To all those who didnt get to read the previous installment, I just decided to answer one of life's great questions: what you should really be reading these days. The answer (...drumrolls...) is Humor. Of course it is.
Oh, I am not putting this down because these authors paid me to do so (I wish!) but because these guys really rock.
Mary Roach
Any lady that can make me laugh deserves my outmost respect. This lady makes me roll on the ground silly. She takes everyday situations and spins them into brilliant anectodes. In her owns words: “Mary finds humor in strange places. Also, her car keys.” Ed is her husband, by the way. The quotes:-
“Ed is the most levelheaded person I know. You could take one of the carpenter's levels from Aisle 5 and place it on his head and the little bubble will always be right there in the middle.”
~
“Ed decreed we were to buy only free-range organic chickens. Ed would put them in the shopping cart. I'd look at the price and take them out. ‘Are we eating them, or putting them through college?’”
~
“My waist, I realized one day in a dressing room, has completely disappeared beneath my rib cage, which now rests directly on my hips. I'm exhibiting continental drift in reverse.”
~
“A married couple can best be defined as a unit of people whose sleep habits are carefully engineered to keep each other awake.”
~
My eye bags, I noticed the other day while shopping with my friend, had ceased to be an anatomical feature and were approaching the status of an actual piece of luggage.
~
“My father was English, so gardening, I've long assumed, is in my blood, along with gin and fryer grease and a fondness for long, tedious war movies.”
~
“A family is a collection of people who share the same genes but can't agree on a place to pull over for lunch.”
~
“The French kiss each other twice, perhaps because no one else will.”
~
“I watch sports the way a dog will watch TV: I'm attracted by the motion and color, but no actual comprehension is taking place.
~
“A word about Valentine's Day. This was originally a holiday for a god who protected shepherds' flocks from the wolves outside Rome. I don't know how we got from livestock surveillance to romantic love, but if I had to tender a guess I'd say it had something to do with the Hallmark company. We really have to watch these guys, because soon we're going to find ourselves sending cards for Plumbers and Steamfitters Day ("You bring a special kind of caring to our water-serviced area ...")."
“Ed is the most levelheaded person I know. You could take one of the carpenter's levels from Aisle 5 and place it on his head and the little bubble will always be right there in the middle.”
~
“Ed decreed we were to buy only free-range organic chickens. Ed would put them in the shopping cart. I'd look at the price and take them out. ‘Are we eating them, or putting them through college?’”
~
“My waist, I realized one day in a dressing room, has completely disappeared beneath my rib cage, which now rests directly on my hips. I'm exhibiting continental drift in reverse.”
~
“A married couple can best be defined as a unit of people whose sleep habits are carefully engineered to keep each other awake.”
~
My eye bags, I noticed the other day while shopping with my friend, had ceased to be an anatomical feature and were approaching the status of an actual piece of luggage.
~
“My father was English, so gardening, I've long assumed, is in my blood, along with gin and fryer grease and a fondness for long, tedious war movies.”
~
“A family is a collection of people who share the same genes but can't agree on a place to pull over for lunch.”
~
“The French kiss each other twice, perhaps because no one else will.”
~
“I watch sports the way a dog will watch TV: I'm attracted by the motion and color, but no actual comprehension is taking place.
~
“A word about Valentine's Day. This was originally a holiday for a god who protected shepherds' flocks from the wolves outside Rome. I don't know how we got from livestock surveillance to romantic love, but if I had to tender a guess I'd say it had something to do with the Hallmark company. We really have to watch these guys, because soon we're going to find ourselves sending cards for Plumbers and Steamfitters Day ("You bring a special kind of caring to our water-serviced area ...")."
Mike Gayle
Then there is Mike Gayle. This guy is fantastic: he writes about the things you always experience and always think about but didn’t know you experience or think about until you read it from him. Best of all, he doesn’t write space science, he does romance…and not the out of this world 'knight in shining armor and damsel in distress' kind of romance. No, only the kind of romance you are most likely to be familiar with. Try this:-
“Sometimes I really felt sorry for Mel—her life would've been so much better if she'd fallen in love with someone normal.
Instead she fell in love with me and had been paying for that mistake ever since.”
~
"I'm fine, Mum, honest." It was nice to be fussed over like this. To know that there was someone in the world who, no matter whether you were a convicted homicidal maniac, a porn baron or crack addict, would love you unconditionally.”
