dave barry.

stay fit and healthy until you’re dead

foreword

inspirational opening anecdote explaining the author’s lifelong personal

commitment to health and fitness

thirty-one years ago, when i was a mere boy of seven, my mother fell very, very sick. she
called me to her side and, in a voice weakened by pain, said, “bob, whatever happens to me, i want
you to remember that ...
“david,” i corrected. “my name is david.”
“i know that, you little snot,” she said. “i’m your mother.”
i have always remembered those words, despite the fact that my mother recovered completely
and is fine today.
hi, mom.

introduction

four reasons why you must get fit immediately

1. you owe it to your country. you can bet that the enemies of your country are fit. people in
communist nations are on a strict fitness program of waiting in line a lot and darting their eyes
about nervously. we, too, must be fit, in case these communists invade us. we must be ready to fight
them in the streets and the alleys. the problem is that many of you have eaten so many enormous
economy size bags of corn chips and so much bean dip that you probably couldn’t fit into the alleys
without the aid of powerful hydraulic devices. so you’d have to fight them in the streets, where
you’d be easy prey for their blimp-seeking missiles.
2. you owe it to your career. in the old days, your successful business executive was generally
a spectacular tub of lard who had to be transported from business deal to business deal via private
railroad car. but today’s top executives are lean, sleek, and fit. they eat nutritionally balanced meals,
run ten miles every day, play tennis and racquetball, and work out regularly on nautilus
machines. consequently, they have no time whatsoever for their work. many of them don’t even
know where their offices are. this is why the entire u.s. economy is now manufactured in japan.
3. you owe it to your self-esteem. there is no feeling in the world quite as wonderful as the
feeling of being physically fit, except the feeling of eating pepperoni pizza. no! wait! disregard that
last remark! what i’m trying to say is, when you become fit, everything about you changes. you
have to buy new pants, for example. and you develop a whole new attitude about yourself. instead
of constantly thinking, “i am pasty and flabby and disgusting and nobody likes me,” you think,
“people like me now, but only as long as i can keep from becoming pasty and flabby and disgusting
again. i wish i had a pepperoni pizza.”
4. you owe it to your future. there’s nothing like regular, vigorous exercise to prepare you for
the pain you’ll inevitably have to endure when you get older. let’s say you’re in your mid-20s to
mid-30s. most of the time you feel pretty good, right? the only time you feel lousy is when you
ingest huge quantities of alcohol and wake up the next day in an unfamiliar city naked with
unexplained chest wounds. but as you grow older, you’re going to start feeling more aches and
pains caused by the inevitable afflictions of age, such as the social security administration,
condescending denture adhesive commercials, and your children.
people who exercise regularly are prepared for this pain. take joggers: you see them plodding
along, clearly hating every minute of it, and you think, “what’s the point?” but years from now,
when you’re struggling to adjust to the pains of the aging process, the joggers, who have been in
constant agony for 20 years, will be able to make the transition smoothly, unless they’re already
dead (see chapter 12, under “fitness and the afterlife”).

how insects stay fit

we can learn a great deal about fitness from observing insects. you have probably noticed, for
example, that most ants are in excellent shape. you almost never see a fat ant. what makes this
especially interesting is that ants are always lugging around disgusting junk food, such as discarded
cracker jacks many times the ants’ own size.
so how do ants stay so fit? the answer is surprisingly simple: they have no mouths. and this is
a good thing, really, because it means they can’t scream when you spray them with raid, although
they do their best to writhe around in a piteous manner.
so anyway, what we have, in the ant, is a creature that engages in strenuous physical exercise
all day long and never eats any thing. this is nature’s way to fitness, and we should emulate it if we
wish to have the kind of taut, firm bodies that make ants the envy of the insect kingdom. of course,
we must always weigh this against the fact that they have a life span of maybe six weeks and are
subject to attack by vicious beetles.

so the bottom line is ...

... now is the time to start that fitness program! fitness is more than just another new “craze,”
like flavored popcorn or parenthood. fitness is a philosophy of life, a revolutionary new concept in
personhood, and, ultimately, a way for people like me to become wealthy via the sales of
fitness-related items such as this book.
but people like me can do only so much. we can take your money. after that, it’s up to you. if
you don’t follow the diet and exercise program outlined in this book, it won’t do you a bit of
good. even if you do follow it, it may not do you any good. nobody really knows what will
happen. you’ll be the first person who ever actually tried this particular program. i meant to try it
myself, before the book got published, but i had to buy snow tires. so maybe it would be a good
idea to have a friend try it first, as a sort of test, and watch to see whether he actually does become
fit, or starts lapsing into lengthy comas or something.
well, that’s enough of a pep talk. let’s square our shoulders and take that first step toward
becoming a fitter you. those of you who are unable to simultaneously square your shoulders and
take a step may do them one at a time.

how fit are you?

the first step in your new fitness program is to take the three simple tests below so we can find
out how fit you are right now. be sure to write down the results as you go along, so the police will
be able to figure out what happened.
1. body fat test
you’ll need:
a swimming pool
a dozen concrete blocks
some stout rope
a knife
a primitive denizen of some remote fungal island in the south pacific
directions: fat tends to make you float, so the idea here is to determine how many concrete
blocks have to be lashed to your body to make you stay on the bottom of the pool for at least a
minute without bobbing to the surface. have your denizen perch by the side of the pool with the
knife clenched in his teeth so he can dive down to cut you loose after the minute elapses.
 (caution: some of your more primitive denizens have no understanding whatsoever of time, so
their concept of a minute may in fact be closer to what we in western civilization think of as a
fortnight. also, whatever you do, don’t give your denizen one of those swiss army knives with all
the various confusing attachments. you don’t want him swimming down there and sawing at your
rope with the spoon.)
how to score: count the number of blocks required to keep you submerged. more than eight is
very bad.
2. heart test
you’ll need:
a friend
a job at an office building with elevators
a scorpion
directions: give the scorpion to your friend, and instruct him or her to wait a couple of weeks,
until you’ve completely forgotten about it, then sneak up behind you at work and hurl it into the
elevator with you just as the doors close. what we’re looking to determine here is whether your
heart is strong enough to handle the rigors of an exercise program.
how to score: give yourself a 5 if your heart continues to beat unassisted. if you score any
lower than that, you probably shouldn’t do this particular test.
3. aerobics test
you’ll need:
a stopwatch
gerald ford
directions: the word “aerobics” comes from two greek words: aero, meaning “ability to,” and
bics, meaning “withstand tremendous boredom.” this is the difference between a world-class
marathon runner and a normal person: a world-class marathon runner has undergone sufficient
aerobic conditioning that he can run for nearly three hours without falling asleep, whereas a normal
person will quit after a few minutes and look for something interesting to do.
what you want to do in this test is start your stopwatch, then see how long you can listen to
gerald ford discuss the federal deficit before you doze off. if gerald ford is unavailable, you can use
televised golf.
how to score: 15 seconds is excellent. more than 30 seconds indicates some kind of brain
damage.

calculating your final “fitness quotient”

divide your age by the number of blocks it took to hold you on the bottom of the pool, then
add the number of seconds it took for gerald ford to sedate you multiplied by your scorpion score,
unless you are claiming two or more exemptions. this will give you your “fitness quotient”; store it
wherever you keep the instructions for operating your various digital watches.

important medical note

before you begin any fitness program, you should, of course, have your doctor give you a
thorough physical examination in which he shoves cold steel implements into your various bodily
orifices and sticks needles directly into your skin and makes you put on a flimsy garment apparently
made from a cocktail napkin and parade through the waiting room carrying a transparent container
filled with your own urine past several people you hope to someday ask for jobs. or, if you’d prefer
not to undergo this procedure, you may simply send your doctor some money.

chapter 1. how your body works

 your body is like a superbly engineered luxury automobile: if you use it wisely an maintain it
properly, it will eventually break down, most likely in a bad neighborhood. to understand why this
is, let’s take a look inside this fascinating “machine” we call the human body.
your body is actually made up of billions and billions of tiny cells, called “cells,” which are so
small that you cannot see them. neither can i. the only people who can see them are white-coated
geeks called “biologists.” these are the people who wrote your high-school biology textbooks, in
which they claimed to have found all these organs inside the frog, the worm, and the
perch. remember? and remember how, in biology lab, you were supposed to take an actual dead
frog apart and locate the heart, the liver, etc., as depicted in the elaborate color diagrams in the
textbook?
of course, when you cut it open, all you ever found was frog glop, because that is what frogs
contain, as has been proven in countless experiments performed by small boys with sticks. so you
did what biology students have always done: you pretended you were finding all these organs in
there, and you copied the diagram out of the book, knowing full well that in real life a frog would
have no use whatsoever for a liver.
anyway, biologists tell us that the human body consists of billions of these tiny cells, which
combine to form organs such as the heart, the kidney, the eyeball, the funny bone, the clavichord,
the pustule, and the hernia, which in turn combine to form the body, which in turn combines with
other bodies to form the squadron. now let’s take a closer look at the various fitness-related organs
and see if we can’t think of things to say about them.

the skin

your skin performs several vital functions. for example, it keeps people from seeing the inside
of your body, which is repulsive, and it prevents your organs from falling out onto the ground;
where careless pedestrians might step on them. also, without skin, your body would have no place
to form large facial zits on the morning before your wedding.
but for fitness-oriented persons like yourself, the important thing about skin is that it acts as
your body’s cooling system. whenever you exercise or get on an elevator, sweat oozes out of
millions of tiny skin holes so it can evaporate and cool the area. unfortunately, virtually all of these
holes are located in your armpits, which is stupid. i mean, you hardly ever hear people complaining
about having hot armpits. so what we seem to have here is one of those cases where mother nature
really screwed up, like when she developed the concept of nasal hair.

the muscle system

your muscles are what enable you to perform all of your basic movements, such as bowling,
sniping, pandering, carping, and contacting your attorney. basically, there are two kinds of muscle
tissue: the kind that people in advertisements for fitness centers have, which forms units that look
like sleek and powerful pythons writhing just beneath the surface of the skin, and the kind you have,
which looks more like deceased baby rabbits.
the beauty of muscle tissue, however, is that it responds to exercise. in a later chapter, we’ll
talk about how, using modern exercise equipment, such as the nautilus machine, in a scientific
workout program, you can stretch those pudgy little muscle tissues of yours to the point where you
won’t even be able to scream for help without the aid of powerful painkilling drugs.

