Barry Dave - Dave Barry talks back

I am always getting letters from people who want my job.

Dave, they start out. They always call me Dave.

Dave, they say, I want your job, because my current job requires me to be a responsible person doing productive work, whereas your job requires you mainly to think up booger jokes.

This kind of thoughtless remark really gets my dander up. Because although the reading public sees only the end product of my work, the truth is that I often spend many hours researching a particular topic before I make booger jokes about it. Take the Middle East. This is a very troubled region, a region fraught with complex and subtle issues of major international significance. You cant just sit down and dash off a column that says:

The Middle East! Ha ha! What a bunch of boogerheads!

No, there is a lot more to it than that. As a respected commentator, I am expected to produce a column that is thoughtful, insightful, profound, andabove all800 and how come it is fraught with all these things, and what exactly we mean when we say our dander is up. According to the dictionary, dander means temper, which would make sense except that I distinctly remember that a former editor of mine named Bob Shoemaker used to wear a little medallion around his neck that said:

Bob said he wore this so that in case he was ever rendered unconscious in an accident, the paramedics would realize that they should not expose him to horse dander. But if the dictionary is correct, Bobs medallion was actually saying that he should not be exposed to angry horses. Youd think the paramedics would already know this. Youd think that one of the first rules they learn in Paramedic School is, Never expose an unconscious patient to an angry horse. Sheep, yes. We can all readily imagine situations where it would be necessary, even desirable, to expose an unconscious accident victim to an angry sheep. But as a respected commentator I am deeply concerned about this horse thing, which is just one more example of the kind of subtle and complex issue that we must come to grips with if we are ever to achieve any kind of meaningful understanding regarding these boogerheads in the Middle East.

Another question readers frequently ask is: Dave, what specific system of writing do you use?

Like many great writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky and William Shakespeare, I use the Two-Dog System of writing. This system gets its name from the fact that it involves two dogs, one of which is your main dog and the other of which is your emergency backup dog, in case for any reason your main dog is unavailable. My main dogs name is Earnest, and my emergency backup dog is named Zippy. Every morning I get my coffee and say: You want to go to WORK? And the two of them charge for the door. Sometimes they charge right into the door, because they have the combined IQ of mayonnaise.

So the three of us go to my office, where we all take our positions:

• I sit in front of the computer and try to have insights;

• Earnest lies directly under my desk and periodically emits aromas;

• Zippy lies several feet away, ready to step in and emit aromas if Earnest experiences technical difficulties.

That, along with occasionally barking insanely at invisible beings, is the sum total of the dogs contribution to the column effort. In the years we have worked together, neither dog, to the best of my recollection, has ever come up with a