Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus

by Dave Barry

  A more recent example of American inventiveness is “Buffalo-style” chicken wings. For many years, nobody ate chicken wings, and for a good reason: They are inedible. They are essentially meat-free bones. You might as well chew on a plate of toenails. But one day a shrewd restaurant owner came up with the idea of serving the wings “Buffalo-style,” which means “to people who have been drinking beer.” It is a known fact that beer-drinkers will eat pretty much anything: Exhibit A is “Slim Jims.” You could put a dish of salted mothballs in front of beer-drinkers, and they would snork them up. So chicken wings were an instant hit.

  Today, “Buffalo-style” chicken wings are served in restaurants all over the nation: The waitperson brings out a plate of bones, the customers gnaw on them for a while, and then the waitperson takes them back to the kitchen, where they’re run through the dishwasher and placed on a plate for the next set of customers to gnaw on. A restaurant can sell the same set of “Buffalo-style” wings hundreds of times; this provides a big boost to the economy, and it is easier on the chickens.

  And speaking of modern inventions, let’s talk about the incredible convenience of cellular phones, especially for motorists. Years ago, when you were driving, you wasted your time on such nonproductive activities as listening to the radio, steering, etc. But now, using your cellular phone, you can engage in productive conversations (“Hello, Ted? Can you hear me? Hello? Ted? Can you… Hello? Ted? Can … Hello?”). As a safety bonus, you can also use your cellular phone to call for an ambulance after you rear-end somebody (“Hello? 911? Can you hear … Hello?”).

  The exciting thing is, at this very moment, Americans are thinking up inventions that could improve our lifestyles even more. For example, a while back I received a letter from a research scientist (unfortunately, I lost the letter, so I can’t give you his name) who told me that he and some other research scientists were working on developing a system for—I believe this is how he worded it—”transmitting frozen margaritas over ordinary telephone lines.” I speak for Americans everywhere when I say: Let’s track these scientists down and give them a large federal grant.

  I received another letter, which I managed not to lose, from alert reader Dick Demers, who told me about some inventions that he and his friends had conceived of. For example, his friend James Cathey thought up the long-overdue idea of a “briefcase aquarium.” I assume this would be an aquarium that had a handle so you could carry it around with you; thus, if you were stuck in, for example, a company meeting wherein your boss was droning away about improving product quality, you could pass the time productively by watching your fish swim around and poop.

  Another one of Demers’s friends, Richard Jeanne, had a fine idea for improving the quality of motoring experience. You know those irritating drivers who leave their turn signals blinking, sometimes all the way from New York to Cleveland, slowly driving you insane? This irritation would be eliminated by Jeanne’s idea for a new, improved turn signal: “After 15 seconds, the car will automatically turn in the direction indicated by the signal.” Wouldn’t that be great? It would remove at least 200,000 drivers from the road in Miami alone. Speaking of irritations: Have you noticed that more people seem to be paying for everything—EVERYTHING—with credit cards? Last winter I waited in a long ticket line outside a movie theater near Detroit on a bitterly cold night for what seemed like hours because many people were charging their $3.50 movie tickets. Each of these purchases had to be approved by a central computer; meanwhile, the movie was starting, and people in the ticket line were keeling over from frostbite and being dragged off into the parking lot by wolves. I have invented a way to prevent this kind of thing: For credit-card purchases under $20, the central computer would add an Annoyance Charge, which would be based on the number of people waiting in line, air temperature, and other factors. (“Okay, that’s two tickets to Flipper; with your senior-citizen discount and your Annoyance Charge, it comes to $237,000.”)

  I’ll bet you have some good invention ideas, too, and I’d love to hear what they are. But please mail them in; we cannot accept phone calls. We’re keeping the line open for margaritas.

  BEEWARE

  Today’s Science Topic Is: Insect Intelligence

  I don’t know about you, but I’ve always taken comfort in the idea that insects are stupid. For example, if I’m outdoors and a bee lands on me and starts walking around on my head—causing me to turn rigid with fear, terrified that, if I move, the bee will become angry and sting me in the eyeball—I’ve always reassured myself by thinking: “This bee does not wish to harm me! Its tiny brain is confused! It thinks I am a flower!”

