Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus (26 page)

In an effort to check this out, I called Montana, which has an area code and everything, and spoke with Steve Barry, deputy chief of the Montana Highway Patrol.

“Can people drive 400 miles per hour up there?” I asked.

He told me that in all honesty the answer was no. He said that while there was “no theoretical upper speed limit,” there was a practical one, determined by police officers in the field, based on factors such as traffic density, road conditions and type of vehicle. So I asked him: What if all the conditions were perfect? What would be the absolute fastest you could legally go? What is the
real
Montana speed limit? Barry answered that, if you pinned him down, his estimate would be around 100 miles per hour.

“At that point,” he said, “the majority of the citizens at large would say that’s too fast for conditions out here.”

So you vacationing guys are going to have to budget
four
hours for Montana. But this is still an improvement, and I’d like to see other areas of the country make a similar effort to have realistic traffic laws. For example, right now the “legal” speed limit in downtown Manhattan is 30. This is absurd. This is the speed limit that Manhattan drivers observe on the
sidewalk
. On the streets of Manhattan, the actual observed speed limits are as follows:

Traveling Uptown or Downtown:
125 miles per hour, unless you have a chance to hit a pedestrian, in which case you may go 150.

Traveling Across Town:
Nobody has ever successfully traveled across Manhattan in a motor vehicle.

I’d also like to see speed limits that take into account what song you’re listening to on the radio. Ideally, if a police officer
pulled you over for doing, say, 95 mph in a 75 zone, and you could prove to him that you were listening to the Isley Brothers’ version of “Twist and Shout,” he would not only have to let you off, but he would also be required, by law, to sing along with you. It’s something for all of us to look forward to as our ever-evolving nation heads toward the twenty-first century, traveling
way
too fast for conditions.

I
 hate to put a fly in your ointment, but if you think that just because you live in America, you are safe from the terror of terrorism, then I have three words for you: ha ha ha.

I make this statement in light of a terrifying incident that occurred on Christmas Eve, according to an article from the Newport (Oregon)
News-Times
, written by Gail Kimberling and sent in by alert reader Deane Bristow, whose name can be rearranged to spell “Sewer Bandito,” although that is not my central point.

My central point is that, according to this story, a husband and wife were in their home outside of Lincoln City, which is in Oregon, when the United Parcel Service delivered a package to their house. They were not expecting a package, and therefore they became convinced (why not?) that it was a bomb. So, according to the story, the woman put the package in her car, drove the package to the Oregon coast, which is also in Oregon, and “heaved it over the cliff” onto the beach.

The woman then drove to the police station and reported that there was a bomb on the beach. So far you are probably
laughing. But you will change your tune when you learn what the investigating police officer found. What he found, lying on the beach, was a box containing—bear in mind that this happened in the United States of America, not some foreign country such as the Middle East—a fifteen-pound Virginia smoked ham.

Miraculously, the ham had not detonated, so the officer returned it to the couple, who, according to the article, “very reluctantly opened their front door and accepted it.” So luckily this story had a happy ending. But that is no reason for us to break out the celebratory bean dip. Because although in this particular case the package turned out to be an innocent ham, it
could
have been something infinitely more dangerous: It could have been a toilet. Here I am thinking of a story, sent in by many alert readers, from the December 29
New York Times
, headlined
LAWSUIT FILED FOR 2 INJURIES FROM TOILETS
. This story, as the headline suggests, concerns a lawsuit filed for two injuries from toilets. These toilets, located in a Bronx condominium, allegedly exploded when they were flushed; the lawyer for the victims is quoted as saying that there is “an epidemic of exploding toilets.”

Not that I am bitter, but I’ve been writing about the exploding-toilet epidemic for years, not to mention the exploding-cow epidemic, the Strawberry-Pop-Tart-combustion epidemic, and the Rollerblade Barbie underpants-ignition epidemic, and have I received any recognition in the form of a large cash journalism award? No, I have been called “sophomoric” and “childish” by various doodyhead critics. But now that the famous
New York Times
has decided to horn in on this story, I suppose it will become “respectable.” You’re probably going to see presidential
campaign debates wherein all the leading contenders take positions on commodes. Let’s just hope that this is not televised.

But the thing to remember is this: If you are at home, and United Parcel Service brings you a toilet that you are not expecting—even one of those nice designer-catalog toilets that have become such popular holiday gifts—do NOT attempt to flush it. Instead, take the simple precaution recommended by law-enforcement authorities such as the FBI and Mel Gibson: Drive the toilet to the Oregon coast and heave it off a cliff. Better safe than sorry!

