ARM Club 1/ARM_CLUB_CD.iso/contents/sillies/silly8/U/USCynics

Text File | 1994-02-11 | 24.6 KB | 564 lines

The cynics view of life, the universe and everything.

The cynics view of American football:-

Football predictions:  I look for the TV networks to provide 19,000
third-down situations, all of them Crucial.  In any group of five players, I
look for four of them to be Probably the Most Underrated in the League.  I
look for Second Effort, Good Hang Time, and a Quick Release.  I look for yet
another Classic Super Bowl Matchup like the one we had last year between two
teams whose names escape me at the moment.

The cynics view of parents:-

No matter how old you get, in your parents' minds you will always have the
wisdom and emotional maturity of Beaver Cleaver.

The cynics view of old age:-

Growing older is a Major Lifestyle Trend, potentially even bigger than cable
television.


The cynics view of American literature:-

Early American Novel:  The most famous novelist of this era was Cliff, the
author of the famous "Cliff Notes", a series of works that are still immensely
popular with high school students.  The best known, of course, is "The Scarlet
Ladder", which tells the story of a short man named Miles Standish, who lived
in a tall house with seven people named Gable, only to be killed in a sled
crash with an enormous white whale.  This was to become a recurring theme in
colonial literature.

The cynics view of American beer:-

I'm glad I got into beer-making, because the beer sold here in the United
States is sweet and watery and lacking in taste and overcarbonated and just
generally the lamest, wimpiest beer in the entire known world.  All the other
nations are drinking Ray Charles beer, and we are drinking Barry Manilow.

The cynics view of Advertising:-

When the advertising industry wants to convey the concept of glamour, it fills
its commercials with beautiful young people who have Ph.D.'s in bodily
tautness, writhing sensuously around the product as though it's making them so
excited that at any moment they're going to have sex with each other, or
possibly even the product.

The cynics view of contact lenses:-

People who wear contact lenses are always weeping and blinking, and their eyes
turn red, as though their mothers had just died.  You want to go up to them on
the street and say "There, there," and maybe give them money.

The cynics view of memory:-

Your brain never remembers things you should remember.  If you were bleeding
to death and the emergency-room doctor asked you what type you were, you'd
say:  "I think it's B.  Or maybe C.  I'm pretty sure it's a letter."

The cynics view of priorities:-

If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you'd find that
only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one would
know the theme song from "The Beverly Hillbillies."

The cynics view of Skiing:-

Cross-country skiing has become very popular in recent years because it is
highly "aerobic," a term health experts use to describe how dull an activity
is.

The cynics view of clenliness:-

When I hear the word "filthy" used to describe a bathroom, I think about this
bar where I used to hang out called Joe's Sportman's Lounge, where the men's
room had bacteria you could enter in a rodeo.

The cynics view of The history of the species:-

Human beings dated as far back as ancient times, as is shown by the biblical
quotation:  "And Balzubio DID taketh Parasheeba to a restaurant, and they DID
eateth potato skins."

The cynics view of In flight food:-

If armed terrorists had tried to hijaak any of the flights I've been on lately,
we passengers would have swiftly beaten them to death with those hard rolls
you get with your in-flight meal.  Funny, isn't it?  The airlines go to all
that trouble to keep you from taking a gun on board, then they just hand you a
dinner roll you could kill a musk ox with.

The cynics view of femininity:-

Estrogen is the hormone that causes certain distinct female characteristics
such as ovulation and the ability not to watch football.

The cynics view of protests:-

The last time I remember protesting anything with any real passion was when I
was at a professional basketball game and the arena management decided to stop
selling beer in the fourth quarter.

The cynics view of renewable resources:-

Wood heat is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource.  If you
cut down a tree, another will grow in its place.  And if you cut down the new
tree, still another will grow.  And if you cut down that tree, yet another
will grow, only this one will be a mutation with long, poisonous tentacles and
revenge in its heart, and it will sit there in the forest, cackling and making
elaborate plans for when you come back.

