Eleven 1960s phenomena it’s difficult to get too nostalgic over
1) bell bottom pants
2) Vietnam
3) anything to do with Timothy Leary
4) people who try to use eastern pseudo-mystical philosophies to solve western problems
5) anybody playing a guitar with his face
6) the Weather Underground
7) films by Andy Warhol
8) drug comix
9) eight track tapes
10) modernist architecture that looked like beehives
11) The Monkees (please, please say they aren’t planning a comeback)
Seven pieces of old folk wisdom updated for young urban professionals
1) I was depressed because I had no Rolls until I met a man who had no BMW
2) to every company, turn, turn, turn, there is a merger, turn, turn, turn
3) all roads lead to IBM
4) when the going gets tough, the tough get lawyers
5) if the good lord had means us all to have small stock portfolios, he would have given us smaller salaries
6) starve a typewriter, feed a computer (NOT the other way around)
7) earn and let earn
Six great things about USA Today
1) those gorgeous four-colour weather maps
2) short stories unburdened by unnecessary detail
3) charts, graphs and photos too big to miss
4) facts you never in a million years would have guessed you could be interested in
5) labels (such as COVER STORY and SECOND FRONT) that help keep you from becoming confused over which part of the paper you’re reading
6) they tell you what to expect in the next issue so you won’t be taken by surprise
Fourteen impertinent suggestions
1) that future economic summits provide trained bears and magicians to hold everybody’s interest
2) that the federal conflict of interest guidelines henceforth be referred to as the conflict of interest suggestions
3) that the entire staff of Sports Illustrated undergo mandatory urinalysis testing for controlled substances
4) that the films Down and Our in Beverly Hills and
5) that the Canadian embassy in Washington use copious amounts of insulation containing asbestos, and that there is a lot of it lying around in case they need any in the future
6) that Michael Jackson use part of the $15 million he will be receiving from Pepsi to take singing lessons
7) that if the International Monetary Fund can lend billions of dollars to pikers like Brazil and Mexico, who will never in a million years be able to pay it back, it should be able to lend me 20 bucks till payday
8) that Victor Kiam shouldn’t have bought the company
9) that the Kremlin should be relocated to Pripyat
10) that a construction worker paint a moustache on the face of the Statue of Liberty
11) that something interesting happen to Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales to justify all the publicity they’ve been getting lately
12) that the words lifestyle, networking and flex quietly disappear from English usage
13) that book publishers collectively agree to put out no more than five books about baseball each spring
14) that god stop wasting our time and let us all in on the joke
Eight unlikely places for an electrical outlet
1) a cookie jar
2) Act Two, Scene One of Shakespeare’s Richard III
3) the left breast pocket of your favourite smoking jacket
4) Richard Simmons’ navel
5) the lawn of the White House
6) the black keys of a piano
7) a tropical rainforest
8) the bottom line
Twelve indicators that entropy is still a force to be reckoned with
1) an annual divorce rate approaching 50 per cent
2) food staying hot long enough for you to properly enjoy only half of it
3) trying to keep a secret
4) efforts to reduce government spending
5) the decay of the inner city as the newly wealthy workforce moves to the suburbs
6) the battery running out when you need the appliance most
7) the increasing difficulty of living up to arms limitations treaties
8) an artist trying to better his initial achievement in his second work
9) old technologies becoming obsolete
10) quicksand
11) the fact that I could only come up with 11 indicators
Twelve things to do in case of emergency
1) break glass
2) phone the police, the fire department or The Ghostbusters
3) promise yourself you’ll have a better breakfast tomorrow
4) recheck the statistical tables to assure yourself that it could not possibly have happened
5) check the warranty
6) ask yourself what Ted Koppel would do
7) reframe your terms of reference such that the emergency is reduced to a minor inconvenience
8) search frantically for a plausible excuse, somebody to blame or a good, stiff drink
9) fake a heart attack and hope somebody else will be able to get you out of the sketch alive
10) wonder if you turned off the stove before you left
11) try and find the warranty
12) remember what you did last time there was an emergency and try something more effective