the skeletal system

how many bones do you think your skeletal system has? would you say 50?
150? 250? 300? more than 300?
if you guessed 50, you’re a real jerk. i would say it’s around 250, but i don’t really see why
it’s all that important. the only important part of your skeleton, for fitness purposes, is your knees.
 knees are god’s way of telling mankind that he doesn’t want us to do anything really
strenuous. when we do, our knees punish us by becoming injured, as you know if you’ve ever
watched professional football on television:
announcer: the handoff goes to burger; he’s tackled at the six. ... uh oh! he’s hurt!
color commentator: looks like a knee injury, bob, from the way that bone there is sticking out
of his knee.
announcer: burger’s teammates are bending over him. ... uh oh! now they’re down on the
field!
color commentator: looks like they’ve all injured their knees, too, bob.
announcer: here comes the team physician, who is. ... uh oh! now he’s down on the ...
so one of the things we’re going to stress in our fitness program is knee safety. we’re going to
get you so aware of this important topic that you won’t even discuss racquetball over the telephone
without first putting on knee braces the size of industrial turbines.

the digestive system

your digestive system is your body’s fun house, whereby food goes on a long, dark, scary
ride, taking all kinds of unexpected twists and turns, being attacked by vicious secretions along the
way, and not knowing until the last minute whether it will be turned into a useful body part or
ejected into the dark hole by mister sphincter. you must be careful about what you eat, unless you
want your body making heart valves out of things like bean dip.

the central nervous system

the central nervous system is your body’s messenger, always letting your brain know what’s
going on elsewhere in your body. “your nose itches!” it tells your brain. or, “your foot is falling
asleep!!” or, “you’re hungry!!!” all day long, your brain hears messages like these, thousands of
them, hour after hour, until finally it deliberately rests your hand on a red-hot stove just for the
pleasure of hearing your nervous system scream in pain.

your respiratory system

your respiratory system takes in oxygen and gives off carbon monoxide, a deadly gas, by a
process called “photosynthesis.” this takes place in your lungs, yam-shaped organs in your chest
containing millions of tiny little air sacs, called “bernice.” in a normal person, these sacs are healthy
and pink, whereas in smokers they have the wretched, soot-stained, anguished look of the people
fleeing atlanta in gone with the wind. this has led many noted medical researchers to conclude that
smoking is unhealthy, but we must weigh this against the fact that most of the people in cigarette
advertisements are generally horse-riding, helicopter-flying hunks of major-league manhood,
whereas your noted medical researchers tend to be pasty little wimps of the variety that you
routinely held upside down over the toilet in junior high school.

the circulatory system

this is, of course, your heart, a fist-sized muscle in your chest with a two-inch-thick layer of
greasy fat clinging to it consisting of every milky way you ever ate. your heart’s job is to pump your
blood, which appears to be nothing more than a red liquid but which, according to biologists (this
should come as no surprise), is actually teeming with millions of organisms, some of them with
tentacles so they can teem more efficiently.
the only organisms that actually belong in your blood are the red cells and the white cells. the
red cells are your body’s room service, carrying tiny particles of food and oxygen to the other
organs, which snork them up without so much as a “thank you.” the only reward the red cells get is
iron in the form of prunes, which the other cells don’t want anyway. if you don’t eat enough prunes,
your red cells get tired–a condition doctors call “tired blood”–and you have to lie down and watch
“all my children.”
the white cells are your body’s house detectives. most of the time they lounge around the
bloodstream, telling jokes and forming the occasional cyst. but they swing into action the instant
your body is invaded by one of the many enemy organisms that can get into your bloodstream, these
being bacteria, viruses, rotifers, conifers, parameciums, cholesterol, tiny little lockjaw germs that
dwell on the ends of all sharp objects, antacids, riboflavin, and the plague. as soon as the white cells
spot one of these, they drop whatever they’re doing and pursue it on a wild and often hilarious
chase through your various organs, which sometimes results in damage to innocent tissue.
eventually they catch the invader and tie its tentacles behind its back with antibodies, which are the
body’s handcuffs, and deport it via the bowel.
of course this is just a brief rundown on your various organs and systems; in the short space i
have here, it’s very difficult for me to explain all of your body’s complexities and subtleties in any
detail, or even get any facts right. for more information, i suggest you attend harvard medical
school, which i believe is in wisconsin.
meanwhile, let’s turn the page and really get started on our fitness program! or at least limber
up.

chapter 2. getting ready to get started

one of the most exciting aspects of getting into fitness is that you get to wear modern
fitness-oriented clothing, clothing that makes a statement to the world around you. “look,” it states,
“i have purchased some fitness-oriented clothing.”
up until about 15 years ago, the only fitness clothing available for men was the plain grey
sweat suit, which we fitness experts now recognize as totally inadequate in terms of retail
markup. fitness wear for females consisted of those high-school gym outfits colored digestive
enzyme green; there was no fitness clothing available at all for adult women, because the only
forms of exercise deemed appropriate for them were labor and driving station wagons.
as the fitness craze developed, however, all kinds of “active sportswear” became available
from famous designers who think nothing of putting their names on your clothing, but who would
have the servants set the dogs on you if you ever tried to put your name on their clothing. today it’s
not uncommon for people to wear their active sportswear to the shopping mall, to work, to the
opera, to state funerals, etc. recently, an attorney argued a major case before the u.s. supreme court
while wearing a puce jogging outfit! the justices didn’t seem to mind at all, although this could also
have been partly because they had fallen asleep.
the point is, you want to choose your fitness-program clothing carefully because chances are
you’ll be wearing it to do much more than just exercise. in fact, you’ll probably be wearing it to do
everything but exercise, since there is growing medical evidence that exercise can make you tired
and sweaty, as we’ll see in later chapters.

the basic fitness fashion look for women

this is, of course, the leotard and tights, which is the preferred outfit because it shows every
bodily flaw a woman has, no matter how minute, so that a woman who, disguised in her street
clothes, looks like victoria principal will, when she puts on her leotard, transform herself into bertha
the amazing land whale. this encourages her to exercise vigorously and watch what she eats. she
cannot, of course, drink anything, as there is no way to go to the bathroom in a leotard and tights.
many a woman who suffers an exercise-related injury during an aerobic workout is forced to
lie in great pain for hours on her exercise mat, trapped, while frustrated rescue personnel wait for
the helicopter to bring the various specialized torches, saws, and other equipment they need to free
her from her tights and leotard so they can render medical treatment.
extremely important advice concerning danskin brand thermal calf protection devices
several years ago, a crack team of medical fashion experts determined that cold air tends to
form pockets around the calves of fashionable, fitness-oriented women. this breakthrough discovery
explained the sudden upsurge in calf-related hospitalizations that occurred at the onset of the fitness
craze and soon reached epidemic proportions. as one nationally reknowned physician, whose name
is available upon request, put it, “never in my 600 years of practicing medicine had i seen so many
deaths directly attributable to calf coldness. if only we had known then the importance of wearing
danskin brand thermal calf protection devices!”
so the bottom line is: do not view these devices as just another semiretarded fashion
trend. view them as essential medical protection, every bit as important as lip gloss.

fitness fashion for men

what you want, men, is a fashion look that gives you freedom of movement but at the same
time displays, in large letters, the names of at least three major manufacturers of sporting
equipment. also you want to wear a headband and wristbands to absorb the tremendous outpouring
of sweat that we males emit when we are engaged in strenuous masculine physical activity. (if you
are one of those unfortunate males who does not emit tremendous outpourings of sweat, you should
purchase, from the nike corporation, a container of “pro-spiration” spray-on sweat droplets, which
you apply discreetly in the locker room before you begin your workout.)
ideally, of course, you will also sport some evidence of a semicrippling football injury. the
best kind is a medical knee contraption of such enormous size and complexity that your racquetball
opponent will feel like absolute pond scum if he hits the ball anywhere other than directly to you. or
you might want to look into a new product from the adidas corporation called “the all-scars,” which
are large, realistic, and extremely repulsive synthetic removable knee scars patterned after those
belonging to famous battered sports legends such as joe namath.

fitness with computers

can you use a personal home computer in your fitness program? you bet! computers are
incredibly versatile machines that can do everything from screw up your airplane reservation to
cause an income tax blunder that gets you sentenced to a life term in a slimy walled federal prison
so utterly desolate that the inmates pay rodents for sex! so they’re a “natural” for the fitness
movement!
one obvious way to use a computer, of course, is to record your daily fitness statistics such as
weight, height, age, etc., on it, using a felt-tipped marker. but the best way to really unleash the
power of a computer is to lift it up and set it down repeatedly, thus building muscle mass and
definition. as you become stronger, you can gradually add weight, in the form of “disk drives,” until
eventually you move up to a heavier computer–and perhaps someday even reach the point where
you can hoist what computer bodybuilding enthusiasts call a “mainframe” computer!
for the average person who does not have a background in data processing, i generally
recommend starting out with a 35-pound computer. unfortunately, computer weights are measured
not in pounds, but in “k’s” (as in 512k), which stands for “kilograms.” there is a way to convert
kilograms to pounds, but it is almost always fatal, so i recommend, as a wise consumer tip, that you
go through your entire planned computer-lifting routine right at the store with several reputable
computers, checking each for heft, balance, and tendency to break into 600,000 tiny pieces when
you lift it over your head and drop it, before you actually purchase anything.
of course, some of you, and here i am talking about the technically oriented ones, the ones
with a thin layer of mechanical pencil dust on your clothing–in a word, the geeks–may even want to
plug your computer directly into the wall, thus allowing electricity to flow through it. in this case,
you’ll also need to purchase a “program,” or “software,” which comes on a “floppy disk,” an object
the size of a 45 rpm record such as “shake, rattle and roll,” which we used to dance to at “record
hops” back when dwight “ike” eisenhower was president.
fortunately for you and the entire fitness movement in general, i have developed a special
piece of fitness-oriented software called the “dave barry total diskette workout program.” the way it
works is, you put it in the computer, which asks you to type in your name. then you type in your
name, and the computer forgets it immediately because the truth is that the computer really doesn’t
give a damn what your name is. it was just trying to be polite.
next, the computer holds an interactive fitness dialogue with you, wherein it elicits certain
facts from you regarding your specific fitness situation, then it evaluates the facts and reports its
findings, as follows:
computer: enter the last time you engaged in a workout.
you: (enter the last time you engaged in a workout, such as “just before thanksgiving” or
“world war ii.”)
computer (thinks for a minute, and proceeds): sounds to me like you’ve done all the working
out you need to do for the forseeable future. all working out makes jack a dull boy! ha ha! please
enter a list of the foods you would like to eat today.
you: (enter a list consisting of no more than 100 foods which you would like to eat on that
particular day.)
computer: i don’t see any problem with the foods you have listed. have a nice day.
that’s all there is to it! in less than five minutes, you have accomplished, using a computer, a
data-processing feat that would take 60,000 trained mathematicians 1.3 billion years to accomplish,
and even longer if you let them go to the bathroom! and you will be pleased to learn that this
program will also do your income taxes (“yes! you can deduct that! i’m sure of it!”).

