about one millimeter (0.04 inch) to more than 15 meters (50 feet) ...”
   Think of that. Assuming you are a person of average height, at this very moment you could contain a worm nearly ten times as long as you are. If you suspect that you do contain a fifty-foot tapeworm, I advise you to feed it raw pork or whatever else it wants. Do not try to get it out, or anger it in any way; we have enough trouble in the world without huge, angry parasitic worms thrashing about.
   If anything besides tapeworms goes wrong with your body, you should get a large quantity of money and go to a doctor. Everybody is always picking on doctors just because they charge high fees and rarely cure anything, but this is unfair. I mean, look at it from the doctors’ point of view: they are healthy, intelligent people who spend years in medical schools, dealing with lots of other healthy, intelligent people; then they have to go out and deal with members of the public, most of whom are sick and have no medical training. As far as doctors are concerned, the worst part about practicing medicine is having to deal with sick, untrained people all the time. Some doctors solve this problem by becoming surgeons, who wear masks and deal only with patients who are unconscious and strapped down. Others become specialists, who issue opinions from motor yachts and never see patients at all.
   But most doctors are stuck in offices, and eventually they have to see actual conscious patients. What is worse, these patients generally insist on trying to explain their medical problems. Doctors hate this. I mean, they didn’t spend all those hours learning such things as where the pyloric valve is located just so they could listen to some idiot patient talk about medicine. So most doctors follow this rule: The patient is always wrong. This is why most doctor-patient conversations go like this:
   PATIENT: I broke my leg.
   DOCTOR: What makes you say that?
   PATIENT: A tree fell on me, and my leg went “snap.” Look, a jagged piece of bone is sticking out of my thigh.
   DOCTOR: The symptom you describe could well be caused by a dysfunction of the endocrinological system.
   PATIENT: But my leg ...
   DOCTOR: I’m going to schedule you for a series of tests at the Mayo Clinic next month, and in the meanwhile, I’ll consult with several specialists by marine radio. I suggest you avoid fatty foods.
   So if you know what’s wrong with you, your best bet is to tell your doctor you think something else is wrong with you. That way you stand some chance of actually getting treated

Injurious To Your Wealth

   I understand “M*A*S*H” is going off the air, which means I will have to get a new doctor. For the past few years, I have been telling my life-insurance agent that my doctor is Alan Alda. My agent needs to know who my doctor is so he can increase my life-insurance coverage, which he does roughly every couple of months. He’ll call me up and say, “Dave, I’ve been reviewing your files, and I really think we need to increase your coverage, now that you have a child.” And I’ll say, “But, Jeff, we had the child two years ago, and we have used that excuse to increase my coverage four times since then.” And he’ll say, “Oh yeah, right. But I still think we ought to increase your coverage, because, ummmm, the cost of living has been going up.” And I’ll say, “It sure has, Jeff, especially the cost of my life-insurance premiums.” And he’ll say, “That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about, Dave. Think how difficult it would be for your wife to pay your life-insurance premiums if God forbid you were dead.”
   This goes on for a half hour or so, until finally I agree to increase my coverage because otherwise I won’t be able to get off the phone and earn enough money to pay my premiums. Then Jeff says, “All I need, Dave, is the name of your doctor.” I don’t know why life-insurance companies always want the name of your doctor. Maybe they use it to check your credit rating. Or maybe they have a master list of really incompetent doctors, doctors whose patients come in with minor ear infections and wind up getting open-heart surgery, and if you have one of these doctors your premiums are adjusted upward. All I know is that Jeff won’t get off the phone until I name a doctor.
   I used to give him the name of the doctor who gave me my physical examinations for my life-insurance application. He was a terrific doctor, because he specialized in insurance examinations, which means he was not the least bit interested in the internal workings of my body. All he was interested in was filling out the insurance application, which is a long list of questions, sort of like the college-entrance examinations, except that the correct answer is always no. If you answer yes, you run the risk that you won’t be allowed to pay the premiums, so the doctor reads the questions very quickly and checks “no” before you get a chance to answer:
   DOCTOR: Have you or any member of your family or anybody you played with as a child ever had any funny tingling sensations?
   YOU: Well, I ...
   DOCTOR (checking “no”): Have you ever sat bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night with a sharp pain in your abdomen and thought it might be appendicitis but couldn’t remember whether your appendix is on the right or the left side so you woke up your spouse and he or she was somewhat irritable?
   YOU: Well, once ...
   DOCTOR (checking “no”): What about endotoxic infections? Salmonella typhosa? Acne? Clostridium botulinum? Semicolons? Ricketts? Tired blood? What is the capital of Idaho?
   YOU: Would you mind repeating ...
   DOCTOR (checking “no”): Okay. Now cough.
   I liked this approach, because I never had to spend more than ten minutes with the insurance doctor, and he never tried to inject any foreign substances into my body. So I always said he was my doctor, until he retired, which is when I switched to Alan Alda.
   I picked Alan Alda because he is a peck of fun. This is because he is in the Korean War, which, as you know if you watch “M*A*S*H,” is a zany, wacky, fun war, so much fun that it has been going for ten years now. I always figured that if I got sick, I could be flown directly to Korea, where Alan Alda would heal me within a half hour and introduce me to one of the several dozen attractive nurses who work in the M*A*S*H unit, and we could all go off and drink martinis and talk about how awful war is and then make lots of hilarious remarks, except for the nurses, who never say anything because their job is to mop Alan Alda’s brow.
   But “M*A*S*H” is going off the air, so I need a new doctor. I’m seriously considering Robert Young, who stunned the medical world a few years back when he discovered that virtually all major psychological disorders can be cured through the regular use of caffeine-free coffee.

