Pharyngula got a small link from Dave Barry today. It’s one word (“YIKES”, which seems appropriate), but I have a dream that someday I will get a whole sentence. And it will be funny.
Oh yes, it will be funny.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I thought he had retired?
He should have retired about 15 years ago, when he stopped being funny.
He retired from his weekly column. He’s still blogging and still writes novels and the occasional column on special occasions.
And as always, he’s still running for president.
One of his commenters couldn’t follow the link here because it was blocked. Was it the goddless liberalism of the foul oaths that trigged the filter?
Dave Barry can be funny. He wrote a novel once and misidentified the toad with psychoactive secretions as the cane toad Bufo Marinus. I often wondered how many people got poisoned as a result.
sailor, Bufo marinus can indeed get you high (for lack of a better term, “bufoed” maybe). Haven’t you ever seen the movie Cane Toads?
And you Dave Barry haters can bite me.
Have never heard about Dave Barry before, and reading his wikipedia entry made me none the wiser (nor much better informed)
You don’t really want to be famous, do you PZ? Having to hang around at all those chi-chi engagements with the likes of Brangelina and Gene Shalit, followed by paparazzi?
I’d hate for one of us to have to accost you in public, saying “What’s happened to you, man? You used to keep it real. You’ve changed, man, you’ve changed.”
Since Darwinism, which has more holes than you can drive a truck through, and atheism isn’t exactly funny, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting until Dave Barry recognizes you the next time.
ps: I must say, those Squid creatures are so beautiful it is laughable that anyone could imagine they got here by accident.
“it is laughable that anyone could imagine they got here by accident.”
Certainly right about that. Which is why no one is saying it.
I’ve always thought Dave Barry was hilarious. He’s got great timing to his writing, and this delicious way of bringing some ridiculous thing back at the least expected moment.
I’m a big Dave Barry fan as well. I particularly like his book The Taming Of The Screw. The chapter about getting rid of pests is great.
Hey, Brownian, should I expect Brangelina to call because I got a passing mention by a humor columnist? Their standards can’t have gotten so low, but I guess I better go brush the food particles out of my beard and trim my toenails, just in case.
It’s satire, Brian.
Crap, sorry. At first i thought it was, but then i went to the blog, and got all confused.
I enjoyed the movie version of Big Trouble (too bad its release date was Sept 14, 2001), and his Guide to Bad Gifts always makes me laugh.
“sailor, Bufo marinus can indeed get you high (for lack of a better term, “bufoed” maybe). Haven’t you ever seen the movie Cane Toads?
And you Dave Barry haters can bite me. ”
Sven you are wrong – try scraping some toad extract, eating and you will see. Biologists don’t use movies as evidence. There has been a lot of confusion about this. But the real toad… No I wont tell you about the real toad they are cool as they are rather than scraped clean.
Well, a mention by Dave Barry is only the first step; the next is a short-lived sitcom called The Devil Went Down to Morris starring Rip Torn as you and David Hyde Pierce as the devil, a non-existent entity who only appears at the most inopportune times. Hilarious hijinks ensue as the two of you are forced to room together when a runaway bulldozer demolishes your houses (the pilot guest stars Christopher Hitchens and the Dalai Lama as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern-esque construction workers). The show will earn a Eugenie, presented by the National Center for Science Education for “excellence in the portrayal of issues in science in a drama or comedy series.”
You’d better thank us little people when you’re nominated for an Emmy as creative consultant on the show.
I’ve read a book by him, in German. It’s a short explanation of America and a few other things, and makes me laugh on every page. Strangely, the original title is “Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltline”. The German title — as usual a completely independent invention — is better: it retranslates as “The axis of dumb”.
I’ve read a book by him, in German. It’s a short explanation of America and a few other things, and makes me laugh on every page. Strangely, the original title is “Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltline”. The German title — as usual a completely independent invention — is better: it retranslates as “The axis of dumb”.
Kristjan Wager at #7:
I find him hilarious. languagelog has some good Dave Barry stuff, especially juicy if you’re a lingustics dilettante like me.
Sven, I had to run off. Back to Bufo Marinus and the mistaken Dave Barry who would NEVER kiss a toad.
PZ will tell you biologists are cool. They are, but there are a far cooler bunch of scientists called ethnobotanists. These guys get to put on shirts and ties and take drugs with people living without running water and McDonalds. They also understand the chemical structures of these drugs. The man who ran down the truth about Buffo Marinus was Wade Davis, and his paper is here.
http://www.erowid.org/archive/sonoran_desert_toad/davisWeil.htm
But if you can ever find his long essay about this, which goes into the history of the magic toad myth and how the FBI got pulled in, you should read it. It is hillarious.
Pony, pony, pony.
Accuracy aside, Dave Barry was definitely funny, though I don’t particularly care for his blog. Pointing at odd things and saying “oh no, Hide!” isn’t quite up to his old standards.
“Biologists don’t use movies as evidence.”
huh. And here I thought I was one. (aside: it’s really a good idea to avoid the appearance of condescension when conversing with people you don’t know) I’m not sure The Vaults of Erowid count as peer-reviewed primary literature either, btw.
Thanks for the interesting link, though. A bit of Googling suggests, however, that it’s not the last word on the subject–the psychoactivity of bufotenin is hotly debated (a debate to which I have little interest in contributing), and of course toad venom contains all sorts of other substances, including serotonin.
p.s. I am in fact familiar with Bufo alvarius; have even found them in the wild. You?