by Barry, Dave
20.Another option is to look at your watch.
21.Carefully scan the horizon, noting landmarks—a river, a hill, a valley, a Motel 6 sign, etc. Use these to create a “mental map” of your current position.
22.Keeping all of this information in mind, calmly, and without panicking, run in a random direction, throwing your hands into the air and shouting, “I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”
23.If you are anywhere in North America, within twenty minutes you will come to a Starbucks.
24.There, you can purchase emergency scones while the staff calls for help.
How to Sail a Sailboat
1.Figure out where you want to go.
2.Whichever way it is, do NOT aim the sailboat in that direction.
3.Aim the sailboat in some other direction.
4.Trust me, this is the way sailboaters do it.
5.They are heavy drinkers.
How to Dress
1.Get hold of the Sunday New York Times.
2.Turn to the Men’s Fashion section and make note of what it says the Modern Man is wearing.
3.Whatever it is, do not wear it.
4.EVER.
5.Exhibit A is “capri pants.”
6.A man should not wear capri pants.
7.This is not a matter of “taste” or “style.” This is a matter of scientific fact.
8.A man who puts on capri pants, no matter how suave and attractive he is otherwise, immediately transforms himself into a Category 5 douche.
9.Yes, there are foreign countries where many men wear capri pants.
10.None of these countries has ever won a war.
11.Yet for decades now, the Times has been trying to get American men to wear capri pants.
12.I don’t know why the Times does this.
13.It just seems to have a men’s capri pants bee in its bonnet.
14.Or perhaps the men’s capri pants industry has obtained photographs of the Times men’s fashion editor in a compromising situation with an underage Shetland pony.
15.But whatever the reason, every six months or so, the Times declares that capri pants are the “Hot New Trend for the Modern Man.”
16.Of course the vast majority of American men are not stupid enough to fall for this.
17.Tragically, however, there are a pathetic, desperately insecure few who do.
18.We call these people New Yorkers.
19.Another example is scarves.
20.There are times when a man should wear a scarf.
21.For example, if he is competing in the Iditarod.
22.But a man should never wear a scarf in warm weather, or indoors.
23.Nevertheless, several years ago—we assume the Times was also behind this—thousands of New York men suddenly started sporting long, flowing scarves everywhere they went, including probably the shower.
24.It was like a mass audition for Lawrence of Arabia.
25.Fortunately, the Scarf Trend ended, although it was followed by the Hipster Ironic Fedora Trend, which was actually worse.
26.As a general rule, do not wear “ironic” clothing unless you wish to make the bold fashion statement: “I’m still living off my parents.”
27.Also, be aware that there is an appropriate time to wear a tank top and that time is not when you are in a restaurant or airport.
28.People do not go to those places in hopes of catching a glimpse of your armpits.
29.Finally, never wear any designer clothing on which the designer logo is taller than the actual designer.
30.I am looking at you, Ralph Lauren.
How to Order a Bottle of Wine in a Restaurant
1.Look at the wine list and tell the waiter which wine you want.
2.When the waiter brings it to you, take a sip.
3.If it’s OK, say it’s OK.
4.Then shut up about the wine.
5.Don’t talk about the wine anymore.
6.Nobody gives a shit how much you know about wine, OK?
7.And, for God’s sake, don’t keep holding your glass up and sloshing the wine around and looking at it as if it’s magical unicorn blood.
8.It’s wine, for God’s sake.
9.In an hour it will be urine, same as Bud Light.
How to Jump-start Your Car When the Battery Is Dead
1.Obtain a working car from somewhere and park it next to your car.
2.Or, if the owner isn’t around, you could just take off in the working car.
3.No, that would be wrong.
4.On both cars, locate the hood, which is a big flat piece of metal in the front with bird poop on it.
5.Open both hoods. There will be a button or lever inside the car on the driver’s side that you need to push or pull, and then a latch somewhere under the front of the hood that you need to reach in and release. So your best bet is to use a crowbar.
6.Locate your car’s battery. It will be a black box partly covered with a whitish-greenish fuzz. This is car leprosy. Do not touch it.
7.Obtain some jumper cables from somewhere.
8.Call 911 and let them know there might be an emergency soon.
9.Do this next part VERY, VERY CAREFULLY OR YOU WILL DIE.
10.Connect one end of the red jumper cable to the positive terminal (also called the ignition or carburetor) on your car’s battery. Then connect the other end of the red cable to an electronic part such as the radio of the opposing car. Repeat this process in the opposite order with the black jumper cable, taking care to reverse the polarity.
11.Try to start your car. If the engine explodes in a giant fireball, something is wrong.
12.Maybe you should have somebody else try to start your car while you go get coffee a minimum of 150 yards away.
13.If by some miracle your car actually starts, do not turn it off ever again.
14.When you drive, be alert for further signs of trouble such as a flickering of your headlights, which is an indication of a problem in your electrical system; or a collision with a building, which is an indication that you forgot to put the hood back down.