  But now I have received, from alert reader Greg Stevens, a news item by the Reuters (pronounced “Associated Press”) news service concerning an experiment, conducted by bee scientists at the Free University of Berlin, suggesting that bees are not so dumb after all.

  The article states that these scientists, whose names are “Lars” and “Karl,” set up various landmarks between a beehive and a bee feeder. After the bees had located the feeder, Lars and Karl started changing the locations of the feeder and landmarks. The surprising result: Lars and Karl were both killed by eyeball stings.

  No, seriously, they discovered that the bees were locating the feeder by counting the landmarks. Yes! Bees can count! This means that bees, in terms of math skills, are ahead of most American high school graduates. It also means that, contrary to my earlier belief, when a bee is walking around on my head, it knows exactly where it is and what it’s doing. It’s thinking: “Ha ha! He thinks I’m looking for a flower, when in fact I am here for the express written purpose of watching him turn rigid with terror while I poop in his hair! I can’t wait to get back to the hive and tell everybody the landmark coordinates for THIS bozo!”

  The German discovery makes you wonder what ELSE bees have been hiding from us. For example: I have always wondered how they really obtain honey. I do not believe that they make it themselves. What would they use for utensils? I’ve never made honey, but I have made fudge, which belongs to the same chemical family (technically, the “Family of Things You Can Put on Ice Cream”), and I know for a fact that you need, at minimum, a stove and a candy thermometer. My guess is, if you were to poke around in the bushes near a beehive, you’d find piles of empty plastic squeeze bottles shaped like little bears.

  But here’s what really concerns me: If bees can count, the logical assumption is that they can also read. Therefore, I wish to make a sincere announcement to any bees walking around on this newspaper: I DID NOT BLOW UP THE HIVE NEAR EVAN THOMPSON’S HOUSE IN ARMONK, NEW YORK, IN 1961. I WAS PRESENT, BUT IT WAS EVAN WHO LIT THE CHERRY BOMB. PLEASE DO NOT HURT ME. IT IS VERY FUNNY WHEN YOU POOP IN MY HAIR. HA HA! I BELIEVE EVAN STILL LIVES IN THE NEW YORK METROPOLITAN AREA. THANK YOU.

  Here is another troubling thought: Bees are not the only smart insects. I have here an item from the November 1995 issue of Popular Science, alertly sent in by Frank Schropfer, which states that cockroaches can display intelligent behavior even when their heads have been removed. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t even know cockroaches had heads. I thought that, as members of what biologists call the “Family of Animals That It Is Morally Okay to Drop an Unabridged Dictionary On,” cockroaches were just icky little brown bodies with legs and feelers sticking out. But it turns out that they do have heads, and according to Popular Science, they “can live for several days” without them. But here’s the amazing thing: Researchers have found that cockroaches, when their heads are removed, immediately start performing country-style line dances.

  No, seriously, Popular Science states that headless cockroaches can, when prompted by electrical shocks, learn to run a maze. Without heads! They can learn a maze in thirty minutes. I seriously doubt that headless humans could beat that time, although just to be sure we should definitely run some experiments using volunteer Tobacco Institute scientists.

  I also think we should find out what, exactly, the researchers do wi
th the cockroach heads. You would definitely want heavy security for those babies. You would NOT want them to fall into the wrong hands.

  Tom Brokaw: In our top story tonight, terrorists have threatened that, unless the United States government gives them Cincinnati, they are going to dump cockroach heads into the nation’s vulnerable supply of movie popcorn. For the Clinton administration’s reaction, we go now live to White House press secretary Mike McCurry, who has a statement.

  McCurry: I’m going to throw up.

  In conclusion, we see that the issue of insect intelligence is not as simple as we thought it was before we started to think about it. So the next time a mosquito lands on our arm, and we are tempted to whack it, we should pause and remind ourselves that the mosquito is a thinking being just like us; and that, with proper training and encouragement, it might be able not only to count and run mazes, but perhaps also to laugh, to sing, to philosophize, even to write poetry.

