Collage 197               H u m o u r N e t               19 DEC 95

<fanfare> Welcome to yet another Dave Barry Collage! </fanfare>

Many, many, many *huge* thanks to JD in New Jersey for digging up
the article, scanning it, and OCRing it for me.

This Dave Barry article, entitled "Where the Fast Lane is As Good As
the Rut" (assuming that I can trust John's OCR software), focuses on
male behavioral patterns (or, "why guys act macho"), particularly
where driving habits are concerned.

And speaking of driving ...

Freezing rain is falling on Washington, D.C., as I type this. Our
installation is closing because of the bad weather, and everyone is
leaving.

Except me.

No, not because I'm so dedicated to HumourNet that I feel compelled
to stay here and write this. Because it's safer to leave later.

You see, hazardous weather and Maryland drivers simply don't mix.

Maryland doesn't see enough snowfall for drivers to really become
proficient at driving on slippery roads -- yet, we're not far enough
South to avoid the stuff altogether. This creates a rather
distasteful situation in which the average Marylander insists on
doing what he doesn't do best:

Driving in the snow.

In a state where schools close on the *forecast* of snow (I'm not
making this up) and grocery stores sell out of milk, bread, canned
soup, and toilet paper on the eve of a storm in which four or more
inches of snow are predicted, you'd figure people would take a more
conservative approach to inclement-weather driving. But they don't.

(Toilet paper? What are these people thinking? I mean, the milk
and the bread--and even the canned soup -- I can understand, if
you're given to such flights of panic. But toilet paper? Do they
really get *that* nervous when the snow starts falling? :-)

Right now, as I sit here in my quasi-climate-controlled office,
Maryland drivers are happily playing bumper cars. With other cars.
And trucks. And bridge abutments. They are playing "chicken" with
oncoming traffic, driving backward and sideways down the road, and
just generally performing a sort of "transportation ballet."

When I finally get around to driving home, the results of the
carnage will be almost unbearable -- cars parked in ditches, lamp
posts, guard rails, and each other, with their owners wandering
around the sides of the roadways like re-animated corpses from
"Night of the Living Dead."

And it could all be so easily avoided. With just a *little* advance
planning, every single one of those drivers could be spending a quiet
night at home, secure in the knowledge that his auto-insurance rates
won't be increasing any time soon. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Plan ahead. Pick a section of road in which you would like to
ditch your car during the next snow or ice storm. You can use any
criterion you like: wide shoulders, a favorite stretch of road,
convenience to home or friends. etc.

2. As *soon* as inclement weather is imminent, BUT WELL BEFORE
THE STORM HAS BEGUN, call up a close friend (or a taxi service)
and have him meet you at the selected spot.

3. Leave your car in a creative position -- typically, one you might
use in the event you were silly enough to drive during the storm.
Points are awarded for style here: Off the road and facing traffic
is good, up against a bridge abutment is better, and perched on a
guard rail is best. Be careful to avoid damaging the car, though;
we don't want to defeat the purpose. And, ideally, select a
location that is unlikely to place your car in harm's way when all
the fun starts.

4. Have your friend drop you off at your house.

5. During the storm, sit inside the house, sip hot chocolate or
spiced apple cider, play board games, and pity those people who do
not have your foresight and planning abilities.

6. After the storm -- and after the roads have been fully cleared,
and have dried to a dull sheen -- have your friend drop you back at
your car. Agree to switch roles for the next storm.

See? No schlepping around in the snow, waiting for police or a tow
truck to arrive. No frozen feet. No rearranged fenders or hoods.
And, best of all, no bodily damage or insurance-premium increases.

It's an airtight plan. I just can't figure out why more people
don't use it.

Okay, on to Dave ... and enjoy!

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1995 by Vincent Sabio
  Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage";
  please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message.
____________________________________________________________________

"Where the Fast Lane is As Good As the Rut"
By Dave Barry

Our topic today, in our continuing series on guys, is: why guys act
macho.

