Deliriously Happy
Authors: Larry Doyle
Happy
LARRY DOYLE
For Julia Just
Contents
The Eight Ages of Happiness
May We Tell You Our Specials This Evening?
Life Without Leann: A Newsletter
Recent Advances in Interpersonal Grooming, If I Had My Way
Stop Me If You've Heard This One
The Larry Doyle Story As Told to Larry Doyle
We Request the Honor of Your Presence at GywnnandDaveShareTheirJoy.com
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What Am I Going to Do with My Mega Millions?
Cigarette Brands Targeting Specialty Niches in an Increasingly Challenging Marketplace
I'm Afraid I Have Some Bad News
Recent Supreme Court Decisions
Thank You for Considering My Cult
PIECES LEFT OUT OF THIS COLLECTION
You Won't Have Nixon to Kick Around Anymore, Dirtbag
Protecting Your Baby Investment
Addendum to the Acknowledgments
The first thing you need to know about me is you're standing too close. Put the book down and take a couple steps back, all right, friend?
It's for your own good. I am a man of powerful opinions, requiring strong gestures and sudden movements to make known, and I wouldn't want to see you hospitalized unnecessarily.
If you know meâwhich you don't, so don't pretend to your friends that you do, until you've read furtherâyou know one thing: I'm against the war. As this volume goes to press, that includes all those Muslim wars, which I'm counting as one war. If some new wars have started in the last couple of weeks, I'm against those as well. I opposed the Vietnam War as a baby, and I believe I would have opposed the Korean War; I'll have to look it up someday and find out. Had I been around, I definitely would have opposed WWII. In hindsight, you can say it turned out all right, but we'll never really know how many lives could have been saved had we given appeasement a chance.
Nevertheless, I'm not an anti-Semite. I am an anti-anti-Semite. Unless that makes me a Semite. Then I'm something else.
Another thing about me: I support gay rights, even though I'm not gay, personally or professionally. Or secretly. I mean, I'm so heterosexual I can't even masturbate. But I believe whatever two guys want to do with each other's parts is fine, as long as I'm not in the room, and two gals as well, even if I am.
Also, I won't eat anything with a face that might recognize me. Neither will I eat anything with a name, be it Elsie, or Beauty, or Old Red. If I must eat an animal, I insist on being led to believe it died humanely, preferably by its own hand. I eat a lot of lemming (tastes like vole).
I won't wear fur on purpose. I believe Fur Is Murder, on account of the clever internal rhyme.
As far as evolution goes, I don't buy it. If chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing more than 98 percent of our DNA, you should be able to mate with them, but you can't. You really can't. I have a theory that we are evolved from cows and sheep, but I can't go into the details right now. It's in peer review.
Oh, and global warming is our single greatest challenge today, I believe. Along with fresh water. Plus religious extremism and renewable energy. And AIDS babies, natch. Yeah, sure, oppression of women/breast cancer, too. Those are all our single greatest challenges today. This I believe.
Of course what I believe doesn't matter. You just wasted a lot of time there. Because I'm a man of action. What I do is who I am, and I do a lot.
I don't carry cash, but if I did I would certainly share my hard-earned money with panhandlers and vagrants and the like. In lieu of payment, I offer smart career advice and motivational sayings.
For the past couple of years I've Gone Zero, as many big celebrities are doing. To reduce my carbon emissions, I've carved my name on that tree over there, and several others around the neighborhood. There's also this moss growing across my back and down my legs. I have to face south all the time, but I think our planet is worth it.
I recycle constantly. I eat out of garbage cans whenever there's nobody with a whisk broom around. I am also progressing in my goal of achieving zero net biomass. Hence the jars. The technology is not yet there to turn our urine into gasoline and excrement into some other wonderful thing, but when it is, I'll be ready. Also, it's not easy to fart into jars, but I'm getting good at it.
I don't wear hats. This is not a hat. It is my hair, woven into a porkpie. There's a difference.
When you invite me to your next dinner party, you should know that in addition to the above, I am conversant in the following topics: funny Bill Murray movies. And fair warning: if you seat me next to a precocious, talkative child, there will be punching.
Do your kids like to have fun?
Come to Fun Times!
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Do you like to watch your kids having fun?
Bring 'em to Fun Times!
Are your kids sullen, withdrawn, wearing a lot of black lately, and you, your life practically over, and for what?
For gosh sakes, get the whole family down to Fun Times!
Fun Times!'s “fine amusement dining” is the most fun you can have, legally, in the United States right now. Why spend thousands of dollars flying to Disney World when you can spend less than half of that indoors and malaria-free, within a day's drive of most cities?
To find the Fun Times! nearest you, simply get on your favorite highway and keep going until you hear the fun! Park in any of our outer lots and hop on the Jolly Trolley,
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or walk on ahead if you prefer. Once you've reached the Fun Times! intake office, you will be asked to fill out a few simple waivers and financial disclosure forms.