The cynics view of Viva la difference:-

WHAT WOMEN WANT:  To be loved, to be listened to, to be desired, to be
                  respected, to be needed, to be trusted, and sometimes, just
                  to be held.
WHAT MEN WANT:    Tickets for the World Series.

The cynics view of Britain:-

Despite the fact that Great Britain has been unable to produce a car that can
be driven all the way across a shopping mall parking lot without major engine
failure, Americans think that anything British is really terrific.

The cynics view of The Home:-

The desire to own a home of one's own has been a part of human nature ever
since that fateful moment, millions of years ago, when our earlist ancestors
climbed down out of their trees and moved into their very first caves.  It was
a major moment in history, and its glory was dimmed only slightly by the fact
that their furniture did not arrive for another 250,000 years.

The cynics view of Children:-

Which of the following statements best describes you feelings toward children?
  A.  "Put that down this instant!"
  B.  "I said put that down!"
  C.  "Never put your finger in that part of the doggy!!"

The cynics view of cats:-

Get rid of your cat.  Cats are scum.  You've read newspaper stories about
elderly widows who die and leave their entire estates to their pet cats,
right?  Well, your cat reads those stories too, and has spent most of its
skulking, devious little life dreaming about inheriting all your money.  You
know where it goes when it disappears for hours at a time?  Investment
seminars, that's where.

The cynics view of sexual fitnes:-

There's no reason for us to feel that getting older should stop us from having
sex.  Our role model in this area should be such biblical stud muffins as Job,
who, if I remember my Sunday school lessons correctly, remained sexually
active for several hundred years.  Of course I vaguely recall that at one
point in the story, all of Job's cattle and relatives died and he got boils
all over his body, which should serve as a reminder to all of us, no matter
what our age, of the importance of practicing safe sex.

The cynics view of comtraception:-

The most effective method of birth control for males is the one where, just
when the male and female are about to engagae in sex, the friends of the male
burst out of the bushes and yell and jump up and down on the bumper and spray
shaving cream all over the car.  The problem is that this method is pretty
much limited to teenage males.

The cynics view of Rock 'n Roll:-

I'm assuming that you're like most of us Boomers in the sense that, musically,
you have always considered yourself to be a Major Hipster.  Why not?  Hey, we
were frontline troops in the Rock 'n' Roll Revolution, right?  We knew the
dirty words to "Louie Louie," including the ones that did not actually exist.
We knew the Beach Boys when they could sing and Elvis when he was alive the
first time.

The cynics view of health:-

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.  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.

The cynics view of Marathons:-

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.

The cynics view of the Home:-

We have been deeply into dinosaurs for some time now.  We have a great many
plastic dinosaurs around the house.  Sometimes I think we have more plastic
dinosaurs than plastic robots, if you can imagine.

The cynics view of The meaning of Life:-

Why do we get older?  Why can't we just go on and on and on, accumulating a
potentially infinite number of Frequent Flyer mileage points?

The cynics view of Life:-

Unless you die, you will continue to get older.

The cynics view of DIY:-

Most home projects are impossible, which is why you should do them yourself.
There is no point in paying other people to screw things up when you can
easily screw them up yourself for far less money.

The cynics view of Electricity:-

Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles, called electrons,
that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.

The cynics view of Sports trends:-

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.  Fitness buffs saw this and
realized that any activity with such great potential for being fatal must be
very good for you.

The cynics view of the Global Village:-

American men tend to take their sports seriously, much more seriously than
they take family matters or Asia.

The cynics view of Childrens Parties:-

Children's birthday party serving suggestion:  If you're running behind
schedule, you may save yourself time by bypassing the children and rubbing the
fudge sauce directly onto the drapes.

The cynics view of Automobiles:-

Nobody knows how transmissions work, or even where they come from.  They just
arrive at car factories in unmarked crates, and the workers put them into
cars.  Many people believe transmissions are created by beings from other
solar systems.  There is evidence to support this theory, namely transmission
manuals, which contain bizarre diagrams and deranged alien commands.