Psychiatrist For Rent

   Psychiatry has gotten a lot of attention lately because of the recent court case in which John W. Hinckley, Jr., was charged with being sane. Those of you who do not understand our legal system probably thought Hinckley had been charged with shooting the President and several other people, because that is what he did. But everybody knew he had done it, so the trial would have been fairly short:
   DEFENSE ATORNEY: My Client, John W. Hinckley, Jr. ...
   JURY: Guilty.
   So to put some meat on the trial, the judge decided that the prosecution would have to prove that Hinckley was sane. Apparently, being sane is now a federal offense. As a result, the lawyers pretty much ignored the actual shootings, which everybody had seen on television anyway, and instead spent the bulk of the trial showing the movie Taxi Driver and getting testimony from rented psychiatrists, who explained that Hinckley clearly was or was not insane, depending on which psychiatrist happened to be on the witness stand:
   PROSECUTING ATORNEY: So, Dr. Warble, would you say that the defendant is sane?
   PSYCHIATRIST: Oh yes indeed, very sane. Extremely sane.
   DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I object, your honor. The defense rented this psychiatrist, and he is supposed to say that the defendant is insane.
   PSYCHIATRIST: Oh yeah, that’s right. What I mean is the defendant is insane. Sorry.
   The defense psychiatrists proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hinckley shot the President because he (Hinckley) was in love with Jodie Foster and had watched Taxi Driver many times, so he was acquitted. This makes sense to me. I think we can all agree that anyone who fell in love with Jodie Foster and watched Taxi Driver many times would have no option but to shoot the President. I think Hinckley should be set free, and Congress should pass a law requiring Miss Foster to date him.
   The only flaw in the Hinckley trial is that it left a lot of people with the impression that psychiatrists are just a bunch of bearded voodoo doctors who espouse confusing and wildly contradictory theories that have nothing to do with common sense. This is totally unfair. Many psychiatrists are clean-shaven.
   To understand why psychiatrists behave as they do, you have to understand the history of their profession. In primitive times, people believed that psychiatric disorders were caused by demons who possessed people, and primitive psychiatrists cured them by gouging holes in their skulls so the demons could get out (I am not making this up). Now, of course, we know that this is silly. The modern approach for getting rid of a demon is to have a priest dive out a fourth-floor window, as you know if you saw the fine documentary movie The Exorcist, which I imagine John Hinckley saw thirty-five times.
   The other big cause of psychiatric disorders, besides demons, is your father. The man who discovered that fathers cause virtually all psychiatric problems was Sigmund Freud, who is known as the Father of Modern Psychiatry. Freud also discovered that if a trained analyst probed a patient’s past for several hours a week, week after week, year after year, the analyst could make an enormous amount of money. Of course, the analyst must be very skilled, because otherwise the patient might go off on all kinds of irrelevant tangents unrelated to the father:
   PSYCHIATRisT: And what seems to be the trouble?
   PATIENT: I’ve been having these horrible, splitting headaches.
   PSYCHIATRIST: And when did these headaches begin? Around the time you realized your father was a horrible man?
   PATIENT: No, my father was a wonderful man. My headaches began last week, when I was working under my car and the jack broke and the car fell on my head. I’ve also been bleeding from my ears.
   PSYCHIATRIST: I see. And was your father’s name Jack?
   And so it goes, for a decade or so, until the patient realizes that his head aches because forty-seven years earlier his father wouldn’t buy him an ice cream cone.
   Freud’s approach is based on the fact that the human personality is actually made up of a number of parts: the Ego, the Libretto, the Sense of Humor, and the Tendency to Be Irritable in the Morning. The Libretto is trapped in the subconscious with nothing to read and consequently thinks about sex all the time. This embarrasses the other parts, so they clean up the thoughts before you actually get to think them. For example, let’s say the Libretto thinks about a sexual organ. By the time you get it, the other personality parts have turned it into an aquarium, so that’s what you think you’re thinking about, you nave fool. What this means is that everybody is actually thinking about sex all the time, although this becomes obvious only under intensive psychoanalysis or at office parties.
   Freud’s brilliant pioneering paved the way for new discoveries by future generations of psychiatrists, all of whom disagree with him and each other. We can only regret that Freud did not live to see his theories come to fruition, and maybe watch Taxi Driver a few times.