choosing the right place to get fit

basically you have two options: your living room, or a fitness club. the advantage of getting
fit in your living room is that it’s free and you can scratch yourself openly. the disadvantage is that
your living room is where you keep your little dish of m&ms for guests, which means you’ll
actually gain roughly a pound of ugly fat for each week of your home fitness program.
so you should probably join a fitness club such as you see advertised in the newspapers by
photographs of attractive models wearing leotards fashioned from a maximum of eight leotard
molecules. before you join such a club, you should take a tour conducted by one of the fit and
muscular staff persons. this person will show you the various rooms and pieces of equipment, then
hold your head under the whirlpool until you agree to buy a membership.
here’s a useful checklist of the features a good fitness club should have:
a powerful odor of disinfectant various species of hairs in the sinks signs all over the place
reminding you that the management is not responsible a loudspeaker system playing soothing
musical numbers as performed by the dentist’s office singers a door that says “weight room” that
you never venture through because large sweating men go in there and emit noises like oxen with
severe intestinal disorders two women in the sauna who are always there, no matter what hour of
the day or night, talking loudly about growths in their pelvic regions

saunas

the word “sauna” is finnish for “very hot little room with strangers in it breathing funny,” and
people who’ve tried it agree that it’s a very invigorating experience, provided you get out in time. if
the door sticks or anything, you have about as much chance of survival as the unfortunate corals
who happened to be residing on that reef where we detonated the original hydrogen bomb, because
the usual temperature inside a sauna is 180 degrees, which you may recognize as the recommended
final temperature for cooked turkeys, very few of which live to tell about it.
this high temperature is, of course, very good for you because your body contains traces of
toxic minerals such as lead, which get in there when you get drunk and eat paint, and the heat helps
you sweat them out. really, i’m not making this up. here’s a direct quote from shape magazine, an
authoritative journal:
“sweating is now a significant route for eliminating trace elements from the body.”
so that’s the good news. the bad news, of course, is that these trace elements have to go
somewhere, presumably onto the sauna seat, which means if you use a spa sauna, you’re lounging
around on a lot of other people’s trace elements.
so what i recommend is that you build your own sauna at home, which is a lot easier than you
might think. all you need is a few simple hand tools. (no! i’m not going to tell you which ones! i’m
sick of making all the decisions!)
using your hand tools, construct a handcrafted little wooden room that has a bench inside it
and a sign on the door that says “warning! remove all clothing and jewelry and dental fillings and
pacemakers!” now all you need is a way to raise the internal temperature to 180 degrees. you could
always set fire to the sauna, of course, but then you’d have to handcraft a new one every time you
wanted to use it, which would leave you with very little time in which to eliminate your
elements. so i suggest that you take the more practical route, which is to plug in 40 toasters set to
“medium brown.” they’ll give you all the heat you need, plus you’ll get a healthy aerobic workout
clambering around in there trying to keep all the little levers pushed down. keep the number of the
burn unit handy.
okay! now you’ve bought your fitness outfits, you’ve found a place to do your workout, and
you’ve built your own sauna. the only remaining question is ...

when to actually start your fitness program

not today, certainly. you’ve done enough today! i would rule tomorrow out, also, seeing as
how it comes so soon after today. you rush into these things, and the next thing you know, you’ve
strained a ligament or something. so i would say the best time to begin would be first thing after
easter, although not the one coming up.

chapter 3. women’s total complete aerobic fitness workout

warming up

to understand the importance of warming up, let’s take a look inside a typical human
muscle. as we can see, it’s very dark inside a typical human muscle. this means that most of the time
the individual muscle cells are fast asleep. the purpose of your warm-up routine is to allow these
cells to wake up gradually–to stretch, to scratch, to go to the bathroom, etc. if you just start jerking
them around, they’re going to be very cranky, and they may develop a condition that professional
medical doctors call a “charley horse,” which is usually fatal.
warm-up number one:
clearing your mind of worrisome thoughts
you can’t loosen up effectively if you’re worried about nuclear war, or the likelihood that
somebody might steal your wallet while you’re doing your exercise routine. so your initial warm-up
step should be to lie down on your back with your knees bent and your feet planted 17 inches apart,
then, with your left hand overlapping your right, clasp your wallet to your chest, raise your head to
an angle of about 36 degrees fahrenheit, and watch “happy days” or a similar television situation
comedy rerun where they never talk about the likelihood of nuclear war. hold this position until
about a minute and a half before your neck develops a “crick,” which is usually fatal.
warm-up number two:
letting your muscles know
you’re about to start moving
 lie facedown on your wallet with your legs together and your arms away from your body at an
angle of about 7 degrees, then have a friend or hired servant place his or her face about an inch from
your various major muscle groupings and say, in a pleasant, musical voice, “everybody up! time to
start warming up for a fitness workout!” then have your friend listen closely to your muscle
groupings for the sound of good-natured cellular grumbling. if necessary, he or she should prod
them very gently with the eraser of a number 2 pencil, such as you used on your college boards.
warm-up number three:
putting a tape of loud rock ‘n’ roll-type
work-out music on a ghetto blaster-type
stereophonic listening device
one thing you have probably wondered about for many years is why musicians who sing rock
‘n’ roll tend to be extremely thin, if not actually dead, whereas those who sing, say, opera, tend to be
humongous wads of cellulite. the reason for this phenomenon, scientists now believe, is that fat
cells are actually destroyed by stupid lyrics. in one recent experiment, scientists at the university of
iowa reduced a live 450-pound hog to an object the size of a harmonica in less than six hours by
repeatedly playing the chorus to “shake your groove thing” at it. other songs with proven
fat-reduction lyrics that you’ll want to have on your workout tape are:
“my baby does the hanky panky”
“yummy yummy yummy i’ve got love in my tummy”
the verse of “we wish you a merry christmas” that refers to “figgy pudding”
everything barry manilow ever wrote
“ballad of the green berets”
“da doo ron ron”
“my way”
to put your tape on your ghetto blaster, lie on your back with your legs about 14 inches apart
and your wallet clamped in your left armpit, raise your right arm gradually until you can insert the
workout tape into the ghetto blaster device, press the “play” button, then gradually return your arm
to the floor and just lie there for a while, spent.

the actual workout

all warmed up? great! let’s start getting fit! do each of the exercises below twice on the first
day, 4 times the second day, 8 times the third day, and so on, each day doubling the previous day’s
number until, after just two weeks, you’re doing each exercise over 1,000 times! and hemorrhaging
internally!
so let’s get started!
exercise number one:
leg heft
lie on your back, legs slightly spread, arms resting on the floor, palms down. have an
accomplice grasp you by your ankles and lift your legs about 18 inches then attempt to guess their
combined weight.
exercise number two:
thigh grasp
lie on your stomach with your face resting on a new york times “fall fashion supplement”
opened to a photograph of a model who consumes fewer calories in an entire year than you do at a
single wedding reception. slowly reach your hands down and grasp yourself by the left thigh, then
the right, and then close your eyes and moan quietly in despair for a count of about eight seconds.
exercise number three:
sincere announcement of intention
to change dietary habits
you and a partner stand facing each other about three feet apart, legs comfortably spread,
knees slightly bent, eating from individual one-pound bags of wise brand potato chips. you say,
“first thing tomorrow i swear to god i am definitely going to go on a diet, i really mean it.” your
partner responds, “yes, me too. i definitely will go on a diet also. i believe there is a vat of lipton
brand california-style onion dip in the refrigerator.” then you exchange places and repeat the
exercise.
exercise number four:
breast development
originally, i was going to use this space to describe an amazing new scientific discovery
exercise that enables any woman to develop, within minutes, two large, firm breasts such as are
regularly featured on television star loni anderson. but then i said to myself, “hey, isn’t it time that
we, as a liberated society, got over this juvenile and demeaning fixation with breasts?” so i have
decided to omit this particular amazing, risk-free, 100
percent effective exercise, although of course if you wish to obtain a copy for the purpose of
scientific research, i’d be happy to send it to you just for the asking, plus $29.95 for postage and
handling. if you act right now, i’ll also send several grainy before-and-after photographs of women
who used to look like olive oyl but now, thanks to this amazing breast exercise discovery, cannot
walk erect unless preceded by native bearers.

cooling down

as we discussed in chapter 1, when you exercise, your muscle cells take in molecules of
oxygen and give off molecules of sweat, which work their way to your armpits. for your
cooling-down phase, lie on your back with your arms laced behind your head and your elbows on
the floor, thus exposing a maximum of armpit area and allowing the sweat molecules to escape into
the atmosphere as harmless bo vapors. this would be an excellent time to start worrying about
nuclear war again.

chapter 4. running

an important safety note about running

in this chapter, i can give you only a cursory overview of running, which is without question
the most difficult and complex form of exercise, as is evidenced by the fact that it is the subject of
numerous lengthy books costing upward of $14.95. unfortunately, many members of the general
public still labor under the dangerous misconception that running is simply a matter of getting out
and running. so before you attempt to do any actual running, i strongly urge you to read a minimum
of several books on the subject and to take lessons from a trained running instructor. i also cannot
overemphasize the importance of spending large sums of money.

what kind of person should take up running, and what will happen to this
person’s knees

running is the ideal form of exercise for people who sincerely wish to become middle-class
urban professionals. whereas the lower classes don’t run except when their kerosene heaters
explode, today’s upwardly mobile urban professionals feel that running keeps them in the peak form
they must be in if they are to handle the responsibilities of their chosen urban professions, which
include reading things, signing things, talking on the telephone, and in cases of extreme upward
mobility, going to lunch.
that’s why at the end of the working day, when the lower classes have passed out facedown in
the cheez whiz, you can drive down the streets of any middle-class neighborhood in america and
see dozens of professionals out running with determined facial grimaces, burning off calories,
improving the efficiency of their cardiovascular systems, increasing their muscle flexibility, and
ultimately staggering off into the bushes to die. even as you read these words, thousands of
designer-sportswear-clad bodies are rotting in the bushes of suburban america, and the only reason
you don’t hear more about it is that the next of kin generally don’t report the disappearances,
because they are quite frankly pleased that they no longer have to listen to the runner blather on and
on about his or her cardiovascular development.
of course, not all runners die in the bushes. many fail to make it that far, because of knee
injuries. to understand why, let’s look at the interior of the human knee.
what we can learn from this is that, although from the outside your knee feels like a croquet
ball inserted in the middle of your leg, it is in fact a complex organ consisting of bone, muscle,
thong, and mucilage, bounded on the west by spain. the knee provides adequate support for
everyday activities, such as renewing magazine subscriptions or gesturing at cretins in traffic, but it
is not designed to withstand the strain placed on it by running, where each time the runner’s foot
hits the pavement, the knee is subjected to 650,000 kilocycles of torque, and even more if the runner
has been dropped from a helicopter. this is why it is so very important to choose the right running
shoe.