How to Ride a Horse
1.Always approach the horse from the southwest at an eighty-degree angle, bearing in mind that the horse hates you, and with good reason, because it knows you intend to sit on it.
2.The horse would like nothing more than to kick you in the head and then poop all over your unconscious body.
3.Establish dominance by making eye contact with the horse. This is not a figure of speech: You should literally press your eyeballs against the horse’s eyeballs. This lets the horse know that you are just as crazy as it is.
4.Mount the horse by firmly grasping the fetlock, inserting your foot deep into the bridle and, with a thrusting motion, raising yourself until your thighs are straddling the horse’s loin quarters.
5.At this point, it is perfectly normal for both of you to be sexually aroused.
6.The way you get the horse to start moving depends on whether you are riding “English” or “Western” style:
English style: Gently flick the reins.
Western style: Discharge your sidearm into the air.
7.Steer the horse by tugging on the reins, which are attached to its mouth. This signals to the horse that you enjoy inflicting pain on it.
8.Note that in English-style riding, a left tug will turn the horse right.
9.Keep riding the horse until you think it is too tired to bite you, then stop it by steering it into a hedge, or, if you’re riding Western style, a saloon.
10.To get off the horse, give the command “Kneel!” If the horse fails to obey, you will have to stay up there until help arrives with a ladder.
11.Western
riders may use their sidearms to signal distress.
How to Perform Emergency First Aid
1.Making a conscious effort not to whimper, evaluate the overall situation. Is anybody actually hurt? If nobody is, you probably do not need to perform emergency first aid, although for legal reasons it does not hurt to slap on a few tourniquets just in case.
2.If there is a victim, determine whether he or she is conscious by singing a few bars of the Barry Manilow classic “Copacabana.” If the victim is conscious, he or she will try to hit you.
3.Keep the victim calm by administering several brisk facial slaps and shouting, “CALM DOWN, DAMMIT! DO YOU WANT TO DIE??”
4.Very Important: Before attempting any treatment, find out whether the victim has insurance or is planning to pay with cash.
5.Determine what specifically is wrong with the victim by looking for medical symptoms such as paleness (which can indicate hominy), dilated pupils, shortness of breath, a knife handle sticking out of the victim’s eye socket or a major limb such as a leg lying detached more than fifteen feet away from the remainder of the victim.
6.Check for fractures by giving all of the victim’s remaining limbs a hearty yank. The victim will let you know which limb is fractured.
7.Whatever the problem appears to be, apply direct pressure. Everybody agrees on this.
8.Also remember the “ABC” rule of first aid:
A
Bone
Coming out through the skin is very bad.
9.If the victim appears to be woozy or “out of it,” you will need to perform immediate brain surgery. Every second counts, so do not wait for the paramedics. Using a sterilized surgical saw or clean sharpish rock, carefully cut around the circumference of the victim’s head just above the ear line and lift it off the top of the skull to expose the brain. When you see what the problem is, apply direct pressure to it.
10.If the victim is feeling bloated, use a six-foot length of bamboo to administer a field enema.
11.To induce vomiting, force the victim to watch an episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
12.Often you can lure a tapeworm out of the victim by placing tapeworm treats* on the ground in the vicinity of the victim’s butt, then loudly making statements such as, “We’ll just leave these treats here unguarded!”
13.If the victim is choking, the most likely cause is either something blocking the victim’s airway, or an alien creature about to burst out from the victim’s chest. Whatever you do, do not let it get into the escape shuttle.
14.When the ambulance arrives, ask the paramedics if you can operate the siren.
15.Be sure to apply direct pressure.
So I read Fifty Shades of Grey. This is the book written by female British author “E. L. James” that became a huge bestseller, devoured by pretty much every woman on Earth except my wife (or so she claims).
I think I might be the only man who read this book. I did it sneakily, hiding the cover, especially when I was on an airplane, which actually is a good place to read this book because you have access to a barf bag. I say this because of the writing style, which is . . . OK, here’s one tiny sample of the writing style:
“Did you give him our address?”
“No, but stalking is one of his specialties,” I muse matter-of-factly.
Kate’s brow knits further.
That’s right: This is the kind of a book where, instead of saying things, characters muse them, and they are somehow able to muse them matter-of-factly. And these matter-of-fact musings cause other characters’ brows—which of course were already knitted—to knit still further. The book is over five hundred pages long and the whole thing is written like that. If Jane Austen (another bestselling female British author) came back to life and read this book, she would kill herself.
So why did I read it? I read it because, as a man with decades of experience in the field of not knowing what the hell women are thinking, I was hoping this book would give me some answers. Because a lot of women LOVED this book. And they didn’t just read it; they responded to it by developing erotic feelings—feelings so powerful that in some cases they wanted to have sex with their own husbands.
I know that sounds like crazy talk, but I have firsthand confirmation of this phenomenon from my friend Ron, who is married to my wife’s cousin Sonia, a woman. Ron states: “While Sonia was reading the book, I was getting more action than Wilt Chamberlain.”