Oaf Of Hippocrates

   NOTE: Before you read this article about medical care, let me warn you that I am not a doctor. I did, however, study First Aid when I was in the Boy Scouts. We scouts used to meet in the Methodist Church basement and apply tourniquets to each other, and we got really good at it. We once applied a tourniquet to Randy Lape that was so elaborate he couldn’t move any part of his body, and he probably would have lain there until he starved to death if the choir hadn’t shown up for rehearsal.
   I have forgotten my First Aid training, except for one rule: When you encounter an injured person, you’re not supposed to move him. At least I think that’s the rule. Maybe the rule is that you’re not even supposed to touch him. Maybe you’re supposed to run away. Frankly, it’s all a blur in my mind, along with the Morse Code, which is the other thing I learned in Boy Scouts, God only knows why.
   Anyway, I just thought you should be aware of this before you read this article, assuming you still want to.
   You should get a thorough physical examination at least twice a year, unless you have to pay for it personally, in which case you should get one every eight years or whenever you think something is really wrong with you, whichever comes first.
   You can usually tell when something is really wrong with you, because you feel really lousy even when you haven’t been drinking. Sometimes you can cure yourself merely by calling your employer and saying, in a sincere, sick voice, that you won’t be coming into work. If you have faked illnesses in the past, you should subtly let your employer know that you really are sick this time. Retch frequently, and say something like “I’m really sick this time. Really. (Pause here for a retch.) Honestly.”
   If you still feel lousy, you should identify your symptoms and try to figure out exactly what’s causing them. Here are the most popular symptoms:
   Sharp, stabbing pains in the chest or stomach—These are usually caused by being stabbed in the chest or stomach with a sharp object, but it could be something worse. Dull, aching pains in the head—These are usually caused by a headache. Often, you can cure yourself merely by being irritable; if that doesn’t work, you may need aspirin or brain surgery. Vomiting—This is usually caused by eating clams.
   If your symptoms don’t go away, you should call your doctor’s office. Notice I say “doctor’s office,” not “doctor.” Under American Medical Association rules, doctors are not allowed to talk to patients over the telephone, because this would be unethical.
   So when you call the doctor’s office, you will talk to a medical personnel wearing a white outfit, whose job is to make an appointment for you to come in roughly six weeks later. If you are really sick, and you are a regular patient, the medical personnel may agree to talk to the doctor on your behalf, and your doctor may agree to phone the drugstore and order you a little bottle of pills that costs $34.38. But if you are really really sick, too sick to go to the drugstore, too sick to walk, too sick to even move, the doctor may want you to come to his office right away and sit in the waiting room.
   Assuming you can get to the doctor’s office without dying, your first job is to find a good seat, ideally one that is close to the tropical-fish tank and as far as possible from patients with visible fungus. Then you should read an old copy of National Geographic. Doctors like to have National Geographic in their waiting rooms, because it reminds patients that in many primitive countries people are not fortunate enough to have the kind of medical care we have here in the U.S.A. Many patients feel so much better after reading it for a couple of hours that they don’t even need to see the doctor. They just pay their bills and leave.
   But if you still feel sick, the medical personnel will order you to undress and put on a garment that gives your secret bodily parts a high degree of visibility. Then they’ll take some blood out of your arm and make you go into a bathroom and urinate into a glass container. While you’re in there, the medical personnel will hide, giggling, in a closet, so that when you emerge you have to parade around, bodily parts flashing in every direction, looking for somebody to give the container to. None of this has anything to do with curing you. Why on earth would they want your blood and urine? They’ll just throw it away. The point of all this is to determine whether you are really, sincerely sick, sick enough to actually see the doctor.
   If you pass this test, you get to go into a little room and sit on a table covered with cold waxed paper for about forty-five minutes—this is the final test—while the doctor watches you through a secret peephole. If he is satisfied that you qualify, he’ll bustle into the room and prod you with various implements, muttering all the while. The doctor is not allowed to tell you directly what is wrong—again, this would be a breach of ethics—you have to listen closely to his muttering, and interpret it. Here are the standard doctor mutters, translated to laymen’s terms:
   “Uh huh”: This means “Oh my God.” “Ummm”: This means “Good Lord.” “Ah hah”: This means “I vaguely remember seeing a case like this in medical school, but it hadn’t advanced nearly this far.”
   After the doctor has finished prodding you, either he will send you to the hospital, which will give you a battery of extremely humiliating tests designed to weed out people who are not serious about being hospitalized, or he will call the drugstore and order you a small bottle of pills that costs $34.38. If he spent much time in the Boy Scouts, he may also decide to apply a tourniquet.