  And then we should whack it. Because we hate poetry.

  THE NEW

  MAD SCIENCE

  Today I wish to present further evidence that the scientific community has completely lost its mind.

  Exhibit A is an article that appeared recently on the front page of the New York Times (motto: “Even We Don’t Read the Whole Thing”). The article concerns a scientist named Dr. Raul J. Cano, who got hold of a bee that died 30 million years ago and was preserved in amber.

  Now here is the difference between a scientist and a sane layperson such as yourself: If YOU came across a bee that had been dead for 30 million years, your natural, common-sense reaction would be to stomp on it just in case, then maybe use it as part of a prank involving a salad bar. But that was not Dr. Cano’s scientific reaction. His reaction—and remember, this story comes from the New York Times, which never makes anything up—was to extract some really old dead germs from the bee’s stomach AND BRING THEM BACK TO LIFE.

  Yes. Does this make ANY sense to you? I mean, don’t we already have ENOUGH live germs in this world, causing disease, B.O., and really implausible movies starring Dustin Hoffman? Do we laypersons not spend billions of dollars per year on antibiotics, Listerine, Right Guard, and Ty-D-Bol for the specific purpose of KILLING germs?

  According to the Times, the scientific community is all excited about Dr. Cano’s revived bee-stomach germs. Apparently the scientific community has never seen The Mummy, Frankenstein, Night of the Living Dead, Bacteria, or any of the numerous other reputable motion pictures depicting the bad things that inevitably happen when some fool brings a dead organism back to life. You wait: One of these nights, Dr. Cano’s germs are going to escape from their petri dishes and start creeping forward, zombie-like, with their little bacterial arms sticking straight out in front of them, and heaven help the laboratory security guard who stands in their way. (“What’s wrong, Bob?” “I don’t know! I have the weirdest feeling something’s trying to eat my toe!”)

  At this point you are saying, “Okay, so this one scientist is perhaps a few ice cubes short of a tray. But he’s probably just an isolated example.”

  You wish. I have here another New York Times story, sent in by many alert readers, concerning scientists who have figured out how to—get ready—GROW EXTRA EYES ON FLIES. Yes. The story states that, by messing around with genes, the scientists have produced flies with “as many as fourteen eyes apiece” in various locations—”on their wings, on their legs, on the tips of their antennae.”

  On behalf of normal humans everywhere, let me just say: Great! Just what we need! Flies that can see EVEN BETTER! As I write these words, I am unwillingly sharing my lunch with a regular, nonimproved fly, which is having no trouble whatsoever seeing well enough to keep an eye on me while it walks around on my peanut-butter sandwich. Whenever I try to whap it, the fly instantly zooms out of reach, buzzing its wings to communicate, in fly language, the concept of “neener neener.”

  Not that it would do me any good to kill it; Dr. Raul J. Cano would probably just bring it back to life.

  Speaking of insects, I have here a column from the spring 1995 issue of American Entomologist magazine, sent in by alert reader Jackie Simons and written by May Berenbaum, who discusses a University of Illinois entomology professor who has—you are not going to believe this, but I’m going to tell you anyway—”pioneered the design and use of artificial limbs for cockroaches.”

  Naturally I had to call this professor, whose name is Fred Delcomyn. He freely admitted to me that he has, indeed, fitted cockroaches with tiny artificial limbs made from toothpicks. He’s trying to figure out exactly how cockroaches move—in stark contrast to us normal, nonscientist, sane people, who would like to figure out exactly how to make cockroaches STOP moving, so we could hit them with hammers.

  But here’s the truly alarming thing: Delcomyn, as part of his research, wants to BUILD A ROBOT COCKROACH. In fact, he has already built one that’s a foot and a half long (“not too big, compared to your Florida roaches,” he noted, correctly). But his plan is to build a bigger one, a robot cockroach that will be FOUR FEET LONG.