choosing the right running shoe

time was, of course, when there were no running shoes, only “sneakers,” which were bulky
objects that cost $12 and said “u.s. keds” on the side and had essentially the same size, weight, and
styling characteristics as snow tires. but today’s topflight running shoe is a triumph of sophisticated,
computer-designed, laser-augmented, fully integrated, infrared, user-friendly technology and
space-age materials, packed with dozens of medically proven health and safety features, and all
combined into a small and lightweight unit that, surprisingly, costs no more than a black-market
infant.

choosing the left running shoe

most running experts and bankers recommend that you wait until you’ve completely paid for
the right running shoe, including insurance, before you plunge in and buy the left. when you do, i
urge you to shop around for a shoe that is as similar as possible to the other one, except in so far as
which foot it goes on. this is assuming that you intend to wear both shoes simultaneously.

what to wear on the rest of your body

you should, of course, wear a specially designed $200 running garment made from a synthetic
material that has a name like the leader of a hostile reptilian alien invasion force in a space movie,
such as “gore-tex.” the beauty of these materials is that they actually “breathe.” really. at night, if
you listen very carefully to your closet, you’ll hear your garment in there, breathing and
occasionally chuckling softly at some synthetic joke it heard from your dress slacks.

where to run

one good place to run is in the olympic marathon, because (a) you have to do it only once
every four years, and (b) you have an armed motorcycle escort, so if people try to thrust liquids and
fruits at you, which is a common problem in marathons, you can order your escort to fire a few
warning rounds into their chests. the big drawback with running in the marathon, however, is that
you have to consort with a bunch of sunken-eyed running wimps, some of whom are not even
united states citizens.
this is why many people prefer to run, unescorted, on the streets of their own
neighborhoods. the big problem here is dogs, which will view you as an intruder and may attack
you, especially if they can smell fear on your body. this is why the wise runner carries a small spray
can of a chemical originally designed for use by mail carriers. if a dog attacks, you simply spray this
chemical into your nose, and within seconds you don’t feel any fear of any damn dog. be careful
that you don’t stare directly into the sun.

chapter 5. popular sports

mankind’s need to compete in sports goes back to that fateful prehistoric day, hundreds of
thousands of years ago, when a primitive man first picked up a club and a primitive ball fashioned
from animal hide, tossed the ball aloft, then whomped the club into the sloping forehead of a
primitive umpire. since then, there has never been a civilization that did not engage in sports.
archeologists digging in what was once ancient sumeria recently found the remains of a primitive
stone jockstrap. this goes a long way toward explaining why you see so few sumerians around.
in ancient greece, the olympic games were considered so important that when it was time to
hold them, the greeks would lay down their arms and invite their enemies to do the same. then the
greeks would snatch up their arms again, whack their enemies into pieces the size of candy corn,
and celebrate by having the olympic games.
back then, of course, the only events were running naked, jumping naked, throwing things
naked, and ice dancing. today, we have hundreds of sports to choose from. in this chapter we’re
going to look at some of the more popular modern sports, so you can choose the ones you wish to
incorporate into your overall fitness program. as i have stressed repeatedly throughout this book,
before you embark upon any new form of physical activity, you should notify your doctor’s
answering service.

ski jumping

ski jumping as a form of exercise has grown immensely in popularity in recent years,
especially among people who, because of knee problems, cannot jog. this exciting sport got its start
as a symptom of mental illness in northern climes such as norway and sweden, where it is cold and
dark and there is very little to do except pay taxes. life is depressing in these countries. watch any
movie by the famous swedish director ingmar bergman, and you’ll notice that all that ever happens
in the entire two hours is depressed people sit around talking swedish, which sounds like fats
domino records being played backward, only a little too slow. this is what life in sweden is actually
like, except that it often lasts longer than two hours. after a while, the strain gets to people, and they
suddenly leap up, barge out, don skis, and launch themselves off giant chutes.
americans did very little ski jumping until the television program “wide world of sports”
began showing a promotional film snippet in which a ski jumper hurtles off the edge of the chute,
completely out of control, with various important organs flying out of his body (for a discussion of
the various important organs and their functions, see chapter 1). fitness buffs saw this and realized
that any activity with such great potential for being fatal must be very good for you, so the sport
began to catch on. today, most major hotels offer ski jumping facilities for the convenience of
business travelers. also, thanks to a new, innovative portable device, you can even engage in
“simulated” ski jumping indoors! so there’s really no excuse not to get into this popular sport,
except a will to live.

peewee football

although most people think of peewee football as a “kid’s game,” more and more
fitness-oriented urban professionals with a love of physical contact and a sincere desire to lie about
their ages have discovered that there’s no better way to get rid of frustrations than to lean down,
take a handoff (by force, if necessary) from a 48-pound quarterback, and plow through an entire
team of 8-year-old boys on the way to a 97-yard touchdown run. not only is it fun, but nutritionists
(never mind which ones) tell us that the average 40-year-old male burns off ten extra calories for
each child clinging to his ankles!
one word of caution here: if any other urban professionals have discovered your particular
peewee football league, you want to make sure they play on your team. this is also a good practice
to follow with any unusually large eight-year-old boys.

racquetball

this is a popular sport wherein you and another person go into a white room, close the door,
and attempt to injure each other in the eye. originally, this was done by whacking a ball against a
wall in such a way that it would bounce back and strike the other person, but your highly
competitive modern player tends to ignore the ball and lunge straight for his opponent. this is why
you first should determine the playing style of your potential opponent and then decide whether you
need a “traditional” or a “competitive” racquet.

professional ice hockey

professional ice hockey is an ideal way for the entire family to keep fit. there’s something for
everyone: the kids will love participating in a loose, freewheeling sport where everybody makes the
play-offs and the only activity that is specifically prohibited is selling narcotics to your opponents
on the ice; dad will appreciate the fact that he’s improving his cardiovascular efficiency while at the
same time fleeing large vicious toothless stick-wielding men whose frontal lobes have been battered
into prune-sized masses of scar tissue; and mom will be pleased to learn that many of the players
come from canada, so she’ll have a chance to “brush up” on such french phrases as arretez vous! je
suis une femme! cest ma balle d’oeil! (“stop! i am a woman! that is my eyeball!”)

golf

although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight protestants, today it’s open to
anybody who owns hideous clothing. the basic idea is to stand on top of a hummock, squinting into
the distance, wager, then saunter over to another hummock, and so on until it’s time to drink. that
may not sound like much exercise to you, but in fact every one of these activities except drinking
consumes calories, as shown by this scientific chart.
golf activity calories consumed
ascending hummock 2.04959
squinting 0.00035
wagering 0.00102
descending hummock 1.84958
sauntering to next hummock 4.02013
saying things like “you certainly did bogey that par-six eagle nine-iron wedge, ted! ha ha!”
0.00076
tipping wiry youth who carries equipment 0.00007
thus we see that in the course of a typical “round” of golf, lasting just four hours, you could
burn off enough calories that you could then go out and eat the better part of a slice of wonder bread
with only a minor weight gain.

swimming

swimming is one of the best forms of exercise, provided you remember to follow these simple
safety rules:
1. never swim in a lake or river. these contain snapping turtles, which have no natural enemies
and therefore grow to the size of motel units, plus they tend to be irritable because they mate for
life. lakes also contain giant lake-dwelling carp, which will watch you from the loomy depths with
their buggy eyes, wondering with their tiny carp brains whether you would fit into their mouths.
2. never swim in the ocean. the ocean contains creatures that make the giant lake-dwelling
carp look like bambi.
3. never swim in a swimming pool. people pee in swimming pools. oh, i know you don’t pee
in swimming pools, and i certainly don’t, but somebody does, which promotes the growth of
bacteria, which is why swimming pool owners are always dumping in toxic chemicals, to the point
where there is virtually no actual water in the pool, just toxic chemicals and dead bacteria and old
pee. this is why, as you may have noticed, the actual owner never gets into the pool. he’s always off
pretending he has to do something important involving the filter.

pig lifting

this is probably the quintessential fitness activity for today’s upscale young urban
professional, who more often than not will forsake the old-fashioned “three-martini lunch” in favor
of going to his posh downtown club, sometimes with an important client, for a hard 45 minutes of
pig lifting, followed by a soothing hose-down. more than one major business deal has been forged
this way, and the cry “anyone want to hoist some pork?” is likely to echo down the corridors of
power for many years to come.

fitness for the business traveler

anyone who travels a lot on business will tell you that it isn’t easy: eating at a different
restaurant every night, having the maid leave little chocolate mints on your pillow, ordering a
late-night hors d’oeuvre platter from room service while you watch in-room movies such as nubile
olympic gymnasts visit the petting zoo, and all the other little hassles and inconveniences that go
with life “on the road.” but for the businessperson who’s into physical fitness, there’s yet another
problem: finding a way to work out. here are some suggestions.
without question, the best way to work out in your hotel room is to turn on the television at
the crack of dawn and watch one of the morning workout shows featuring the obscenely cheerful
leotard women. believe me, there’s no more invigorating way to start the day than to lie in a
darkened hotel room and listen to these women leap around and shout encouragement at you until
you work up the energy to hurl your hors d’oeuvre tray at the tv screen and order room service to
send up several orders of pancakes immediately.

center-city jogging

although a few forward-looking hotels now offer a service whereby a staff person from a
third-world nation will do your running for you while you are in meetings, in most cases you must
still attend to this tiresome chore yourself. this isn’t so bad if your hotel is located in, say, nebraska,
where the only danger you face on the street is that you might trip over a pig. but it can be a real
problem if you’re in a large urban area such as new york city, where the vast majority of the people
on the street are drug addicts, pickpockets, muggers, rapists, murderers, or partners in advertising
agencies.
this doesn’t mean you can’t run: it means you must take steps to protect yourself. a gun will
do you no good. it would just be stolen. no, what you need is a safety device i designed especially to
solve this problem–the urban runner’s simulated gaping chest wound, which operates on the proven
scientific principle that no urban resident will go anywhere near a person who is clearly in desperate
need of help.
with your simulated gaping chest wound strapped on, you can jog anywhere you want in new
york city, and you’ll attract no more attention than the apparently deceased persons sprawled on the
sidewalks, or the random street lunatics holding lengthy debates with individual oxygen atoms. for
extra privacy, you can purchase the optional 3,500 simulated maggots eating your body accessory.
these devices, incidentally, are part of an entire dave barry line of traveling executive fitness
products, which also includes the heavy briefcase. this appears from the outside to be a normal
leather briefcase, but hidden inside is a 350-pound weight!
(there’s also a roomy compartment capable of holding your cigarette, or part of your
pen.) executives who regularly carry the heavy briefcase report a dramatic improvement in arm
length.
the in-flight workout device is a portable device that, when folded up, fits inside a handy
steamer trunk that can be carried on board a commercial aircraft, provided you purchase two
adjacent first-class seats for it, yet unfolds after takeoff to form a complete “airborne
gymnasium.” it features a sophisticated electronic digital computer “brain” that not only monitors
your pulse rate, but also has a new and improved electronic circuitry design which we sincerely
believe and hope will correct the unfortunate problem whereby it was somehow seizing control of
the automatic pilot and steering planes into various mountains, which is, of course, a violation of
federal regulations.