Another friend of mine whose name I will keep confidential out of respect for his privacy* told me, “I’d be lying on the bed watching SportsCenter, and she’d be reading that book and suddenly, WHOA.”
So what kind of book is Fifty Shades of Grey? I would describe it, literary-genre-wise, as “a porno book.” But it’s not the kind of porno men are accustomed to. When a man reads porno, he does not want to get bogged down in a bunch of unimportant details about the characters, such as who they are or what they think. A man wants to get right to the porno:
Chapter One
Bart Pronghammer walked into the hotel room and knitted his brow at the sight of a naked woman with breasts like regulation volleyballs.
“Let’s have sex,” she mused matter-of-factly.
A few paragraphs later they’re all done, and the male reader, having invested maybe ninety seconds of his time, can put the book down and go back to watching SportsCenter.
Apparently that is not what women want, porno-wise. What women want, to judge from Fifty Shades of Grey, is not just people doing It. Many pages go by in this book without any of It getting done, although there is a great deal of thinking and talking about It. The thoughts are provided by the narrator and main character, Anastasia Steele, who is a twenty-one-year-old American woman as well as such a clueless, self-absorbed ninny that you, the reader, find yourself wishing that you still smoked so you would have a cigarette lighter handy and thus could set fire to certain pages, especially the ones where Anastasia is telling you about her “inner goddess.” This is a hyperactive imaginary being—I keep picturing Tinker Bell—who reacts in a variety of ways to the many dramatic developments in Anastasia’s life, as we see in these actual quotes:
“My inner goddess is swaying and writhing to some primal carnal rhythm.”
“My very small inner goddess sways in a gentle victorious samba.”
“My inner goddess is doing the Dance of Seven Veils.”
“My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves.”
“My inner goddess has stopped dancing and is staring, too, mouth open and drooling slightly.”
“My inner goddess jumps up and down, with cheerleading pom-poms, shouting ‘Yes’ at me.”
“My inner goddess is doing backflips in a routine worthy of a Russian Olympic gymnast.”
“My inner goddess pole-vaults over the fifteen-foot bar.”
“My inner goddess fist-pumps the air above her chaise longue.”
That’s right: Her inner goddess, in addition to dancing, cheerleading, pole-vaulting, etc., apparently keeps furniture inside Anastasia’s head. Unfortunately, this means there is little room left for Anastasia’s brain, which, to judge from her thought process, is about the size of a walnut. On the other hand, Anastasia is physically very attractive, although she never seems to figure this out despite the fact that all the other characters keep telling her, over and over, how darned attractive she is.
As the book begins, Anastasia has somehow managed to complete four years of college, during which time she has had—despite being so physically attractive—no romantic involvement of any kind with anybody. In fact, she’s still a virgin. Also, she does not own a computer nor does she know how to operate one. She has no e-mail account, and seems to be only dimly aware of how the Internet works. At one point she says, quote: “Holy cow! I’m on Google!”
That’s right, Anastasia uses the expression
“Holy cow!” Also, when she gets upset (which is often) she says: “Crap!” When she gets really upset, she says: “Double crap!”
In short, Anastasia is a totally believable and realistic depiction of a normal twenty-one-year-old female American college student as she might be imagined by a middle-aged female British author who has lived her entire life in a cave on another planet.
So anyway, early in the book Anastasia meets the main male character, Christian Grey. He is average-looking.
Hah! I am of course joking. He is the handsomest man in the history of men. Lest we forget this crucial fact, Anastasia remarks on Christian’s handsomeness at least once every two pages. Her inner goddess repeatedly shits her tiny imaginary leotard over the hotness of this man.
To add to the stark realism of his character, Christian is also, at age twenty-seven, a self-made billionaire. He started a company called, realistically, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc., which employs thousands of people engaged in the field of doing some kind of vague business things in accordance with businessy-sounding orders given by Christian over his mobile phone as he stands around in various stylish settings with his worn but stylish jeans hanging loosely off his hips looking unbelievably hot. Christian also is an expert dancer, piano player and glider pilot. Plus he has the ability to read minds and move so fast you can’t even see him.
No, sorry, that’s Edward from Twilight.
So anyway, Anastasia and Christian meet, and he is of course attracted to her, although because of her walnut brain she can’t believe this despite the fact that, as I have already noted, every freaking person she meets is attracted to her. Christian starts stalking her and pressuring her to engage in—and I do not mean this to sound in any way judgmental—sicko pervert sex. He wants to tie her up with ropes, handcuffs, shackles, tape, etc. He wants to blindfold and gag her. He wants to spank her, whip her, flog her, cane her, paddle her, put nipple and genital clamps on her, bite her and use hot wax on her. We know this because he asks her to sign a contract agreeing to let him do these things to her. Yes! To be fair, the contract clearly states that there will be “no acts involving fire play . . . urination or defecation and the products thereof” and “no acts involving children or animals.” Because that’s the kind of old-fashioned cornball romantic Christian is.