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Authors: Larry Doyle

Deliriously Happy

BOOK: Deliriously Happy
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Deliriously
Happy

LARRY DOYLE

Dedication

For Julia Just

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

The Eight Ages of Happiness

Me: An Introduction

JOY

Fun Times!

Me v. Big Mike

My Pet Store

Sleeper Camp

Armchair Father

ECSTASY

Dating Tips

May We Tell You Our Specials This Evening?

Date with an Angel

Disengagements

Life Without Leann: A Newsletter

My Heart: My Rules

Ask the Eight Ball

GLEE

Portrait in Evil: My Story

Recent Advances in Interpersonal Grooming, If I Had My Way

Adventures in Experimentation

I Killed Them in New Haven

Are You Insane?

HIGH SPIRITS

Media Culpa

Local Wag

The Rest of the Story

Freelance File

Stop Me If You've Heard This One

Notes on My Next Bestseller

The Hot Book

Huck of Darkness

MERRIMENT

Let's Talk About My New Movie

You Asked for It

The Larry Doyle Story As Told to Larry Doyle

Last of the Cro-Magnons

An Open Letter to All Academy Members, Creative Artists, and Anyone Else Who Still Believes in Freedom of Expression

Why We Strike

t.V.

BLISS

We Request the Honor of Your Presence at GywnnandDaveShareTheirJoy.com
.

The Babyproofer

Whacking the Baby

Bad Dog

What Am I Going to Do with My Mega Millions?

ACCEPTANCE

Please Read Before Suing

Cigarette Brands Targeting Specialty Niches in an Increasingly Challenging Marketplace

I'm Afraid I Have Some Bad News

Breakfast Updates

Eulogy for Bob

RAPTURE

Then What?

Recent Supreme Court Decisions

Freezer Madness

Pop Corps

How to Handle Your Money

Thank You for Considering My Cult

Is There a Problem Here?

PIECES LEFT OUT OF THIS COLLECTION

You Won't Have Nixon to Kick Around Anymore, Dirtbag

Farewell, My Chubby

Protecting Your Baby Investment

Material

How to Talk to Your Dog

Acknowledgments

Addendum to the Acknowledgments

About the Author

Praise

Other Works

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Me: An Introduction

The first thing you need to know about me is you're standing too close. Put the book down and take a couple steps back, all right, friend?

It's for your own good. I am a man of powerful opinions, requiring strong gestures and sudden movements to make known, and I wouldn't want to see you hospitalized unnecessarily.

If you know me—which you don't, so don't pretend to your friends that you do, until you've read further—you know one thing: I'm against the war. As this volume goes to press, that includes all those Muslim wars, which I'm counting as one war. If some new wars have started in the last couple of weeks, I'm against those as well. I opposed the Vietnam War as a baby, and I believe I would have opposed the Korean War; I'll have to look it up someday and find out. Had I been around, I definitely would have opposed WWII. In hindsight, you can say it turned out all right, but we'll never really know how many lives could have been saved had we given appeasement a chance.

Nevertheless, I'm not an anti-Semite. I am an anti-anti-Semite. Unless that makes me a Semite. Then I'm something else.

Another thing about me: I support gay rights, even though I'm not gay, personally or professionally. Or secretly. I mean, I'm so heterosexual I can't even masturbate. But I believe whatever two guys want to do with each other's parts is fine, as long as I'm not in the room, and two gals as well, even if I am.

Also, I won't eat anything with a face that might recognize me. Neither will I eat anything with a name, be it Elsie, or Beauty, or Old Red. If I must eat an animal, I insist on being led to believe it died humanely, preferably by its own hand. I eat a lot of lemming (tastes like vole).

I won't wear fur on purpose. I believe Fur Is Murder, on account of the clever internal rhyme.

As far as evolution goes, I don't buy it. If chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing more than 98 percent of our DNA, you should be able to mate with them, but you can't. You really can't. I have a theory that we are evolved from cows and sheep, but I can't go into the details right now. It's in peer review.

Oh, and global warming is our single greatest challenge today, I believe. Along with fresh water. Plus religious extremism and renewable energy. And AIDS babies, natch. Yeah, sure, oppression of women/breast cancer, too. Those are all our single greatest challenges today. This I believe.

Of course what I believe doesn't matter. You just wasted a lot of time there. Because I'm a man of action. What I do is who I am, and I do a lot.

I don't carry cash, but if I did I would certainly share my hard-earned money with panhandlers and vagrants and the like. In lieu of payment, I offer smart career advice and motivational sayings.

For the past couple of years I've Gone Zero, as many big celebrities are doing. To reduce my carbon emissions, I've carved my name on that tree over there, and several others around the neighborhood. There's also this moss growing across my back and down my legs. I have to face south all the time, but I think our planet is worth it.

I recycle constantly. I eat out of garbage cans whenever there's nobody with a whisk broom around. I am also progressing in my goal of achieving zero net biomass. Hence the jars. The technology is not yet there to turn our urine into gasoline and excrement into some other wonderful thing, but when it is, I'll be ready. Also, it's not easy to fart into jars, but I'm getting good at it.

I don't wear hats. This is not a hat. It is my hair, woven into a porkpie. There's a difference.

When you invite me to your next dinner party, you should know that in addition to the above, I am conversant in the following topics: funny Bill Murray movies. And fair warning: if you seat me next to a precocious, talkative child, there will be punching.

Joy

Fun Times!

Do your kids like to have fun?

Come to Fun Times!
*

Do you like to watch your kids having fun?

Bring 'em to Fun Times!

Are your kids sullen, withdrawn, wearing a lot of black lately, and you, your life practically over, and for what?

For gosh sakes, get the whole family down to Fun Times!

Fun Times!'s “fine amusement dining” is the most fun you can have, legally, in the United States right now. Why spend thousands of dollars flying to Disney World when you can spend less than half of that indoors and malaria-free, within a day's drive of most cities?

To find the Fun Times! nearest you, simply get on your favorite highway and keep going until you hear the fun! Park in any of our outer lots and hop on the Jolly Trolley,
†
or walk on ahead if you prefer. Once you've reached the Fun Times! intake office, you will be asked to fill out a few simple waivers and financial disclosure forms.

BOOK: Deliriously Happy
13.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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