The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass (7 page)
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Authors: Bill Maher
Tags: #Humor, #Form, #Political, #General, #Topic, #Political Science, #Essays
BOOK: The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass
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New Rule:
Stacking cups is not a sport. ESPN has been airing the World Sport Stacking Championships, where kids stack and unstack pyramids of plastic cups at lightning speed. It’s all the pageantry of Little League combined with all the suspense of watching someone unload a dishwasher. Here’s how you know a skill isn’t really a sport: when “turning pro” means you’re a barback.
COMPUTER CRASHStacking cups is not a sport. ESPN has been airing the World Sport Stacking Championships, where kids stack and unstack pyramids of plastic cups at lightning speed. It’s all the pageantry of Little League combined with all the suspense of watching someone unload a dishwasher. Here’s how you know a skill isn’t really a sport: when “turning pro” means you’re a barback.
New Rule:
Instead of getting me the new steering-wheel desk for my birthday, save the $19.99 and just write “I hope you die” on a card.
CONDOMNATIONInstead of getting me the new steering-wheel desk for my birthday, save the $19.99 and just write “I hope you die” on a card.
New Rule:
Condoms are not sex toys. Trojan has released a new line of condoms that vibrate and heat up. Look, condoms keep people from getting AIDS and the clap. Haven’t they done enough? You want to improve condoms? Invent a wrapper guys can open before they lose their hard-on.
CORDON BLEWCondoms are not sex toys. Trojan has released a new line of condoms that vibrate and heat up. Look, condoms keep people from getting AIDS and the clap. Haven’t they done enough? You want to improve condoms? Invent a wrapper guys can open before they lose their hard-on.
New Rule:
Celebrity chefs have to get over themselves. At Mario Bata-li’s new $12 million New York City eatery, he’s serving a pasta dish with black truffles, cockscombs, and duck testicles. Okay, I’m trying to eat dinner, not pledge a fraternity. Though I must admit: The spit-roasted Latvian mongoose wrapped in the saffron-encrusted gingerweed served in a fifteenth-century Aztec war mask was
to die for.
CORK BLOCKERCelebrity chefs have to get over themselves. At Mario Bata-li’s new $12 million New York City eatery, he’s serving a pasta dish with black truffles, cockscombs, and duck testicles. Okay, I’m trying to eat dinner, not pledge a fraternity. Though I must admit: The spit-roasted Latvian mongoose wrapped in the saffron-encrusted gingerweed served in a fifteenth-century Aztec war mask was
to die for.
New Rule:
Don’t bring wine to my dinner party. Because then if you drink it, it’s not really a gift, is it? But if I choose a different wine, you’re thinking, “What the hell’s wrong with the bottle I brought?” And when you bring wine and then say, “I don’t drink,” what kind of condescending crap is
that
? Your cute little gift is such a minefield of potential awkwardness; thank God I’m already high.
CORN ON MACABREDon’t bring wine to my dinner party. Because then if you drink it, it’s not really a gift, is it? But if I choose a different wine, you’re thinking, “What the hell’s wrong with the bottle I brought?” And when you bring wine and then say, “I don’t drink,” what kind of condescending crap is
that
? Your cute little gift is such a minefield of potential awkwardness; thank God I’m already high.
New Rule:
Don’t try and make the boring parts of a horror movie scary by having someone—who’s not the killer—jump out and scare someone “just for fun.” It’s like making a porn movie where a hot-looking maid enters the scene and you think she’s going to blow you, but it turns out she’s just there to dust.
COURSE LOADDon’t try and make the boring parts of a horror movie scary by having someone—who’s not the killer—jump out and scare someone “just for fun.” It’s like making a porn movie where a hot-looking maid enters the scene and you think she’s going to blow you, but it turns out she’s just there to dust.
New Rule:
College students are allowed to masturbate. Towson University forced the editor of the student paper to resign after he ran a column about masturbation. I don’t know what’s sadder: that colleges can still be this squeamish or that college kids need to be taught how to rub one out. Besides, when it comes to jerk-off columnists, you just can’t beat George Will.
COUTURE CLASHCollege students are allowed to masturbate. Towson University forced the editor of the student paper to resign after he ran a column about masturbation. I don’t know what’s sadder: that colleges can still be this squeamish or that college kids need to be taught how to rub one out. Besides, when it comes to jerk-off columnists, you just can’t beat George Will.