The cynics view of Air Travel.

Air fares are now assigned by a machine called the Random Air Fare Generator,
which is programmed to ensure that on any given flight
  (1) no two people will pay the same fare, and
  (2) everybody else will pay less than you.

The cynics view of sincerity:-

Sometime is a scientific unit of measurement meaning "in approximately 43
hillion jillion years," as in "Let's have lunch sometime."

The cynics view of Pregnancy:-

You must remember that when you are pregnant, you are eating for two.  But you
must also remember that the other of you is about the size of a golf ball, so
let's not go overboard with it.  I mean, a lot of pregnant women eat as though
the other person they're eating for is Orson Welles.

The cynics view of Oscar Mayer:-

I wonder whatever happened to that little boy who used to do the Oscar Mayer
commercials.  Remember?  The one who claimed that his baloney had a first
name, and it was O-S-C-A-R?  I wonder if that child didn't run into problems
later in life.  ("OK, pal.  You and Oscar there are under arrest.")

The cynics view of 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.

The cynics view of teh Presidency:-

When Lincoln assumed the presidency, he was clean-shaven, but one day he got a
letter from a little girl suggesting that he grow a beard.  So he did, and he
thought it looked pretty good, so he decided to keep it.  A short while later,
he got another letter from the little girl, this time suggesting that he wear
mascara and rouge and maybe a simple string of pearls.  Fortunately, just then
the Civil War broke out.

The cynics view of Wildlife:-

I am all in favor of wildlife, as long as it stays in its place, which is
Africa.  I believe that if God had wanted us to share our homes with insects,
He would not have made them so unattractive.

The cynics view of the movie industry:-

One day in the winter of 1848, a worker was digging in a pond on the northern
California farm of Swiss immigrant Johann Sutter.  Suddenly the man stopped
and stared, for there, gleaming through the muck on his shovel blade, was a
discovery that was to transform the entire California territory almost
overnight:  a movie camera.

The cynics view of English food:-

King Arthur was able to unite the various English tribes and drive off the
Vikings via the bold and resourceful maneuver of serving them relentlessly
bland food, a tradition that remains in England to this day despite numerous
armed attempts by the French to invade with sauces.

The cynics view of

What you want, from your career, is a sense of fulfillment as a human being
and maximum personal satisfaction as measured in US dollars.  You want a Rolex
watch and numerous fast cars.  You want employees so desperate for your
approval that you could put your cigar out on their foreheads and they'd
thank you.  You want to be able to leave Supreme Court justices on "hold" for
upwards of an hour.

The cynics view of Sattelites.

One day in 1957 everybody in the United States was minding his or her own
business when suddenly the Russians launched a grapefruit-size object called
Sputink (literally, "Little Sput") into an Earth orbit, from which it began
transmitting back the following potentially vital intelligence information
(and we quote):  "Beep."  This came as a sevre shock to the Americans, because
at that point the best our space scientists had been able to come up with was
a walnut-sized object that went:  "Moo."

The cynics view of Builders.

Wood has been the preferred building material for thousands of years, because
it is one of the few materials that will rot as well as burn.

The cynics view of Sport.

Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history, dating
back to the time, millions of years ago, when the first primitive man picked
up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the air, and whomped
the club into the sloping forehead of the first primitive umpire.

The cynics view of Ski Jumping.

Ski jumping got its start as a symptom of mental illness in northern climates
such as Norway and Sweden, where it is cold and dark and there is very little
to do except pay taxes.  After a while, the strain gets to peole, and they
suddenly leap up, barge out, don skis, and launch themselves off giant chutes.

The cynics view of Hospitals.

At the hospital as soon as they find out what your Blue Cross number is they
pounce on you with needles the size of turkey basters.

The cynics view of Roaches.