chapter 6. bodybuilding
most of us males, at one time or another, have felt like joe, the scrawny little wimp in the old
charles atlas advertisement who was humiliated in front of his girlfriend on the beach when the
muscular bully kicked sand in his face. as you’ll recall, joe sent away for the charles atlas
bodybuilding course, then came back to the beach with large, bulging, rippling muscles. when the
bully returned, he was extremely impressed and suggested that joe should also apply oil to his body
so that it would have a satiny gleam, and perhaps shave his armpits. before long, they were very
close friends and often helped each other select posing outfits.
you may feel that this is the kind of story that “only happens in comic books,” but in fact it
can happen to you, too–provided you have the discipline, drive, endurance, and just plain
old-fashioned guts required to procure the necessary steroids.
ha ha! just a little fitness humor there. you don’t need to ingest pharmaceutical substances to
develop a major body; you simply have to follow the simple-to-follow instructions in this
chapter. but first, let’s answer some commonly asked questions about bodybuilding.
q. i’m a man. how large should i let my muscles get?
a. this depends on the size of your head. see, your body has only a certain number
(21,796,349,582) of cells. each of these cells can be either part of your body or part of your
head. this means if you make your body bigger, your head has to get smaller. so you should cease
your muscle development as soon as you start noticing the warning signs of severe head reduction,
such as:
buying lawn ornaments
having trouble following the plot on “dukes of hazzard”
answering to the name “vinnie”
if you already meet any of these criteria, you probably shouldn’t do any bodybuilding at
all. of course, if you already meet any of these criteria, you’re probably still trying to figure out how
to get this book open.
q. can a woman such as myself engage in bodybuilding?
a. of course! although experts have discovered that a woman can never achieve the large
muscle mass and definition of a mister universe, she can still, with patience, dedication, and hard
work, make herself look grotesque. or she can simply have large, realistic depictions of centipedes
tattooed on her face.
q. once i become huge and muscular, will i still be able to operate a telephone?
a. push-button, or rotary dial?
q. push-button.
 a. probably.
now that we’ve answered your commonly asked questions, let’s take stock of your current
body. take off all your clothes and stand in front of a mirror, and let’s make an objective,
professional, scientific assessment. go ahead! don’t be shy! we can’t help you if we can’t see what
we’re working with!
(pause)
so! that’s your body, eh? hahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! excuse me. i’m not (choke, gasp) laughing at
you, really. i just, ummmmm, i just thought of something funny somebody said to me in
1967. anyway, looking at your body, i would hahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahaha! excuse me. i would say that you hahahahahahahahahahahaha! whew! put your
clothes back on, okay?
using this scientific assessment of your current bodily needs as a guide, let’s look at the
various kinds of bodybuilding equipment.

weights: a stupid idea

forget about weights. for one thing, they’re very heavy, and for another thing, they wreck your
body. look at what they do to your big-time weight lifters, who have turned into 400-pound hairy
sweaty shapeless grunting masses of tissue. and the men are even worse. no, you want to take the
new, high-tech, scientific route to a better body, with nautilus equipment.

how nautilus equipment works

originally designed as a way to keep professional football players from having sex before a
game, nautilus equipment has become an extremely popular bodybuilding aid that not only is costly
but also takes up a lot of room. this is because it’s actually a series of machines, each specifically
designed to develop one of the major muscle groupings (the abductors, the transponders, the
trapezoids, the isobars, the quatrains, the bivalves, the social democrats, and the gerunds). the idea
is that you work a grouping until it can no longer respond to signals from your brain, then you move
on to the next machine, and so on until you’ve worked all your muscle groupings, at which time you
signal the attendant, by blinking in a prearranged code, that you wish to be bathed.
i can’t go into great detail here about how the various nautilus machines work, because it
would soon become obvious that i don’t know.

the trouble with nautilus equipment

the trouble with nautilus equipment is that to use it, you have to join either a spa or a
professional football team, which means you’re going to spend a lot of time enveloped in other
people’s bodily aromas. so what would be ideal, if only such a thing were possible, would be if
somebody would develop a totally new amazing scientific affordable bodybuilding device that you
could use in your own home.

announcing a totally new amazing scientific affordable bodybuilding device

that you can use in your own home

i am very pleased to be able to announce at this time a major breakthrough in the field of
home body devices: the dave barry total person workout device. i’d tell you how good it is, but i’d
be violating numerous federal statutes, plus i think you’ll be even more convinced by these actual
testimonials from imaginary satisfied customers:
“your total person workout device has completely changed my life! for example, i can no
longer discern colors!”–a.b., detroit, michigan
 “i was being constantly hassled by vicious youths in my urban neighborhood. i sent away for
your device, and within a week they had stolen it!”–c.d., toledo, ohio
“what have you done with my wife!”–l.m.n.o.p., eau claire, wisconsin
what’s the cause of all this excitement? it’s a device that actually costs less than a new home
yet yields results.
both models come in an attractive designer cardboard box telling you which end is supposed
to be up and whether or not you should drop it (no). the price is just $799 for the basic model and
$1,099 for the really nice model, the main difference being that we check the really nice model for
vermin. of course, if you are in any way the least bit dissatisfied with your device, you simply have
to write an angry letter to the employees at your state bureau of helping the consumer, who
probably won’t be there because they get just about every other day off for cretin holidays like arbor
day.

chapter 7. nutrition

why you should watch what you eat

in your great-great-grandfather’s day, nobody had to worry about proper nutrition, because
people lived on farms and ate wholesome, natural foods. whenever they needed meat, they just went
out and whacked off a sector of the family cow. when they needed bread, they just cut down some
wheat, then they threshed it, then they took the grain and started grinding it up, then they said, “nah,
the hell with it; let’s just eat sector of cow tonight.”
today, unfortunately, most cows are grown by giant multinational corporations, who feed them
harmful preservatives day and night for the express purpose of killing innocent consumers. many
cows are so full of toxic chemicals that they explode right in the pasture, leaving behind only
billowing clouds of greenish fumes, which cause acid rain. you have the same kind of problems
with white bread and refined sugar, both of which, if eaten, cause death within hours. this is why it’s
so important in today’s world that you watch what you eat, at least until you get it inside your
mouth. after that, it gets pretty disgusting.

how your digestive system works

your digestive system’s job is to turn food into useful body parts. to save itself a lot of
aggravation, your digestive system has a policy whereby it turns a given food into the body part
most similar to it. thus hard-boiled eggs become eyeballs, cauliflower becomes brains, mixed
vegetables become the pancreas, polish sausages become male sexual organs, candy canes become
bone, little yellow-covered marshmallow easter chickens become pus, beer becomes urine, and so
on. if you eat a kind of food that does not resemble any known body part, such as a pink good ‘n’
plenty, your body turns it into fat.

eating a “balanced diet”

to make sure your digestive system gets the “raw materials” it needs, at every meal you
should eat at least 1 food from each of the 15 basic food families: fruits, vegetables, meats, fishes,
loaves, hors d’oeuvres, canned goods, jellies, snacks, shakes, additives, eels, those little wax bottles
filled with colorful sugar water, pez, and spam.

what you can learn from reading the labels on foods

virtually nothing. i mean, if the product contains some dangerous chemical, you don’t think
the label writer, who has a mortgage and kids with braces just the same as you do, is going to risk
his job by saying so, do you? of course not. this is why all labels are written in label jargon, such as
“this product contains not less than 0.02 percent of rehydroxylated glutonium or abstract of
debentured soybean genitalia, whichever comes first.” the more of this kind of jargon you see, the
more likely it is that the label writer has something to hide.
so what i recommend is, instead of trying to understand the words on the label, you simply
figure out the average number of syllables per word. if the average is two or below, the product is
probably safe to eat in small quantities. if the average is three or four, you’re probably dealing with
a product that causes grave concern in laboratory rats. if the average is five or more, you should set
the container down very carefully and flee the vicinity on foot.

about vitamins

vitamins are little pills named a, b, c, d, e, and k that the government recommends you have
certain amounts of. these recommendations are based on the requirements of the minimum daily
adult, a truly pathetic individual that the government keeps in this special facility in washington,
d.c., where he is fed things with names like “riboflavin.”
physicians generally pooh-pooh the value of vitamins, but this is because you can get vitamins
into your body without the aid of physicians. if the only way it could be done was for a team of
eight surgeons to implant a special $263,000 trapdoor in your head, physicians would say vitamins
were the best thing since luxury german automobiles.
the truth is that vitamins are very good for you, and each morning you should take a vitamin a
pill, followed by a vitamin d, followed by an e, until you have spelled the healthful mnemonic
phrase “a dead cad baked a bad cake, ace.” this will probably be plenty of vitamins for you, but be
alert for the four major warning signs of vitamin deficiency, which are:
nosebleeds
a sudden fondness for wayne newton
unusually thick coats on woolly caterpillars
death
if you notice any of these signs, you should add the phrase “a beaked dad bedded a
bead-bedecked babe.”

vitamins in food

foods contain vitamins. your mother told you this. she also told you that the vitamins are
always in the most repulsive part of the food. if you were eating a potato, for example, she’d say,
“be sure to eat the skin, that’s where the vitamins are.” they learn this in mother school. so with any
given food, you should always eat the skin or, if it doesn’t have a skin, the rind, the core, or the
pit. if it doesn’t have any of these, you should eat the wrapper.

minerals in food

foods also contain minerals such as zinc, iron, magnesium, steel, and aluminum. at least,
that’s what i’m supposed to tell you. i personally think the whole idea that there is metal in food,
especially blatantly soft food such as twinkies, is absurd. the only idea more absurd is the deranged
notion that eating metal is somehow good for you. if god had wanted us to eat metal, he would have
given us much better teeth. thank you.

what about fiber?

fiber is definitely the number one hot trend in the world of natural health, threatening to break
all the old records set by “ph balance.” remember, back in the 70s, when every product you bought–
food, shampoo, tires–was advertised as being ph balanced, even though nobody ever knew what the
hell it meant? well, it’s like that with fiber today, and so naturally i recommend you eat all the
fiber-rich foods you can shove down your throat. these would be mainly your cotton candy and your
slim jims.