Of course just because you, as an American, could at any moment be killed by a toilet or a ham, that does not mean that all explosions are bad. As the French say, “au contraire” (literally, “eat my Jockey brand undershorts”). Sometimes, the explosive power of an explosion can be harnessed to benefit humanity, as we learn from various newspaper articles, sent in by many alert readers, concerning the effort last October to move the World War I monument in the city of LaPorte, Indiana.

The monument, a massive piece of granite more than six feet tall, was in a secluded, overgrown location. It was scheduled to be moved to a more prominent place in time for Veterans Day, but efforts to dislodge it from its base with drills and jackhammers had failed. What happened next is not entirely clear, but apparently an unidentified local law-enforcement official contacted an Army Reserve group, which provided some unidentified explosives experts, who used some kind of unidentified explosives to separate the monument from the base. This operation went off without a hitch.

Well, okay, if you want to be picky, there was one teensy
hitch, which was that after the explosion, the monument no longer, in a technical sense, existed. But it definitely was not attached to the base anymore. Mission accomplished!

This story does raise several questions:

• Who were these “experts”?
  

• How come we never asked them to “move” Saddam Hussein’s headquarters?
  

But that is water over the dam. The point I want to make, in closing, is that just because things are blowing up all around us in this country, that is no reason for us to cower like rabbits under our beds. We are just as safe in our closets. As Winston Churchill (whose name can be rearranged to spell “Hurls Cow Chin Lint”) put it: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Of course he was safely over in England at the time.

N
ot to toot my own horn, but I’m starting to see a strong voter response to my presidential campaign (Motto: “It’s Time We Demanded Less!”).

Every day, more and more voters are turning toward me. Granted, they immediately turn away and barf, but that is not the point. The point is that I’m getting attention, and I’m getting it without the negative campaigning and cheap-shot name-calling you’re hearing from my dirtbag slimeball opponents.

How strong is my candidacy? Let’s take a look at the following chart, which shows, state by state, the developing popular groundswell, as measured by the actual percentages of people voting for me in the early state caucuses and primaries (this chart has a margin of error of three-tenths of an inch):

• IOWA—Zero
  

• NEW HAMPSHIRE—Zero
  

• DELAWARE—Zero
  

• ARIZONA—Zero
  

• THE PLANET EARTH IN GENERAL—Zero
  

I’m sure I don’t have to whack you over the head with the significance of these numbers. I’m sure you’ve already reached the obvious conclusion. “Hey!” you are thinking. “Dave is getting EXACTLY THE SAME VOTE PERCENTAGE AS COLIN POWELL!”

Calm down: There is no need to think in capital letters. But you are correct: I am currently running dead even, state for state, with the man who has been shown in poll after poll to be the nation’s first choice for president.

Why are Colin and I so hugely popular? I can answer that in one simple word: “The Issues.” Here is where I stand on them as of 8:35
P.M.
yesterday:

Crime
—You can call me courageous if you want, but I am against crime. I favor the death penalty for everything, including zoning violations. In the case of really, really bad criminals—especially murderers and whoever is responsible for putting ketchup in those little packets they give you at fast-food restaurants—I support a massive government project to develop a way to bring them back to life after we execute them, so we can execute them
again
.

The Budget Deficit
—For far too long, politicians have been “sugar-coating” the truth about the deficit, telling us only what they think we want to hear. Well, I say it’s time we acted like grown-ups and “faced the music.” If you really want to know who’s responsible for the budget deficit, go to a mirror, look yourself straight in the eye, and say: “I’M sure as hell not responsible!” Of COURSE you’re not! Neither am I! I was hitting golf balls with O.J. at the time.

Taxes
—A lot of my opponents have been going around spouting harebrained “pie-in-the-sky” tax schemes that promise “something for nothing.” Well I say it’s time for a
“reality check.” I favor a practical, fiscally sound, two-pronged “flat-tax” system, as follows:

Prong One
—Everybody would pay less.

Prong Two
—You, personally, would pay nothing.

Unlike my opponents, however, I am not suggesting that there is such a thing as a “free lunch.” (Under my administration, you will still have to pay for your lunch, although dinner would be free, unless they serve it with those little ketchup packets, in which case they would have to pay YOU.) I fully realize that if
everybody
paid lower taxes, then the government would not have the money it needs to carry out its vital constitutional function of shutting down every other week. Therefore, to offset my tax break, I am proposing a special tax of $10,000 on everybody who gets: