But the point is that the central thrust of the Sun headline (“CAT”) was right on target, which gives us every reason to accept the giant-mutant-flea article at face value. Nevertheless, I thought I should check it out, so I called the Midwest, which is in Iowa, and talked with Donald Lewis, extension entomologist for Iowa State University. He said: “I haven’t heard anything even remotely similar to that. We do have periodic flea outbreaks, but each flea is still small.” Naturally, this made me suspicious, so I called Lysie Waters of the University of Iowa, who said: “I haven’t heard anything about that. And I definitely would have heard about giant fleas.”
And that was all the proof I needed. Because when two men from separate universities that are miles apart and have completely different nicknames (“Cyclones” vs. “Hawkeyes”) used almost exactly the same words—”I haven’t heard anything”—to deny having heard anything, then you don’t have to be a seasoned journalist such as myself to know they are covering up a giant mutant flea rampage. My guess is they don’t want to scare off the seven or eight tourists who flock to the Midwest each summer looking for directions.
How serious is this problem? To help answer that question, the Sun has published a direct quotation from a “Cornbelt sheriff” who, as you can well imagine, asked not to be identified. He states that these giant fleas “are almost impossible to catch” because “they can jump 50 times their own height without warning.”
The Cornbelt sheriff does not specify why he would wish to catch the giant mutant flea or what kind of warning he feels the flea should give. (“Stand back! I am about to jump 50 times my own height!”) But he does point out that once the fleas have eaten all the smaller animals in the Midwest, they “will have to go somewhere else to eat the larger livestock, chicken ranches, city streets, and homes.”
“Little children will be completely at their mercy,” he notes.
I have mixed feelings about all this. On the one hand, I have never liked small dogs. There are these two in particular that live near me, both about the size of the wads of cotton they put in aspirin bottles to keep you from getting at the aspirin. They’re always yapping at me when I go by, and quite frankly the only thing I would enjoy more than watching them have all their life fluids sucked out by a giant mutant flea would be watching this happen in slow motion. But I draw the line at larger livestock, chicken ranches, and most little children.
Step One, of course, is to send Vice President Bush out there to the Midwest to frown at the affected area from a federal helicopter. Step Two is to develop a plan. I think we should try an approach that has been used on other insect pests in the past, namely: You get a hold of a whole bunch of the males, sterilize them, and drop them from airplanes onto the affected area, where they mate with the females, who don’t get pregnant, and there you are.
Of course, we have to solve some technical problems first. We need to figure out a way to sterilize giant mutant fleas. My guess is this job will call for highly paid personnel with soothing voices and tremendous manual dexterity. Also, we will need some kind of special parachute system, because otherwise we’re going to have giant, federally neutered fleas crashing through the roofs of cornbelt dwellings, thus further depressing the American farmer. Of course, all of this will cost money, which fortunately is the very thing the government will continue to relieve you of in large amounts under the president’s revolutionary new tax plan.
Booked To Death
I’m on a book tour. I’m going on radio and TV shows, being a Guest, selling a book. I’ve been on this tour two, maybe three weeks now. Maybe 10
weeks. Hard to tell. Been in a lot of time zones. Been on a lot of planes. Had a lot of complimentary honey-roasted peanuts whapped onto my tray table by hostile flight attendants. “Would you care for some peanuts, sir?” WHAP. Like that. The flight attendants hate us passengers, because we’re surly to them because our flight is delayed. Our flight is always delayed. The Russians will never be able to get their missiles through the dense protective layer of delayed flights circling over the United States in complex, puke-inducing holding patterns.
Our flight is also always very crowded. This is because 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. People are flying across the country for less than you paid for your six-week-old corn muffin at the airport snack bar. Anybody can afford to fly these days. You see Frequent Flyers with bare feet and live carry-on chickens.
And so the planes are crowded and noisy and late, and everybody hates everybody. If armed terrorists had tried to hijack 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.
Me, I eat the roll. Got to eat. Got to keep my strength up, on the book tour, so I can be perky when I get interviewed by the cheerful talk-show host. You want to sound as perky and enthusiastic as possible, on a book tour, so your listening audience won’t suspect that you really, deep down inside, don’t want to talk about your book ever ever ever again. You have come to hate your book. Back at the beginning, you kind of liked it, but now you think of it as a large repulsive insect that cheerful hosts keep hauling out and sticking in your face and asking you to pet.
But you do it, because the alternative is gainful employment. You put on your perky face, and you chat with the host about why you wrote the book. Why you wrote it, of course, is money. I’m very up front about this. “Buy my book,” I always advise the listening audience. “Or just send me some money in a box.”
I’ve had some fun times, on my various book tours. The most fun was when I was promoting a book about do-it-yourself home repair. This book was, of course, totally worthless, not a single fact in it, but I ended up on a whole bunch Of radio shows where the hosts, who had not had time to look at the book personally, thought I had written a real book about home repair. So the interviews went like this:
HOST: Dave, what’s the best place to add insulation?
ME: Bob, I recommend the driveway.
HOST: Ha ha! Seriously, Dave.
ME: I am serious, Bob.
HOST: My guest has been Dave Barry.
I have also been on some very interesting TV shows. I was on a show in Cleveland where the other guests were a sex therapist and a Swedish gynecologist, who were supposed to have a sensitive discussion about the Male Perspective on sexuality with an all-male audience that had been bused in especially for the show. it turned out, however, that there was also beer on the bus, so the Male Perspective on sexuality consisted almost entirely of hooting and snickering. Somebody would ask the sex-therapist where the “G-spot” was, and she’d start to answer, and somebody in the back would yelclass="underline" “It’s in Germany!” Then there would be a violent eruption of hoots and snickers and we’d break for a commercial.
Recently, in Boston, I was on a show where the other two guests were—this is true—a police officer who explained how to avoid getting your purse snatched, and a woman named “Chesty Morgan” who once served in the Israeli army and currently dances topless and has the largest natural bosom in the world. She said she wears a size double-P bra. She has it made specially in Waco, Texas. She has a very interesting and tragic life story, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the near future, she comes out with a book.