a thoughtful philosophical discussion of vegetarianism

this is a touchy subject for me to discuss without having the vaguest idea of what i’m talking
about, but here goes. many people feel it is wrong to eat animals, on the grounds that animals have
souls. i would have to say, although i certainly have nothing but the deepest respect for this position,
that this is pretty stupid. i mean, i don’t want to offend any religious group, especially if it is armed,
but i frankly don’t see how anyone can say that all animals have souls. obviously, some animals do:
lassie clearly did, and probably so did trigger. if anybody ever tries to eat lassie, i’ll be the first one
to attempt a citizen’s arrest.
but nobody’s going to look me square in the eye and claim that, for example, toads have
souls. i am not saying that it’s okay to eat toads, of course, unless the alternative is starvation, or
what they serve you under the heading of “snack” on commercial airliners. i’m just saying we have
to draw the line somewhere.
i, personally, follow what i call a “modified vegetarianism” system, under which it is okay to
eat meat provided that it has been disguised so you can’t tell what kind of creature it came from. a
perfect example is hamburger. there is no way to tell, just by looking at a hamburger, where it
originated.
we believe it is from cows, because we are told this by burly cleaver-wielding men in chicago
with bloodstained garments, but we would not have come to this conclusion independently. so under
my system, hamburger is fine.
lobster, on the other hand, is out. there is no way you could not know you were eating a
lobster. when you walk into a restaurant, often the first thing you see is a large tank containing
lobsters wearing handcuffs and trying to scuttle behind each other so you won’t pick them. if you
order a lobster, you don’t get to use the kind of euphemisms you use with cows, such as “beef” or
“steak”: you say, “i’ll have a lobster,” and when they bring it to you, you just get this naked lobster,
and you’re supposed to eat it. i think this is wrong, and i imagine it goes without saying that i also
feel very strongly about blatant organs, such as tongue.

chapter 8. dieting and weight control

do you weigh the proper amount?

to answer that question, locate yourself on the medical chart provided here. chances are the
chart shows that you’re above your proper weight. the reason is that you eat too many foods that are
high in “calories,” which are little units that measure how good a particular food tastes. fudge, for
example, has a great many calories, whereas celery, which is not really a food at all but a member of
the plywood family, provided by mother nature so that mankind would have a way to get onion dip
into his mouth at parties, has none.
age female small average big male small average big 18-25 e f a b c d 26-31 f a b c d e 32-39
a b c d e f 40-50 b c d e f a over 50 c d e f a b dead d e f a b c
a–you could definitely stand to lose weight. b–no question about it, you have a weight
problem. c–based on your weight, you should get on a diet. d–it would certainly not hurt you to lose
some weight. e–you are carrying too much weight for your body type. f–you must make more of an
effort to control your weight.

the simple, basic, obvious truth about losing weight

 obviously, the only sane way to lose weight, and to keep it off, is to ... hey! who are you
guys?!! wait a minute!! you can’t just barge in here and ...
so as i was saying, the only sane way to lose weight is to get yourself on, and then stick to, a
regular, planned, conscientious program of purchasing newly published diet books. here are some
that i especially recommend:

the handsome sincere random doctor medical diet poop yourself thin the
elvis presley memorial diet the total tapeworm diet how to lose weight in the
coming depression shed unwanted ounces the orson welles way the dead
preppy cat microcomputer diet book the all-goat-products diet the frequent
casual motel sex diet the amazing mother theresa weight loss plan

all of these books are very excellent, and there are thousands more that are just as good, many
of them offering such proven and time-tested features as consecutively numbered pages.
perhaps the best diet book is dessert makes you fat , by ernst viewfinder, who has several
credits toward his associate’s degree in motel food administration from southwest buford county
community college (“where the leaders of tomorrow are frowning at blackboards today, visa and
mastercard accepted”). his theory is that people get fat because they eat too many desserts, so he has
developed a diet designed to encourage you to skip the dessert. here is a typical day’s menu:
breakfast
froot loops eclairs with side orders of bacon
dessert: one slice whole wheat toast
lunch
snickers fries any number of cheeseburgers
dessert: cottage cheese
dinner
dixie cup filled with sugar melted turkish taffy soup big lumps of chocolate with fudge sauce
dessert: that really pathetic lettuce that looks like lichen, festooned with clearly visible insect
eggs (no dressing)
i personally tried this diet for several weeks, and i found that not only was i able to skip many
desserts, but i didn’t need to sleep at all, although near the end they tried to make me.

common questions often asked about losing weight

q. do i actually have to read my diet books?

a. no. there is no medical evidence that reading leads to weight loss. simply keep the books in
a prominent location in your home, and occasionally press them against your thighs and buttocks.
q. is there any kind of operation i can have that will help me lose weight?
a. there are quite a few such operations, but probably the most effective one, with the fewest
negative side effects, is to have an airline pet transporter bonded to your skull with fast-drying
epoxy cement. this encourages you to eat only those foods which will pass through the mesh door,
such as fettuccine and licorice.
q. what about absurd mechanical weight loss devices, such as those motorized belts that were
always shown jiggling the massive hips of pasty middle-aged female character actresses in comedy
movies and television shows up through the 1950s?
a. these devices are extremely effective. the fat just melts away. two of those character
actresses, in fact, went on to become bo derek and victoria principal. this is why you never see those
machines in health clubs any more: the clubs took them out because their members were leaving at
an alarming rate to accept lucrative film contracts. this is a shame, really, because it leaves the
weight-conscious person without any kind of guaranteed, surefire, safe, proven weight loss
device. if only somebody would make such a device available to the general public!
 announcing the dave barry guaranteed, surefire, safe, proven, medically
unusual weight loss device for human beings belonging to the general public

the concept for this truly revolutionary device, which came to me one evening while i was
throwing up on my shoes, is amazingly simple: if you go around with an object that weighs
approximately 350 pounds strapped to your body, you can’t help but lose weight! assuming you
don’t have a serious accident! so i designed this device with you, the consumer, in mind, such that
you can wear it virtually undetected to work, around the home, on the tennis court ... even to
executions, if these are permitted in your state!

what the experts say about the dave barry weight loss device

“yes! okay! it is very good! people should buy it! now please, let us go!”–a team of leading
physicians speaking in unison from inside a concrete structure
“the water used in tokyo, yokohama, kawasaki, and other parts of the metropolitan area is
supplied by aqueduct systems!”–the encyclopaedia britannica volume 18 (taylor-utah)

chapter 9. women’s beauty and grooming

thus far in this book, we’ve concentrated on improving your body. but let’s face it: having a
great body does you no good whatsoever if you have the kind of face where people are always
saying you have a nice personality, meaning you can cause crops to fail just by looking at them.
so in this chapter, we’re going to take a look at some of the things you can do to your face and
hair to give yourself that feeling of inner confidence that says, in the words of the song maria sang
in west side story just before her lover stabbed her brother to death, “i feel pretty.” you’ll see that
you don’t have to have been born with great genes to look beautiful; there are lots of simple little
“beauty secrets” that can turn even a real woofer into an extremely presentable person, although in
your case i would not necessarily rule out plastic surgery.

the first step toward a more beautiful you

the most important step, of course, is to recognize that whatever you’re currently doing is
totally wrong. what you need is a new look, as you know if you read any of the major women’s
beauty magazines. month after month, year after year, they publish the same article, which is
“several dozen new ways to put makeup on your face and style your hair in a lifelong futile effort to
look like the model on the cover.”
the reason the beauty experts keep coming up with new looks is that the old ones are all
repulsive. you look back at your high school yearbook or, heaven help you, your mother’s
yearbook, and you see the looks that were popular years ago, and you wonder how the human race
managed to reproduce. you wonder why men and women didn’t take one look at each other and
sprint in opposite directions until they dropped from exhaustion. someday your children will say the
same thing about the way you look today, which is why we here in the beauty industry are always
pushing back the frontiers of knowledge, coming up with new looks, with no real hope of personal
financial benefit beyond the sale of beauty products that cost more per ounce than all but the finest
narcotics.
sometimes, out of the goodness of our hearts, we beauty experts make guest appearances on
those morning television shows devoted to a wide range of topics that the folks who run television
feel are of interest to women, namely these:
sex problems fashion and beauty tips problems that involve sex tips on beauty and fashion
various sexually involved problems discussions of how you can become more sexually fashionable
and beautiful by means of certain tips pasta
 what the beauty experts generally do on these shows is select a woman from the audience and
point out how she has committed several dozen common major beauty blunders due to the fact that
she is not a knowledgeable beauty expert. their technique is to pick somebody who looks perfectly
normal–perhaps even attractive–to the unprofessional eye, then harp away at her until the audience
begins to marvel that she managed to get past the studio guards without being mistaken for an
escaped boar and shot.
then they take this pathetic woman, and they give her a completely new look, offering all
kinds of professional beauty tips as they go along:
“now the most unfortunate facial characteristic of rhonda here,” they say, “is that she has a
nose you could hang a garment bag on, so we are going to begin by applying about five-eighths of
an inch of base coat to the rest of her head in an effort to make it appear larger. we’ll top that off
with two coats of sealant, then we’ll remove all of rhonda’s current eyebrows and start applying the
first few coats of skin dye while we try to think up something we can do about her mouth.”
and so on, until rhonda’s face is encased in congealed cosmetic substances to the point where
her own dog wouldn’t recognize her. as the studio audience applauds her new look enthusiastically,
robert redford walks onstage and asks her to marry him, and they walk off together, living proof of
the advantages of knowledgeably applied beauty products, at least until rhonda’s sealant weakens
and her base coat starts falling off in slabs the size of french toast.

what you, personally, need to do about your appearance

unfortunately, we are dealing with the print medium here, so i am unable to consult
individually with you in regard to your specific beauty needs, except to say that from this particular
angle it appears you ought to give a bit more thought to booger removal. however, i can offer these
helpful beauty guidelines for you to bear in mind as you try to achieve your new look:

guideline 1: your face is much too fat.

it looks like a weather balloon, for god’s sake. try some puce blush on your cheekbones, if
you can locate them, and accentuate those little lines coming out of the sides of your mouth by
filling them in lightly with an accountant’s fine point bic pen.

guideline 2: i can’t believe what has been done to your hair.

i am assuming that you didn’t pay for that cut. i am assuming that a deranged, near-blind,
palsied person wielding pruning shears burst into your room in the dead of night and cut your hair
after beating you unconscious. the only thing i can suggest until it grows back out is that you join
some sort of religious order that has a mandatory head covering. and when it does grow back, you
want to decide which of the three common head shapes, you have and choose a hairstyle that
compliments it.

guideline 3: i would say your eyes are your best feature.

this is assuming i have to pick something. you want to draw attention to your eyes through
subtle use of your lipstick. note that when i say your eyes are your best feature, i am speaking of
them as independent organs. taken as a set, they are maybe three-quarters of an inch too close
together.

personal hygiene

after going to all that trouble with your face and hair, the last thing you want to do is go
around smelling like a billy goat with a flatulence problem. this is why good personal hygiene
habits are so important. let’s review them briefly.

teeth

you should brush them immediately before having conversations, using a tube of toothpaste
with these words printed on the side: “the american dental association has found this to be an
effective tube of toothpaste when squeezed from the bottom in conjunction with a program of
regular payments to a member of the american dental association.”