One recent morning I was driving in Miami on Interstate 95, which
should have a sign that says:

         WARNING:
 HIGH TESTOSTERONE LEVELS
      NEXT 15 MILES

In the left lane, one behind the other, were two well-dressed
middle-age men, both driving luxury telephone-equipped German
automobiles. They looked like responsible business executives,
probably named Roger, with good jobs and nice families and
male-pattern baldness, the kind of guys whose most violent physical
activity, on an average day, is stapling. They were driving
normally, except that the guy in front, Roger One, was thoughtlessly
going only about 65 miles an hour, which in Miami is the speed limit
normally observed inside car washes. So Roger Two pulled up behind
until the two cars were approximately one electron apart, and honked
his horn.

Of course Roger One was not about to stand for THAT. You let a guy
honk at you, and you are basically admitting that he has a bigger
stapler. So Roger One stomped on his brakes, forcing Roger Two to
swerve onto the shoulder, where, showing amazing presence of mind in
an emergency, he was able to make obscene gestures with both hands.

At this point both Rogers accelerated to approximately 147 miles per
hour and began weaving violently from lane to lane through dense
rush-hour traffic, each risking numerous lives in an effort to get
in front of the other, screaming and getting spit all over their
walnut dashboards. I quickly lost sight of them, but I bet neither
one backed down. Their co-workers probably wondered what happened
to them. "Where the heck is Roger?" they probably said later that
morning, unaware that, even as they spoke, the dueling Rogers, still
only inches apart, were approaching the Canadian border.

This is not unusual guy behavior. One time in a Washington, D.C.,
traffic jam I saw two guys, also driving nice cars, reach a point
where their lanes were supposed to merge. But neither one would
yield, so they very slowly -- we are talking maybe 1 mile per hour
-- drove into each other.

Other examples of pointlessly destructive or hurtful macho guy
behavior include:

* Guys at sporting events getting into shoving matches and
occasionally sustaining fatal heart attacks over such issues as who
was next in line for pretzels.

* Guys on the street making mouth noises at women.

* Boxing.

* Foreign policy.

Why do guys do these things? One possible explanation is that they
believe women are impressed. In fact, however, most women have the
opposite reaction to macho behavior. You rarely hear women say
things like, "Norm, when that vending machine failed to give you a
Three Musketeers bar and you punched it so hard that you broke your
hand and we had to go to the hospital instead of to my best friend's
daughter's wedding, I became so filled with lust for you that I
nearly tore off all my clothes right there in the emergency room."
No, women are far more likely to say: "Norm, you have the brains of
an Odor Eater."

But the real explanation for macho behavior is not that guys are
stupid. The real explanation is that because of complex and subtle
hormone-based chemical reactions occurring in their brains, guys
frequently act stupid. This is true throughout the animal kingdom,
where you have examples such as male elks, who, instead of simply
flipping a coin, will bang their heads against each other for hours
to see who gets to mate with the female elk, who is on the
sidelines, filing her nails and wondering how she ever got hooked up
with such a moron species, until eventually she gets bored and
wanders off to bed. Meanwhile the guy elks keep banging into each
other until one of them finally "wins," although at this point his
brain, which was not exactly a steel trap to begin with, is so badly
damaged that, in his confusion, he will mate with the first object
he encounters, including shrubbery, which is why you see so few baby
elks around.

Another example of macho animal behavior is guy dogs, who are so
dumb they make elks look like Rhodes scholars. Every male dog
firmly believes that if he makes weewee in enough places, he will be
declared Dominant Male Dog of the Entire Earth and receive a plaque
plus valuable dog prizes, such as a bag of chicken heads. Of course
since there are several billion dogs in the competition, everybody
is extremely busy trying to stay ahead of everybody else. One time
I took a hike on a mountain with two male dogs named Rubio and Moo
Shu. Every three minutes Rubio would carefully select a spot and
establish his dominance over it; then Moo Shu would come sprinting
from as far as a mile away so that, despite having the entire
mountain to choose from, he could establish HIS dominance over the
same 4 square inches previously dominated by Rubio, who by now was
several hundred yards away, dominating a new spot, which Moo Shu
would then frantically sprint toward, and so on all day long, with
each dog absolutely convinced that he was the baddest hombre on the
planet. Ha ha! At least we *human* males don't do THAT.

We don't need to. We have cars.

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