  When will these scientists ever learn? We know what’s going to happen! We’ve seen this movie! Everything will be fine at first, with the robot roach doing exactly what the scientists want it to. But then one night, after the scientists have left the laboratory, there will be a lightning storm, and extra electricity will flow into the roach, and it will COME TO LIFE ON ITS OWN—FrankenRoach!—and escape and terrorize the community, smashing its way into supermarkets, skittering past terrified screaming shoppers, seizing entire display racks of Hostess Twinkies.

  Oh sure, eventually the Army will come up with a way to stop it, possibly by constructing a fifty-foot-tall can of Raid. But do we really want to put ourselves through this? Why must scientists continue to mess with the natural order of things? Why do we need to create giant cockroaches? We already have the O.J. Simpson defense team! If you are as concerned about these issues as I am, I urge you to take action TODAY in the form of doubling your medication dosage. Also, you are welcome to this sandwich.

  MY SUMMER

  VACATION

  Once again it’s summer vacation time—time to lock up the house, load the kids into the car, fill the tank with gas, then decide which one of the kids you should sell to pay for the gas, because it’s very expensive this year.

  Now you’re all set! To guarantee that it’s the “vacation of a lifetime,” I’ve prepared a special itinerary just for you, featuring a set of unique attractions that I swear I am not making up.

  You’ll start by driving to …

  Marshall County, Indiana—Here you’ll visit the historic town of Bremen. According to the Marshall County Convention and Tourism Commission brochure, sent to me by alert reader Chris Straight, Bremen’s claim to fame is that “the world’s heaviest man died here.” The brochure offers no details, except to say that while in Bremen, you can “ask about the casket preparation for the world’s heaviest man.” It doesn’t say whom, specifically, you should ask. Your best bet is to just drive into Bremen, honk at the first person you see, roll down your window, and shout: “WHAT ABOUT THE CASKET PREPARATION FOR THE WORLD’S HEAVIEST MAN?” Then you should drum your fingers impatiently on the steering wheel to indicate you need a quick answer, because you’re in a hurry to get to your next vacation destination….

  Macklin, Saskatchewan—This is located in Canada, which is legally a foreign country, but it’s well worth the trip, because Macklin is the proud home of the world’s largest fiberglass replica of the ankle bone of a horse. This particular one stands 32 feet high, which makes it taller than any fiberglass horse ankle bone you’re going to see in your so-called sophisticated cities such as New York or Paris.

  The giant ankle bone, which was brought to my attention by alert reader Marylu Walters, symbolizes a game called “bunnock” (“bones”), in which you try to knock over horse bones by throwing other horse bones at them. According to a brochure put out by the Macklin Bunnock Comm
ittee, the game was invented by Russian soldiers in Siberia who “discovered that the ankle bones of a horse could be set up on the frozen ground.” The brochure, speculating on what inspired this discovery, suggests “ingenuity,” “sheer luck,” and “boredom,” although I personally think that another strong candidate would be “vodka.”

  Your family is sure to enjoy viewing the giant Macklin bunnock, which looks vaguely like an enormous naked woman with no arms or legs or head. If you’re lucky enough to be in Macklin in August, you might witness the World Championship Bunnock Tournament. But as much fun as it is to watch Canadians throw horse bones, you need to move on to …

  Easton, Massachusetts—This, according to a Boston Globe article alertly sent in by Tom Darisse, is the home of the nation’s only Shovel Museum. More than 800 shovels! The kids will forget all about Disney World! But you’ll have to pry them away, because you’re off to…

  Reno, Nevada—It was here, at the Reno-Sparks sewage treatment plant, where, on February 4, according to a lengthy article in the Reno Gazette-Journal sent in by many alert readers, two courageous plant workers used pitchforks to apprehend a “monster grease ball.” The article states that the grease ball, which was clogging a channel leading to the plant, weighed 150 pounds and was “human-sized,” which leads to the obvious question: Was Robert Shapiro reported missing at around that time?

  Tragically, the grease ball is not on public display, but you and your family will be able to enjoy a quick picnic near the historic sewage plant before hastening to your final vacation destination….