“Great Baby! Delicious!”

   I have been a father for nearly six months now, so needless to say I know virtually everything there is to know about raising babies. The main thing is discipline. You have to ignore all those bleeding-heart psychological theories about being sensitive to your baby’s many delicate emotional wants. These theories are based on the insane premise that babies have many delicate emotional wants. In fact, babies have only one want, and it is hardly delicate: They want to put everything in the entire world except food into their mouths. As far as babies are concerned, the sole function of the world is to provide objects for them to drool on. If you were to open up a baby—and I am not for a minute suggesting that you should—you would find that 85 to 90 percent of the space reserved for bodily organs is taken up by huge, highly active drool glands. Scientists at a major scientific university recently conducted a study in which they collected, in scientific jars, all the drool that a six-month-old baby produced in one twenty-four-hour period. They were stunned at the result. Many of them had to go home and lie down.
   The greatest threat to your baby is educational toys, which you are required by federal law to buy several dozen of. Educational toys are advertised in baby magazines, which arrive by the thousands in the mail when you have a baby. In a typical ad, a baby is looking thoughtfully (for a baby) at two pieces of plastic. According to the ad, the pieces of plastic are helping the baby “acquire skills of problem-solving.” In fact, the only problem the baby is solving is the problem of how to get both pieces in its mouth. These so-called educational toys are merely encouraging your baby to act stupid.
   This is dangerous. If you let your baby continue to stick things in his or her mouth, he or she will have a hard time in later life. I mean, suppose your child goes to a major Wall Street law firm for a job interview, and ends up putting all the waiting-room magazines and ashtrays in his or her mouth. He or she would make a poor impression, and would end up having to be a bum or work for the government.
   So obviously, your job as a parent is to straighten your baby out. You’ll have to be tough. Here’s how I handle my five-and-a-half-month old son: When he’s lying on a blanket, putting various federally required educational toys in his mouth, I say firmly: “Robert, if you keep putting those educational toys in your mouth, I am not going to give you an allowance this week.” If he doesn’t respond to that, I up the ante. I say: “Robert, besides not giving you any allowance, I am not going to read to you from the famous Greek epic poem the Iliad, usually ascribed to Homer.” So far, Robert has continued to put educational toys in his mouth, but I think he’s getting worried.
   Of course, once you get your baby away from “educational” toys, you’ll have to occupy it with new, more meaningful activities. The best activities are games. Here are some excellent, meaningful baby games designed by a distinguished panel of baby experts:

Oklahoma Baby Chicken Hat

   Grasp your baby firmly and put it on your head like a hat, stomach down. Then stride around the room and cluck like a chicken to the tune of “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” bouncing in time to the music.

Wild Teenage Babies from Outer Space

   Lie on your back and hold your baby over you, facing down; move it slowly up and down, like a flying saucer, making flying-saucer noises and feigning great fear when it appears to be about to land on the planet Earth. (NOTE. Wear protective clothing for the preceding two games.)

Attack of the Baby-Eaters

   Lay the baby on the floor, face up. Announce that you are very hungry, and start nibbling at the baby’s toes, then its hands, and finally, with great gusto, its stomach. Every now and then, yell: “Great baby! Delicious!”
   These games will teach your baby many meaningful lessons, the main one being that the world is full of deranged people.
   The only other major problem you’ll have with your baby is feeding it solid foods. Many kinds of baby food are available, all of them disgusting. Basically, the baby-food industry takes things that no normal human being would ever dream of eating, such as squash, and grinds them into mush and puts them in little jars. Babies, of course, hate baby food; they would much prefer the kinds of things you eat, such as cheeseburgers and beer. If we fed babies normal food, they would be full-grown, productive adults in a matter of weeks. But this would destroy the baby-food industry.
   As I noted earlier, babies do not take solid food through their mouths, which are generally occupied with other objects. Babies absorb solid food through their chins. You can save yourself a lot of frustrating effort if you smear the food directly on your baby’s chin, rather than putting it in the baby’s mouth and forcing the baby to expel it on to its chin, as so many uninformed parents do.