New Rule:
You can’t wear a Che Guevara T-shirt with your designer jeans, unless you’re trying to be ironic. One is a symbol for impoverished workers, the other was sewn by them. You want to support the poor people in Latin America? Buy more coke.
You can’t wear a Che Guevara T-shirt with your designer jeans, unless you’re trying to be ironic. One is a symbol for impoverished workers, the other was sewn by them. You want to support the poor people in Latin America? Buy more coke.
PRIDE OF THE YANKEESNew Rule:
America must stop bragging it’s the greatest country on earth, and start acting like it. I know this is uncomfortable for the “faith over facts” crowd, but the greatness of a country can, to a large degree, be measured. Here are some numbers. Infant mortality rate: America ranks forty-eighth in the world. Overall health: seventy-second. Freedom of the press: forty-fourth. Literacy: fifty-fifth. Do you realize there are twelve-year-old kids in this country who can’t spell the name of the teacher they’re having sex with?America has done many great things. Making the New World democratic. The Marshall Plan. Curing polio. Beating Hitler. The deep-fried Twinkie. But what have we done for us lately? We’re not the freest country. That would be Holland, where you can smoke hash in church and Janet Jackson’s nipple is on their flag.And sadly, we’re no longer a country that can get things done. Not big things. Like building a tunnel under Boston, or running a war with competence. We had six years to fix the voting machines; couldn’t get that done. The FBI is just now getting e-mail.Prop 87 out here in California is about lessening our dependence on oil by using alternative fuels, and Bill Clinton comes on at the end of the ad and says, “If Brazil can do it, America can, too!” Since when did America have to buck itself up by saying we could catch up to Brazil? We invented the airplane and the lightbulb, they invented the bikini wax, and now they’re ahead?In most of the industrialized world, nearly everyone has health care and hardly anyone doubts evolution—and yes, having to live amid so many superstitious dimwits is also something that affects quality of life. It’s why America isn’t gonna be the country that gets the inevitable patents in stem cell cures, because Jesus thinks it’s too close to cloning.Oh, and did I mention we owe China a trillion dollars? We owe everybody money. America is a debtor nation to Mexico. We’re not on a bridge to the twenty-first century, we’re on a bus to Atlantic City with a roll of quarters. And this is why it bugs me that so many people talk like it’s 1955 and we’re still number one in everything.We’re not, and I take no glee in saying that, because I love my country, and I wish we were, but when you’re number fifty-five in this category, and ninety-two in that one, you look a little silly waving the big foam “number one” finger. As long as we believe being “the greatest country in the world” is a birthright, we’ll keep coasting on the achievements of earlier generations, and we’ll keep losing the moral high ground.Because we may not be the biggest, or the healthiest, or the best educated, but we always did have one thing no other place did: We knew soccer was bullshit. And also we had the Bill of Rights. A great nation doesn’t torture people or make them disappear without a trial. Bush keeps saying the terrorists “hate us for our freedom,” and he’s working damn hard to see that pretty soon that won’t be a problem.—October 27, 2006
New Rule:
Hillbillies can’t have computers. In Florida, a man named Joseph Langenderfer was so annoyed at his son for spending all his time playing computer games that he fired a gun at the computer. And if that’s not stupid enough, he
missed.
And you call yourself a Langenderfer? Come on, Joe, even Dick Cheney could hit a Dell Dimension from a distance of zero feet. When your patron saint Elvis shot at Robert Goulet on the TV, he
hit
Robert Goulet, he didn’t miss and wing a velvet painting. There’s nothing I hate more than a redneck that won’t make the effort to be the best redneck he can be.
CRASS REGISTERHillbillies can’t have computers. In Florida, a man named Joseph Langenderfer was so annoyed at his son for spending all his time playing computer games that he fired a gun at the computer. And if that’s not stupid enough, he
missed.
And you call yourself a Langenderfer? Come on, Joe, even Dick Cheney could hit a Dell Dimension from a distance of zero feet. When your patron saint Elvis shot at Robert Goulet on the TV, he
hit
Robert Goulet, he didn’t miss and wing a velvet painting. There’s nothing I hate more than a redneck that won’t make the effort to be the best redneck he can be.
New Rule:
No more gift registries. It used to be just for weddings. Now it’s for babies and new homes and graduations from rehab. Picking out the stuff you want and having other people buy it for you isn’t gift giving. It’s the white-people version of looting.