gums and armpits

floss them regularly. if you use the same floss, do your gums first.

hair

shampoo regularly with a shampoo bearing the name of a reputable beauty snot, such as vidal
sassoon. also, be alert for dandruff, an incurable disease where little pieces of your head keep falling
off until eventually all you have left is two eyeballs on stalks protruding from your neck and you
look like a gigantic lobster walking around wearing clothes. scratching only makes it worse.

feet

there’s an old saying about feet that goes: “i had no shoes, and i pitied myself. then i met a
man who had no feet; so i took his shoes.” better than anything i could think of, this saying
illustrates the importance of proper foot care. each day, you should spend a minimum of an hour
examining your feet closely under a 200-watt light bulb and picking at your toenails with various
foot care implements available at woolworth’s. this is something the whole family can do
together. stress to your children that they should not mention it to the authorities.

feminine hygiene

at one time, this important subject would have been considered “too delicate” for a book like
this, but all that has changed, thanks to the efforts of the fine people who sell vaginal deodorants via
television commercials featuring two good friends having a frank discussion:
debbie (hesitantly): sue, may i ask you something?
sue: sure, debbie. what is it?
debbie: sue, are you aware that for the past seven years, including at formal affairs such as
funerals, you’ve been emitting an aroma that would fell a buffalo at 90 feet?
sue (frowning slightly): why no, debbie, i didn’t know! perhaps that is why i have remained a
housewife, rather than winning the nobel prize for physics!
debbie: why not try this?
sue (examining the label thoughtfully): hmmm. new improved crotch bouquet. by golly, i’ll
try it!
debbie: not here, for god’s sake!

chapter 10. men’s beauty and grooming

as recently as 20 years ago, a man was considered well-groomed if he remembered to remove

the little pieces of toilet paper he stuck on his face where he cut himself shaving. but today we live
in a liberated era, an era in which men are not afraid to make themselves more attractive by means
of beauty aids formerly limited to women–hair coloring, makeup, totally alien plastic substances
inserted into the body so as to form bulges, designer dresses, etc.
this is basically a healthy social development. for, as the saying goes, “a man who cares about
his personal appearance is a man who is always checking his reflection in store windows.” so in this
section, men, we’re going to suggest some grooming “tips” to help you look more like the lean and
cruelly handsome male models in the “fall fashion supplement,” and less like the people in your
immediate gene pool.

hair

i will assume that you already shampoo your hair at frequent intervals, that you are not one of
those repulsive males who, apparently feeling that there is some sort of grave threat to the world’s
grease supply, let their hair go for weeks at a time without washing it, such that if one of their
pillows ever caught fire, it would burn for days. but men, even if you do use shampoo regularly, it’s
probably the wrong kind, by which i mean it probably consists mainly of shampoo, with perhaps a
dash of ph.
this is not good enough. women discovered years ago that if you want true hair beauty, your
shampoo must contain foodstuffs. some women prefer fruits and vegetables, such as apricot and
avocado; others prefer poultry products, such as egg; others prefer liquor, such as beer. some even
prefer–this is the absolute truth coming up here–human placentas, which makes for a very
expensive shampoo because, believe me, the shampoo factory has to pay the workers a lot of money
to stuff those suckers into the bottles.
(for a more complete discussion of placentas, see my babies and other hazards of sex, which
many experts consider to be, of all the many books available about birth and child rearing, the one
that took the least time to write.)
and why is it so important to have foodstuffs in shampoo? i can answer that science question
in three syllables: follicles. follicles are little organs that live in your skull, thousands of them, and
produce your hair. to produce hair, they need protein, and to get protein, they need to eat, just as you
do. women are constantly shoving egg and beer down their tiny throats, which is why, as you have
no doubt noticed, women generally have gobs of hair. men, on the other hand, practically starve
them to death–you can eat only so much ph, and then you just don’t want to see another bite–which
is why so many men go bald.

a sincere discussion of baldness

too often in our insensitive society, baldness is treated as a joke, so let me begin this sincere
discussion by stating that, although i am fortunate enough to be blessed with a very full and
attractive head of hair, i am very much aware of the anguish and inner torment experienced on a
daily basis by you chrome domes out there. i mean, it’s not your fault you’re bald, is it? well, okay,
it is your fault because you let your tiny helpless innocent follicles, which had never so much as
said a mean word to anybody in their whole lives, suffer a horrible death by starvation while you
were out laughing and eating pizza with friends, but there’s no point in dwelling on that now. the
question is: what can you do about your unfortunate condition?
one approach, of course, is to get a wig. the advantage of wearing a wig is that you don’t look
quite as stupid as you would if you went around with a giant red clown nose on. the main
disadvantage is that a wig costs a lot more than a large, hand-lettered sign around your neck that
says “wig,” which is equally effective.
another approach is to get a hair transplant. this is a procedure whereby a person who has
completed all three weeks of hair transplant school, which he enrolled in because he flunked
whack-a-mole-game-machine maintenance school, takes hair from somewhere else on your body
and puts it on top of your head. the advantage of this approach is that you do, in fact, end up with
hair growing on your head. the disadvantage, of course, is that it has to come from somewhere else
on your body, which means either (a) you have hair growing up there that originated in your armpit
or some other locale so disgusting i don’t even want to talk about it, or (b) they have to take the hair
off the side of your head, which is not necessarily a great stride forward for you in the looks
department.
finally, there are ads for all kinds of alleged “miracle” hair-growing pills, creams, lotions, and
potions in the backs of sleazeball publications such as penthouse and american beet farmer, which
make all kinds of outrageous claims such as they can “stop the spread of baldness” and “restore lost
hair” and even “grow hair on a billiard ball.” these claims, of course, are totally false, except the
one about the billiard ball, which government researchers recently discovered is true, the drawback
being that many of the balls also developed tumors.
so unfortunately, balding men, there is little to offer you in the way of hope at this time. if
only somebody would develop a proven scientific guaranteed effective totally safe miracle
hair-growth substance!
(news item)
scientists laud dave barry proven scientific guaranteed effective totally safe miracle
hair-growth substance
buffalo or st. louis–scientists wearing white smocks here have announced that in proven
scientific tests, the dave barry miracle hair-growth substance did, in fact, bring new life to dead hair
follicles belonging to volunteer bald persons who were scientifically monitored as they slept on
street grates.
“as this enlarged photograph shows,” explained chief of research dr. ernst viewfinder, “most
of the follicles of the untreated volunteers are small and dead–not unlike, i might add by way of a
humorous aside, some of the untreated volunteers themselves, ha ha. but in these photographs of the
treated volunteers, we can see that the dave barry miracle hair-growth substance has brought their
scalps back to life, with sleek and happy follicles the size of adult mice, in some cases completely
crowding out the brain! this could well be what happened to vidal sassoon.”

skin

what do women find attractive when they look at a man’s skin? bumps. yes, bumps. why do
you think women fall all over robert redford while virtually ignoring you and me? go watch redford
in a movie sometime, and you’ll see that he has a number of facial bumps, which look during the
extreme close-ups to be big enough to play polo on, and which, as far as i can tell, are the only
major physical characteristic in which robert redford and i differ.
so what i am recommending, men, is that as part of your daily grooming ritual, you apply
small globulets of silly putty to your face, as shown in the illustration, so as to render yourself
irresistible to the opposing sex. i regret to point out, however, that silly putty comes in only the
caucasian skin hue, which is blatant discrimination against those members of minority groups who
also wish to install facial bumps, and i think those of us who are still liberals ought to sit right down
and write hostile letters about this to our congresspersons.

makeup

makeup is definitely the coming thing in male grooming. oh, i know what you’re
saying. you’re saying, “no way. no way am i going to put on makeup!” but of course that’s exactly
what you said about bikini underwear, and hair spray, and blow-dryers, which, if you had used them
in a locker room 15 years ago, would have resulted in a situation where if you entered the shower,
the other men would have fled from you in very much the way the residents of tokyo fled from
godzilla, but which are common grooming articles today.
yes, men, you might as well face it: it won’t be long before we’re all wearing makeup. and the
last thing you want to do is get left behind on this trend and end up looking ludicrously out of date,
like the unfortunate individuals you occasionally see who still wear white patent leather shoes and
matching belts and always look like assistant deputy sewage commissioners from small towns
where the highest form of cultural activity is reading the drive-thru menu at burger king. so what i
recommend you do is gradually start introducing makeup into your grooming routine–a little
blusher, a little eye liner, a touch of lipstick–and see if you don’t start making a big impression at
your office, maybe even start attracting the attention of people as high up as vice president, people
who once seemed unaware you even existed, but who suddenly start looking at you for 20 and 30
seconds at a time on the elevator and trying to discreetly read your security badge.

chapter 11. when you get sick

even the healthiest person, if he follows the fitness program described in this book, will
eventually need medical care. fortunately, we americans live in a nation where the medical-care
system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries
like scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.
what we’re going to talk about in this chapter is how you can become more aware of the
various problems that your body can develop, so that you’ll be better able to worry about
them. we’ll also talk about how, if you actually do become sick, you can explain your problems to
the medical-care establishment in such a way that it does not immediately yank out a useful organ.

how you can tell when there is something wrong with you

trained medical personnel detect illness or other bodily problems by looking for “symptoms,”
the major ones being these:
aches pains a total absence of aches or pains bullet holes a feeling of not keeping up with
inflation a leg bone sticking out through the skin never having the correct change a stoppage of
heart or brain activity irritability
get in the habit of checking yourself every 20 minutes or so for these symptoms. when you
notice one, you should immediately follow this emergency procedure:
1. take two pills containing a scientifically proven painkilling formula that has been
advertised on television by a reliable avuncular spokesperson such as robert young.
2. phone your office to tell them that you won’t be in for several days and could somebody
please remember to discard any interoffice memoranda aimed at you. if you have no office, you
should phone your mother and have her confirm that there is definitely something going around.
this course of treatment will cure you most of the time. if it doesn’t, you probably have a
serious illness, which means you should call your physician’s answering service and make an
appointment to go into his office the following month and sit in the waiting room for an hour and 45
minutes reading national geographic. if that doesn’t work, you should go to a hospital emergency
ward and inflict a gunshot wound on yourself, thus increasing the odds that you will see an actual
doctor to nearly 40 percent.

