New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer (16 page)

 
NEW RULE
 
Stop saying Johnny Depp is God’s gift to acting. Maybe he just likes to wear mascara.
Man Date
 
 
NEW RULE
 
You can’t support a law against gay marriage and then hold hands with men. Being “in bed” with the Saudis is just an expression. You don’t
really
have to date the guy. Although there are two upsides to getting it on with a Saudi prince: They have plenty of lubrication, and, for cleanup, there’s always a towel handy.
Manual Stimulation
 
NEW RULE
 
Enough with the “For Dummies” series. The last straw was this week when I saw
NASCAR for Dummies.
Let me save you the $12.99. It’s rednecks drinking beer and watching other rednecks turn left.
March Madness
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Let’s not even try to estimate the number of people in a protest. They’ll always say a million. The Park Service will say 100,000 and Fox News will say 50. Maybe it’s just unknowable—like the size of space or where George Bush was in the ’70s.
Mass. Hysteria
 
NEW RULE
 
Stop calling Massachusetts “Taxachusetts.” It wasn’t funny the first billion times. Thirty-five states have a higher tax burden than Massachusetts does. People in Montana pay more in taxes, so from now on, I’m calling Montana “Taxatana.” How do you like that, Governor Judy Martz?
 
You and your free-spending ways disgust me. What are you, French?
Mayberry PCP
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Drugs are a symptom, not the problem itself. There’s a reason speed is ravaging Small Town, USA:
There’s nothing else to do.
Sorry, John Mettencamp, but the farms are all gone, the Tastee-Freez is closed, and the little pink house burned down in a meth lab explosion. The nearest job is 40 miles away at the Wal-Mart, and they lock you in at night. If you want the kids to stay off the crank, you need to put them on something else—a bus out of town.
Mein Furor
 
 
NEW RULE
 
Don’t pick a German pope the day before Hitler’s birthday. I’m not saying it’s anything but a coincidence, but you’ve just given every conspiracy nut in the world a raging hard-on.
MIA Culpa
 
 
NEW RULE
 
If everybody was wrong about the weapons of mass destruction, then somebody has to say “my bad.” When Clinton was in the White House, we investigated his business partners, his wife’s business partners, the guy who was governor after him, the girls who did him, his travel agents, and the guy who cut his hair. For some reason, the two words this president just can’t seem to say are “sorry” and “nuclear.” Something is terribly wrong when the only person who’s been fired over terrorism is me.
Mission Implausible
 
 
NEW RULE
 
High-profile murder suspects have to try harder. “I left my gun at the restaurant”? “I was golfing at night”? “I went fishing on Christmas Eve”? From now on, alibis for wife killing have to be at least as plausible as the argument for the Bush tax cuts.
Mob TV
 
 
NEW RULE
 
You don’t get a TV show because Grandpa killed people. Meet the Gotti kids, Fredo, Fredo, and Fredo. Their barber is in the witness protection program.
Money for Nothing
 
NEW RULE
 
When you buy a country, get a receipt. The CPA, the American agency that ran Iraq, can’t account for $9 billion it spent there. If Clinton’s people had lost $9 billion, he would have been impeached underwater while sharks gnawed his legs to stumps. Can we finally stop pretending that Republicans are fiscally responsible? At least when Saddam Hussein stole the taxpayers’ money, he ended up with a nice palace to show for it.
Mother Posterior
 
 
NEW RULE
 
If gay men can’t be priests, let them be nuns. They’ve got the costumes. Since 1978, America has lost more than 65,000 nuns. Many left the church, but most simply died. And went to hell. Why not let gay guys fill in? The Halloween parade’s loss can be the Vatican’s gain.

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