The only surefire way to get rid of roaches is to remove all the liquor from
your house.  Roaches can mate only when they're drunk.  Can you blame them?
Would you mate with a roach if you were sober?

The cynics view of Arranged marriages:-

For several centuries marriages were arranged by the parents, based on such
things as how much cattle the bride and the groom would each bring to the
union.  Often the young couple wouldn't even meet until the wedding, and
sometimes they were not strongly atrracted to each other.  Sometimes, quite
frankly, they preferred the cattle.  So now we feel that dating is probably a
better system.

The cynics view of Pop Music:-

My son, despite constant exposure to my taste in music, does not choose to
listen to "classic rock."  When he's in control of the radio, he tunes it to a
different kind of music, a now kind of music that can only be described-  and
I do not mean to be making any value judgments here-  as "stupid."

The cynics view of Aerobics:-

The basic fitness fashion for women is the leotard and tights, which is the
preferred outfit because it shows every bodily flaw a women 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.

The cynics view of Feminists:-

Oh, sure, the women's magazines keep saying that it's no longer important to
look young, that maturity is "in."  But they never use normal mature women to
illustrate this point.  They use Cher, for God's sake, a woman who has had so
much cosmetic surgery that, for ease of maintenance, many of her body parts
are attched with Velcro.

The cynics view of Doctors:-

In primitive times, having a baby was very inexpensive.  When women were ready
to give birth, they simply went off and squatted in a field;  this cost
nothing except for a nominal field-rental charge.  Today, of course, the
medical profession prefers that you have your baby in a hospital, because only
there can doctors, thanks to the many advances in medical equipment and
techniques, receive large sums of money.

The cynics view of Life forms:-

Yeast is a wonderful little plant or animal that, despite teh fact that it has
only one cell, has figured out how to convert sugar to alcohol.  This was a
far greater accomplishment than anything we can attribute to giant multicelled
organisms as, for example, the Secretariat of Transportation.

The cynics view of Business:-

When primitive humans first came along, they did not engage in business as we
now think of it.  They engaged in squatting around in caves naked.  This went
on for, I would say, roughly two or three million years, when all of a sudden
a primitive person, named Oog, came up with an idea.  "Why not," he said,
"pile thousands of humongous stones on top of each other in the desert to form
great big geometric shapes?"  Well, evreybody thought this was an absolutely
terrific idea...  It wasn't until several thousand years later that they
realized they had been suckered into a classic "pyramid" scheme, and of course
by that time, Oog was in the Bahamas.

The cynics view of Foreign languages:-

Foreign persons for some reason believe that everyday household objects and
vegetables are "masculine" or "feminine."  For example, French persons believe
that potatoes are feimine, even though they (potatoes) do not have sexual
organs, that I have noticed.  Dogs, on the other hand, are masculine, even if
they are not.  (This does not mean, by the way, that a dog can have sex with a
potato, although it will probably try.)

The cynics view of Galic:-

Wales is this linguistically deformed area that apparently is too poor to
afford vowels.  All the road signs look like this:  LLWLNCWNRLLWNWRLLN - 3 km.
It is a tragic sight indeed to see Welsh parents attempting to sing
traditional songs such as "Old McDonald Had a Farm" to their children and
lapsing into heart-rending silence when they get to the part about
"E-I-E-I-O."

The cynics view of interior decor:-

The easiest way to install paneling is to simply lean it up against the walls
all around the room.  This way, you can remove it quickly and hide it in the
garage when tasteful visitors come to call.

The cynics view of New Yorkers:-

The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French that had been dedicated in 1886
in a spectacular ceremony featuring a thousand John Philip Sousa
impersonators, was placed in New York Harbor, where its raised torch served as
a welcoming beacon of hope and freedom to millions of oppressed and
downtrodden fish.  Then someone came up with the idea of taking it out of the
water and putting it on an island.

The cynics view of appliances:-

Have you ever wondered why, of all the colors they had to choose from, major
appliance manufacturers for many years insisted on making everything Harvest
Gold or Avocado, two of the ugliest colors ever devised by the mind of man,
colors more appropriate for stomach secretions than home decorating?