CREDIT CANARDNo more gift registries. It used to be just for weddings. Now it’s for babies and new homes and graduations from rehab. Picking out the stuff you want and having other people buy it for you isn’t gift giving. It’s the white-people version of looting.
New Rule:
Stop saying “we” got Osama. “We” didn’t do anything. “We” were watching
The Celebrity Apprentice
and eating Funyuns in our sweatpants. SEAL Team 6 did the killing, with money we borrowed from Beijing, which our grandchildren will have to pay back. So it was a joint Navy SEALs/People’s Bank of China/grandchildren operation.
CROCKTAILStop saying “we” got Osama. “We” didn’t do anything. “We” were watching
The Celebrity Apprentice
and eating Funyuns in our sweatpants. SEAL Team 6 did the killing, with money we borrowed from Beijing, which our grandchildren will have to pay back. So it was a joint Navy SEALs/People’s Bank of China/grandchildren operation.
New Rule:
An appletini is not a martini. A martini is gin, vermouth, and an olive. An appletini is just something a sex predator invented to hide the taste of the roofie.
CRULLER INTENTIONSAn appletini is not a martini. A martini is gin, vermouth, and an olive. An appletini is just something a sex predator invented to hide the taste of the roofie.
New Rule:
I don’t know how to fix the “donut hole” in Medicare, but the first step to better health might be: Stop seeing everything as a donut.
CUERVO GOLDI don’t know how to fix the “donut hole” in Medicare, but the first step to better health might be: Stop seeing everything as a donut.
New Rule:
You can’t get mad about Applebee’s serving a toddler a margarita unless you’ve ever tried to eat at Applebee’s sober. That’s right, some kid was served what can only be called a “Very Happy Meal,” and nobody noticed until he started yelling, “Wait, hold up, this is my jam!” Here’s how you can tell you’re in a bad restaurant: When you call an ambulance and ask it to pick you up around the corner, at Chili’s.
DAFFY FUCKYou can’t get mad about Applebee’s serving a toddler a margarita unless you’ve ever tried to eat at Applebee’s sober. That’s right, some kid was served what can only be called a “Very Happy Meal,” and nobody noticed until he started yelling, “Wait, hold up, this is my jam!” Here’s how you can tell you’re in a bad restaurant: When you call an ambulance and ask it to pick you up around the corner, at Chili’s.
New Rule:
Guys have to stop saying that crazy women are the best in bed. I’m sorry, but half an hour of great sex does not make up for twenty-three and a half hours of weeping, setting the pillows on fire, and coming at you with a butcher knife. And conversely, women have to stop saying the best sex is with “bad boys.” If that’s true, then why aren’t you fantasizing about Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein?
DAIRY ERRGuys have to stop saying that crazy women are the best in bed. I’m sorry, but half an hour of great sex does not make up for twenty-three and a half hours of weeping, setting the pillows on fire, and coming at you with a butcher knife. And conversely, women have to stop saying the best sex is with “bad boys.” If that’s true, then why aren’t you fantasizing about Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein?
New Rule:
Americans have to come up with a better cheese to represent the nation than American cheese. I’m not even sure American cheese is cheese. I think it’s aged Jell-O. And it doesn’t need to be individually wrapped in plastic, either. You’re thinking of condoms.
DAS BOOTYAmericans have to come up with a better cheese to represent the nation than American cheese. I’m not even sure American cheese is cheese. I think it’s aged Jell-O. And it doesn’t need to be individually wrapped in plastic, either. You’re thinking of condoms.
New Rule:
She gained weight; she lost weight. She’s playing an illiterate with an accent in a Holocaust movie. She’s taking her clothes off in harsh light, crying, wearing old-lady makeup. For the love of God, can we give Kate Winslet her Oscar so we can all get on with our lives?
DATE CRIMEShe gained weight; she lost weight. She’s playing an illiterate with an accent in a Holocaust movie. She’s taking her clothes off in harsh light, crying, wearing old-lady makeup. For the love of God, can we give Kate Winslet her Oscar so we can all get on with our lives?
New Rule:
If you dragged your man to
Eat, Pray, Love
this summer, he gets to take you to a movie called
Football, Jerk Off, Nap.
If you dragged your man to
Eat, Pray, Love
this summer, he gets to take you to a movie called
Football, Jerk Off, Nap.
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