Why I Hate Straws

By Barry Parham

Online humorist Barry Parham unleashes this set of satire, humor, and indignations. His perorations poke at family, dating, politics, culture, good and bad decisions, and ferrets.

Says one reader: "His delivery is so slick, his punchlines so accessible...Parham proves that he really only needs one sentence to bring you to tears."

Includes the award-winning story "Driving Miss Conception."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Parham
• Release date: Jul 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452313788

Barry Parham

Barry Parham is the award-winning author of humor columns, essays and short stories. He is a recovering software freelancer and a music fanatic.Parham is the author of the 2009 sleeper, "Why I Hate Straws," his debut collection of humor and satire including the prize-winning stories, 'Going Green, Seeing Red' & 'Driving Miss Conception.'In October 2010, Parham published "Sorry, We Can't Use Funny," another award-winning collection of general-topic satire and humor, and the more targeted "Blush: Politics and other unnatural acts." He followed up in 2011 with "The Middle-Age of Aquarius," a growing-old-but-not-so-gracefully vehicle for the award-winners 'Comfortably Dumb,' 'Snowblind' and 'The Zodiac Buzz-Killer.'"Full Frontal Stupidity" (2012), Parham's 5th collection of humor, satire and observations, features more award-winning stories, including 'Skirts vs. Skins' and 'Scenes From a Maul.' He followed up the next year with a brace of collections, "Chariots of Ire" and "You Gonna Finish That Dragon?" and most recently published his 8th compilation, "Maybe It's Just Me."Parham's work has also been featured in three national humor anthologies:"My Funny Valentine" (2011)"Open Doors: Fractured Fairy Tales" (2012)"My Funny Major Medical" (2012)

Book preview

Distractions, Diversions, Detours

Headlines From The Aftermath

‘Favorite' is a Verb?

Rise, My People

Alaska's Fault: Bush's Fault?

Know Your Blood Typo!

Back At The Tok Kiosk's Mukluk Rack

Up The Holler A Piece

Things I've Learned From Television

Welcome to Charleston

Don't Touch That Dial!

Neighbors & Hoods

No Small Affair

The Tales of Luddite Johnson

20% Off With Their Heads!

Big Carl's Eventual Holiday

Staving Off Masculinity

Culture Shocks, Shocks, and a Lube

Unrealty

Going Green, Seeing Red

A Day in the Life

Feeding The Hand That Bites You

Memo From Management

Adam Smith, Revisited

Evil, Inc.

Calming the Waters

Look Sharp!

Lather, Rinse, Retreat

Varmint Grooming 101

You Want It When?

The Second Oldest Profession

Art Imitates Art

Our Foundering Fathers

If You Can't Say Anything Nice...

Did We Hear From Oprah?

Closing The Hasp On My Fannie Tarp

State 50.5

Head of the Country

For The Want Of A Nail...

Love Means Never Having To Recalibrate

Ale to the Chief

Looks Back, Peeks Ahead

The State vs. Winkie

Lip Service

The Importance Of Safe Sextants

Burgers, Beaches and Blue-Bloods

I, Robot, Do Solemnly Swear

Headlines From The Year 2025

Relationships & Other Collisions

On Being Avuncular

Mother of the Year(ling)

Driving Miss Conception

On Being an Island

Judy, Jeeves & Pearl

Mother's Whistler

...And Then He Hit Me

An Avuncular Afterword

The Girl For Me

Why I Hate Straws

Distractions, Diversions, Detours

Headlines From The Aftermath

I'm a watcher.

I watch people, I listen to people, and I watch people listen to people. And then, more often than my lawyer would like, I comment.

In support of this little life exercise, I have three things going for me:

I work from home, so the TV is always on

I have an excellent lawyer

Our planet, as presented on the news, is pretty much barking nuts

Sometimes I stare at the TV in disbelief. Sometimes I just lapse into a uncontrollable giggle. That's my burden. As with any professional, I face occupational hazards.