The cynics view of Old America:-

Bison herds must have been an awe-inspiring sight:  millions of huge, majestic
animals, forming humongous herds, their hooves thundering like, we don't know,
thunder or something, roaming from the Mississippi River all the way across
the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains, which they would smash into headfirst
at speeds ranging upward of thirt-five miles per hour, then fall down.  They
were majestic, those bison, but stupid.

The cynics view of progress:-

In the fifteenth century, many people believed that the world was flat.
Today, of course, we know that this is true only in heavily Protestant states
such as Iowa.

The cynics view of human rights:-

Always remember this:  your subordinates are not machines.  They are human
beings, with the same needs, the same wants, and the same dreams as you.
Okay, maybe not all the same dreams.  Probably they don't have the one where
you're naked in a vat of Yoo-Hoo with the Soviet gymnastics team.

The cynics view of Science:-

Benjamin Franklin, in a famous experiment, sought to prove his theory that if
you flew a kite in a rainstorm, a huge chunk of electricty would come shooting
down the string and damage your brain.  Sure enough, he was right, and he
spent the rest of his days making bizarre, useless, and unintelligible
statements such as:  "A penny saved is a penny earned."  Eventually he became
so dodderingly pathetic that he had to be placed in charge of the U.S. Postal
Service.

The cynics view of Babies:-

If you were to open up a baby's head- and I am not for a moment suggesting
that you should- you would find nothing but an enormous drool gland.

The cynics view of The Arts:-

Children are capable of learning to read much earlier than we give them credit
for.  Why, Mozart was only two years old when he wrote "Moby Dick"!

The cynics view of life in the fast lane:-

Today, as grownups, we're all so busy rushing madly around trying to meet the
demands of families, friends, careers, homes, etc., that we barely have time
for personal hygiene, which many people now are forced to perform in the car.
Driving to work, I have seen women styling their hair, putting on makeup,
sometimes even sticking their arms out the windows on both sides of the car to
be worked on by professional manicurists riding motorcycles.

The cynics view of American politics in the 1980's :-

The 1980s will be remembered as a time when the nation broke free of the
confining chains of the left-leaning bleeding-heart gutless namby-pamby Mister
Pouty Pants Liberal school of political thought that had dominated the
American political landscape evre since the New Deal;  a time when Americans
began Standing Tall, Talking Proud, Feeling Good, Sitting Straight, Pledging
Allegiance, and Eating More Fiber.

The cynics view of Information Technology:-

GRAPHICS- the ability to make pie charts and bar graphs, which are the
universal business method for making abstract concepts, such as "three,"
comprehensible to morons like your boss.

The cynics view of marriage:-

What's the secret of a happy marriage?  Call me a romantic if you want, but
for me, the answer is the same simple, beautiful idea that has been making
relationships work for thousands of years:  seperate bathrooms.

The cynics view of cosmetit surgery:-

One popular new plastic surgery technique is called lipgrafting, or "fat
recycling," wherein fat cells are removed from one part of your body that is
too large, such as your buttocks, and injected into your lips;  people will
then be literally kissing your ass.

The cynics view of dirt:-

Men and women do not feel the same way about dirt at all.  Men and women don't
even see dirt the same way.  Women, for some hormonal reason, can see
individual dirt molecules, whereas men tend not to notice them until they join
together into clumps large enough to support commercial agriculture.

The cynics view of power dressing:-

HOW WOMEN SHOULD DRESS:  In terms of your business wardrobe, you want to adopt
a fashion look that has become the standard for the woman on the corporate
fast track, a look that can best be described as:  Modified Nun.  This conveys
to the men in your corporation that you are not a sex object, but an authority
figure who must be taken seriously because at any moment you might strike them
on the hands with a ruler.

The cynics view of dieting.

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 the first thing after Easter, although not the one coming up.

*** eof