~
"'Am I your boyfriend?' is the kind of question a nine-year-old asks another nine-year-old. It had no place in a sophisticated relationship. I knew the rules -- I was meant to be cool and relaxed, laid-back and casual. At first maybe we'd 'see' each other (which meant that she'd still 'see' other people), then maybe we'd date (which would mean that she wouldn't see other people even though she might want to), and then finally we'd be boyfriend and girlfriend (by which time she wouldn't want to see other people because she'd be happy with me)."
~
"I wondered what I'd done to deserve her and after a number of minutes concluded that I'd done nothing whatsoever. She was in my life without reason. She was there in spite of myself. Good things could happen to not-so-bad people."
~
"Deep down, I always liked to believe that I knew things wouldn't work out between us. Nothing could have been that perfect unless it had its premiere on terrestrial television."
~
“Being seduced was a nice idea, but she really had no need to go to all this effort. When it came to Mel—who was beautiful in a wonderfully understated kind of way —Easy was indeed my first, last and middle name”.
~
“I love toast. I really do. Toast is just about the best food there is. You take a slice of humble white bread (never brown) and you put it in a toaster (What is it? It's a toaster! What does it do? It makes toast!) and a few minutes later you have a hot nutritious meal. You can put any foodstuff handy from the fridge on top of it and it will pretty much always taste fan-bloody-tastic. Toast, I thought, as two slices popped up, makes a whole lot more sense than chocolate bars.”
~
“At that moment, sitting there in my flat, with the will to do anything at all almost crushed out of my body, I realised that I'd finally found out what it was like to be bored.”
~
“She got over me straight away, which really hurt. She got on with her life as if I was a minor interruption.”
Then there is Mike Gayle. This guy is fantastic: he writes about the things you always experience and always think about but didn’t know you experience or think about until you read it from him. Best of all, he doesn’t write space science, he does romance…and not the out of this world 'knight in shining armor and damsel in distress' kind of romance. No, only the kind of romance you are most likely to be familiar with. Try this:-
“Sometimes I really felt sorry for Mel—her life would've been so much better if she'd fallen in love with someone normal.
Instead she fell in love with me and had been paying for that mistake ever since.”
~
"I'm fine, Mum, honest." It was nice to be fussed over like this. To know that there was someone in the world who, no matter whether you were a convicted homicidal maniac, a porn baron or crack addict, would love you unconditionally.”
~
"'Am I your boyfriend?' is the kind of question a nine-year-old asks another nine-year-old. It had no place in a sophisticated relationship. I knew the rules -- I was meant to be cool and relaxed, laid-back and casual. At first maybe we'd 'see' each other (which meant that she'd still 'see' other people), then maybe we'd date (which would mean that she wouldn't see other people even though she might want to), and then finally we'd be boyfriend and girlfriend (by which time she wouldn't want to see other people because she'd be happy with me)."
~
"I wondered what I'd done to deserve her and after a number of minutes concluded that I'd done nothing whatsoever. She was in my life without reason. She was there in spite of myself. Good things could happen to not-so-bad people."
~
"Deep down, I always liked to believe that I knew things wouldn't work out between us. Nothing could have been that perfect unless it had its premiere on terrestrial television."
~
“Being seduced was a nice idea, but she really had no need to go to all this effort. When it came to Mel—who was beautiful in a wonderfully understated kind of way —Easy was indeed my first, last and middle name”.
~
“I love toast. I really do. Toast is just about the best food there is. You take a slice of humble white bread (never brown) and you put it in a toaster (What is it? It's a toaster! What does it do? It makes toast!) and a few minutes later you have a hot nutritious meal. You can put any foodstuff handy from the fridge on top of it and it will pretty much always taste fan-bloody-tastic. Toast, I thought, as two slices popped up, makes a whole lot more sense than chocolate bars.”
~
“At that moment, sitting there in my flat, with the will to do anything at all almost crushed out of my body, I realised that I'd finally found out what it was like to be bored.”
~
“She got over me straight away, which really hurt. She got on with her life as if I was a minor interruption.”
Awesome stuff. You know, these guys didn’t just write quotes, they also wrote a whole lot of books as well (Oh, hold, these quotes came from the books. Silly me). If you can get your hands on these books, I guarantee you will find them unputdownable.
When you eventually do get tired of humor and you are in need of more serious stuff, grab yourself the Bible. Just don’t do politics.
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