Recently, I was particularly fascinated to hear the Speaker of the House, a lime-sherbet-suit-wearing human, who's just a fate twist or two away from being our President, make headlines with this blisteringly acute observation: I'm not afraid of August. It's a month.

Clever girl. Mystery solved! And I hear the Calendar Czar will be debriefing her on June, too.

On TV, the President kept materializing in odd places like Advanced Lesion, Montana and Bullet Worship, Oregon, assuring all Americans the right to get sick for free, and explaining his plans to reduce costs by spending another trillion dollars.

But he made headlines when he claimed, at a town hall meeting in Upper Boarsocket, Vermont, that the AARP had endorsed his proposal. An indignant spokesman for the AARP said they had done no such thing, and was then arrested under the new fishy statutes. PETA immediately filed a discrimination suit, claiming gill bias.

White House mouthpiece and syntax murderer, Robert Gibbs, who apparently got his job solely due to his willingness to wear lime-sherbet-colored suits, offered an infallible legal defense: The President wasn't misleading; rather, he was just misspoking.

FoxNews itself became the news after being accused of firing little anger darts into the brains of Americans, resulting in massive fake dissent at town hall meetings. The news company fired back by generating a brand new FoxNews Alert graphic.

At a Texas town hall meeting, Congressperson Sheila Jackson Lee hit the headlines when she took a cell phone call while a constituent was in the middle of asking a question. Perhaps the selfless public servant was simply getting an update on the definition of June.

The entire US Government made headlines, thanks to an unknown pollster's revelation that 60% of Americans feared the government more than the big bad wolf. 25% of those polled were more afraid of drinking milk after the expiration date, and 10% think Bill O'Reilly IS the big bad wolf. 5% had no opinion, but I talked them into switching phone companies anyway.

Yessir. Barking.

And finally, as if my home state of South Carolina needed any more publicity just now, there was this shocker, breathlessly delivered by a local TV station's Hair Helmet:

A tractor-trailer hauling kitty litter has overturned, and traffic is at a standstill. Three EMS vehicles are on the scene, as well as a fire truck.

I can't wait to see the newspaper headlines for this one. While we wait for tomorrow's dawn, I'll suggest a few.

Headlines from the Aftermath

Incontinent Housepets Storm SC Community; One Really Slow Person Gored

Pity Is Pretty Itty Bitty For Kitty-Litter City

Kitty-Litter-Littered City Not Sitting Pretty

City Committee Pretty Bitter And Petty To See Little Itty Bitty Kitty-Litter Budget Kitty

I Pity This Pretty Petty Anti-Kitty-Litter City, Mourns Pretty Sitting Kitty-Litter Committee’s Betty 'Kitty' Dittey

EMS Gets Catty At City Committee About Nutty City Kitty-Litter Potty Duty; Committee Adjourns For Cutty

Witty Treasury Sec Geithner Blames Pouty Lobby For Empty Kitty Quasi-Probity; Levies Duty On Citi

Obama Ready To Rally Shovel-Ready Anti-Kitty-Litter-City Deputy Committee; Cites Mighty Hoity-Toity Deity Duty

Folks, we'll be right back after this word from PETA!

‘Favorite' is a Verb?

To see what all the buzz is about, I recently joined a couple of 'social networking' sites, My-Space-Book-Face and Twitcher, or something like that. I was amazed at the number of subscribers (I call them the SocNets), and the amount of first-hand, third-rate, second-by-second information they all feel driven to share.

You can instantly communicate with your friends, and let them know what you're doing, or wish you were doing, or are about to be doing, or just finished doing, or what you think they ought to be doing. Of course, the simple concept of friends isn't enough, so you can also share your intimate metabolic updates with communities, interest groups, corkboard watchers, wall-writers, flair-share gangs, communal fan societies, imaginary characters, dead people, etc.

The SocNets are, naturally, generating their own jargon, and re-generating it daily. So we now have new, ear-grinding argot like Please friend me and I favorited her yesterday. Now, I understand that ours is an evolving language, and that change is inevitable, but I wrong this.