dealing with doctors

to get the most out of a doctor, you have to understand how he perceives the world, which is
best summed up by the last sentence of the hippocratic oath:
“and above all, remember that the patient has nabisco brand shredded wheat for brains.”
yes, doctors tend to feel just a tad superior to the general public, but this is
understandable. doctors are generally smart people, the kind who were attending meetings of the
national honor society while you were leaning out the study hall window seeing if you could spit on
passing nuns. in college and medical school, doctors spend years associating with other smart
people and learning complicated things like the location of the pituitary gland. when they get out,
the last thing they feel like doing is consorting with a bunch of cretin patients, who not only have no
idea where the pituitary gland is, but also are often sick besides.
so the important rule to remember when you’re dealing with a doctor is this: never tell him
what you think the problem is, even if you’re absolutely certain. if you tell him what you think,
he’ll become irritated and go out of his way to prove you’re wrong:
you: doctor, i think i have suffered a knife wound to the stomach.
doctor (sneering): oh you do, do you? and what makes you think that?
you: well, several hostile urban youths accosted me on the street and stuck a knife in my
stomach. see? here’s the knife handle, sticking out of my stomach.
doctor (examining your foot): that could be caused by any number of conditions, such as an
amalgamation of the pyloric valve or an interdiction of the right epistolary oracle. i’m going to send
you to the hospital for some tests next week.
the phrase “send you to the hospital for some tests” is medical code for “drain all the blood
out of your body.” blood removal is the primary form of health care in the united states, and it has
been ever since april 4, 1906, when the founder of the mayo clinic, dr. ted clinic, happened to be
cutting open diseased woodland creatures, as was his wont, and made an amazing discovery: all of
the creatures contained blood. he concluded that blood must be a leading cause of disease, which is
why today when you go into the hospital, various personnel are always lunging at you with
needles. they are very conscientious about this because they don’t want to get a nasty note from the
doctor (“3 p.m.–patient still contains traces of blood! let’s not let this happen again”).
if blood removal doesn’t work, they start taking out your organs. usually they start with
organs you have two of, such as kidneys, then move up to the really vital ones, so it’s very
important that you convince the doctor you’re getting better while you still have a chance to
survive:
doctor: so! how are we feeling today?
you (hastily): fine! great! never felt better!
doctor (frowning at your chart): really? are you sure? because i see by your chart here that you
still have several organs left, and we could ...
you (staggering out of bed, trailing intravenous tubes): no! no! look! i feel terrific! (you
attempt a deep knee bend, then collapse in agony.)
doctor: okay, but i’ll be back to check on you in an hour.

paying for your hospital treatment

always examine your hospital bill closely. it should look like this:
aspirin tablet.
$11.05
little dixie cup for water to wash aspirin tablet down with
6.80
water
31.80
removal of childproof cap from aspirin bottle (dr. viewfinder)
460.00
removal of little tuft of cotton from aspirin bottle (dr. beaner)
385.00
cat scan from when dr. spinnaker thought he might have heard a little whistling noise in the
patient’s chest that was probably nothing but you always want to be sure about these things
87,354.50
consultation among dr. spinnaker, dr. viewfinder, dr. beaner, dr. whelk, dr. pilsner, and dr.
frackmeyer while they were peeing (per doctor)
275.00
also dr. whelk mentioned it to dr. hogworth at the polo match
 340.00
gratuity
85.00
if, after examining the bill carefully, you feel satisfied that all the dollar amounts are lined up
neatly on the right-hand side, you should submit it to your insurance company, which will, without
even looking at it, send it back to you with a testy note telling you that you filled out the forms all
wrong. this will give you time to sell your house and children to raise the cash you’ll need for when
you finally get everything filled out right and the insurance company notifies you that the only thing
you’re actually covered for is 60 percent of the dixie cup.
home emergency first-aid chart to be kept posted on the bulletin board underneath the
coupons that, if you save up ten of them, get you a free medium pizza
home emergency treatment decapitation. elevate head; shriek for assistance. victim has
swallowed fabric softener. induce vomiting by showing the victim a videotape of that speech
richard nixon gave about his mother after he resigned. victim has swallowed a can of chicken
gumbo soup. so? what’s so bad about that? victim has swallowed the actual can. oh. is this by any
chance the same victim that swallowed the fabric softener? boy, that victim has a real problem.

chapter 12. fitness q and a

fitness and the expectant mother

q. i am currently pregnant to a considerable degree. instead of trying to keep fit, may i just
lounge around watching “days of our lives” and reading glamour magazine?
a. no! these are the 80s, for god’s sake, and nobody is excused from being fit! especially you
expectant women! if you just let your body go during pregnancy, after the baby comes, you’re going
to look as though a team of plastic surgeons have implanted a 35-pound mass of wonder bread
dough under the skin around your hips and thighs. but if you continue to care for your body, if you
exercise regularly and maintain your muscle tone, the mass will have a much firmer consistency,
like congealed rubber cement.
of course, a pregnant woman can’t do the same exercises as a normal person. most
gynecologists, for example, frown on the pole vault after about the seventh month. but there are still
some exercises that work very well for the mother-to-be, such as:
1. try to touch the wall. stand in a relaxed fashion with your arms over your head and your
abdominal area forming a large tissue mass directly between you and the wall. now gradually lean
forward until your arms touch the wall, if such a thing is possible, and then return to the full
standing position.
2. try to get out of a car. have several burly friends somehow place you behind the wheel of a
1979 chevrolet chevette, or some equally absurd little car, then have them time you as you attempt
to get out of it in such a way that your undergarments are not clearly visible from other
planets. eight minutes is the world’s record.
3. knee clench. go to a nice restaurant with friends and attempt to get all the way to the
appetizers without going to the bathroom more than twice.
q. what about fitness for the fetus?
a. you should indeed embark upon a rigorous program of fetal fitness, for otherwise the fetus
will be born pasty and flabby and lacking in muscle definition, and in later life it may have trouble
getting accepted by the better aerobic dancing institutes. of course, getting the fetus to exercise is
not easy, any more than teaching the fetus to read is easy, but if you truly are a concerned parent,
you will find a way.
i particularly recommend a new product developed by the fine people who make nautilus
equipment. it’s called the “fetahis” and it’s specially designed for the fetus to use in the womb. it’s a
very effective device and well worth the cost, although to be perfectly frank the insertion process is
not everybody’s cup of tea.
some helpful answers for people who smoke
q. i’m a smoker, and ...
a. you’re a what?
q. i’m a smoker, and i’d really like to ...
a. you are slime, you know that? you are raw industrial sewage.
q. yes, i know. i really want to quit. i just hate ...
a. why don’t you just suck on the exhaust pipe of a poorly tuned automobile, huh? why don’t
you just go around spraying agent orange on your fellow restaurant patrons?
q. of course you are absolutely right. it’s just that it’s so hard to stop, and i’m getting
desperate, and i was hoping that maybe you’d have some tips on how ...
a. i’ll tell you one thing. if you ever try to ignite one of those repulsive toxic objects in a
restaurant where i am dining, i shall order a reputable brand of designer carbonated water and
forcibly pour it into your nasal passages. do i make myself clear?
q. yes, and i can certainly understand why you feel that way.
a. well, you’d damned well better.
q. thank you.
a. get out of my sight before i vomit.

fitness and the afterlife

q. i am very, very proud of my body. i have calluses on the top of my head formed by
bumping into things because i walk around looking down at my various major muscle
groupings. my question is: what will happen to my body when i die? who will take care of it? will it
become soft and shapeless?
a. you will be pleased to learn that the long-neglected field of postmortem fitness has received
a real “shot in the arm” lately with the emergence of the eterna-body chain of fitness centers, each
equipped with the patented cryo-physique room, which is very much like a sauna, except that
instead of exposing living people to heat, it lowers the temperature of dead people to approximately
325 degrees below zero, at which temperature they acquire a firmness of muscle tone that we
normally associate only with world-class bodybuilders and certain minerals.

fitness and sex

q. about a year ago, my husband got on a rigorous fitness program, and he definitely looks
much, much better. the problem is, he has taken to viewing our lovemaking as primarily a form of
exercise. like, for example, he wears ankle weights and heavy hands, which are no picnic during
foreplay. also, i have a problem with the idea of having my sexual partner, at a very intimate
moment, if you get my drift, shout his pulse rate into a tape recorder. don’t you think he’s carrying
this too far?
a. absolutely. first of all, the heavy hands aren’t doing him nearly as much good as dumbbells
would, and second, i see no reason why he can’t simply use a felt-tipped marker to jot his pulse rate
down quietly on an exposed patch of your skin.

fitness and the third world

q. i’m a part of a team of cia operatives currently operating in a fungal, lice-ridden central
american nation that i, of course, cannot reveal the name of because it’s a secret. our main mission
here is to win over the local peasantry to the cause of freedom and democracy via a two-pronged
program of (a) teaching them how to make sandwiches, and (b) shooting suspected opposition
peasants in the head. what i was wondering was, do you think it would help if we also sponsored
dancercise classes?
 a. sounds like a winner! there’s nothing that backward peoples enjoy quite so much as
dancing, to judge from any number of comical old movies i have seen, wherein the natives are
always leaping around and putting bob hope in a large iron pot. be sure your peasants wear an
approved style of leg warmer, which the department of defense will be able to procure for you at a
cost of $63,400 per leg.

postwar fitness

q. what preparations has the government made to insure that our top federal officials will be
able to remain fit in the unfortunate event of a total thermonuclear war?
a. at the first sign of trouble, these officials will be whisked to a giant underground strategic
fitness facility guarded by vicious federal dogs. this facility will be staffed by a corps of female
personnel who have been chosen for their knowledge of postnuclear aerobic routines as well as their
overall body taughtness. also there will, of course, be a sauna and several lead-lined racquetball
courts, although, as one top government planner put it, “it won’t be a picnic in there. towels will be
at a premium.”

office fitness

q. i am employed by a large corporation, and i work in an office where my primary

responsibility is to discuss “general hospital” with helen and louise. as you can imagine, this does
not involve a great deal of physical activity, and i have, quite frankly, developed a rear end which
could serve as a bulldozer-flotation device. so i was wondering if you can suggest any kind of
fitness program that a person can do at her desk.
a. certainly. each morning, during a quiet period, quietly slip off your shoes, push your chair
away from your desk, and engage in five minutes of gentle stretching, followed by five minutes
each of toe touches, dressage, the luge, and the 400-meter butterfly. of course, some of these
activities may require minor changes in your office routine, to allow for such things as feeding the
horse, but i’m sure your employer will have no objection once you threaten to file a gigantic
class-action suit alleging you are being discriminated against on the basis of being pear-shaped.

index
a
“all my children,” 199
american beet farmer, 259
arbor day, 238
b
bertha the amazing land whale, 201-202
c
carp, giant, 227
clinic, dr. ted, 265
communists, 188
f
ford, gerald, 193
frequent casual motel sex diet, the, 246
g
godzilla, 261
gone with the wind, 198
h
hummocks, 226
j
jacks, cracker, 190
m
manilow, barry, 211
mister sphincter, 198
n
nature, mother, 196
newton, wayne, 241
o
oyl, olive, 214
p
plenty, good’n’, 240
r
rabbits, diseased baby, 197
s
social democrats, 235
t
trigger, 242
v
viewfinder, ernst, 246
w
whack-a-mole-game-machine maintenance school, 258