The interface offers a little box, and you're urged to type what you're doing at that exact moment in time. And I mean to tell you that these entries are of the earth-shattering breaking news category. I certainly will sleep better, knowing that TornJeans is about to have some soup YUM or that TeethSpackle is almost home.

The little box, trying to be helpful, always prepends your pending update with your username and the word is (ex: Barry is…), so the SocNet need waste no time and can simply start typing their critical personal update.

But most SocNets are in such a hurry to keep their friends up-to-date on the current state of their endocrine system, they haven't figured out that the is can be replaced with a more accurate tense, or different verb, or none at all. So we end up reading updates like Buckfuller Minster is now I'm really mad and RabidSocks is are you coming or not?

The interface even tags each SocNet's update with a last updated bit - last updated 4 seconds ago, 2 hours ago, yesterday, last week, during the Pre-Cambrian, etc. That way, enterprising criminals can easily synchronize their home invasions, simply by calculating how long ago CuteSingleUnarmedBitsy is going to bed now.

Here's a representative sample of 5 minutes with the SocNets:

Lisa is going to sleep!

Cagney is has to work today. :-0

Shmel is working.

Cagney is my emoticon just grew a moustache!!! :-(0

PaulPot is having a cup of coffee!

Neurosa is are you a fan of the Monkees!

Merla is nite nite!

NoMeasurableEEG likes this post.

Lambskin is inhaling. (4 minutes ago)

ShepherdFilth likes this post.

Lambskin is exhaling. (1 minutes ago)

Lambskin is unconscious!!!

Perky is INVITES YOU TO BE AGAINST CANCER!

MayoClinicNurse likes this post.

Moira is pick up Little Al from soccer practice!!!

ClamNeck is INVITES YOU TO BE AGAINST PERKY!

Lorgnette is on a conference call!!

Virgin Tanktop is thinking!

Bebe is Go Tigers.

Snordner is ROTFLMAO!

NormanBates is murdering his mother!

Okay, I'm un-logging on now. If you need me again, fax my iPhone's twitter address at the facebook phone number listed on my gmail wall avatar's alternate screenshot. And leave a message at the sound of the picture.

Rise, My People

I build web sites. That makes me smarter than you.

True, there are doubters. Skeptics. My family, for instance, who would like to demand a recount. After all, they are the nurturers who have watched me whine and yell, pout, drool, forget to tie my shoes, and run into things. Not to mention the stuff I did as a child.

But I must be smarter than other people, because other people contact me about web sites, and they listen to me, and then they pay me actual cash money. My old college roommate, Chris, says he really wants to meet these people. Chris sells hedge funds.

That's what I do. I build and sell web sites. I line up electrons and make them behave, and people pay me to do it. As a result, I now have a nice house, and an ego large enough to be regulated by Obama's Theme Park Czar.

You may be thinking, though probably not, how does a mere mortal build a web site? Well, it's really quite simple. I type normal human words, wrap them in weird code words, and suddenly you're able to download air-brushed pictures of moody Nordic women.

Impressive, eh? Thanks to me, and people like me, and Al Gore, you are ONLINE. From your home, you can access worlds of information, galaxies of opinions, and about 8 actual facts. You can check your local weather, in case you never bought a TV, or don't own a window. You can have a $2 gadget delivered, after shipping, for $28.95. You can receive the same joke 114 times from your friends. You can make new friends, like the attractive, eager, coquettish Amber, a raven-haired, free-thinking, Ivy League law student, who is actually my old college roommate, Chris.

Thanks to me, you can get emails from deposed third-world royalty, eager to wire millions of Americans dollar to your personally account in a secureness transaction. And you can sign up for an alert so you won't miss the DVD release of When Cannibal Wrestlers Go Wild From Beyond The Grave While Zombie Miami Cops Race Teenage Nurses From Outer Space, Volume IX, starring John Travolta as Caligula and Adam Sandler as the Florida Turnpike.

Oh, stop it. You're welcome, already. All that bowing and genuflecting. Stop it.

In fact, I'll share some more secrets about my rise to greatness. Over time, I've cultivated some critical techniques, and carpal tunnel. To prepare for my career, I've