European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - February 28, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse I ast laugh All wrapped up in moving into the new House Dave Barry recently i stood in the Kitchen of our new Home amid hundreds of cardboard boxes All helpfully labelled Beth and watched my wife Beth open a Cut through several layers of tape opened the Box flaps and pulled out an object that had been laboriously wadded up inside roughly 2,000 Square feet of White paper. She unwrapped it layer by layer until finally she got to the object that had been so carefully protected a Coffee Mug. With Coffee still in it. If you re wondering Why we packed a Mug with Coffee in it the answer is we arc not that stupid. We Are much stupider than that. What we did was pay somebody to do this. I am of course referring to moving professionals. They re All trained at a special school. Here s a Sam ple question from the final exam you arc packing up a customer s possessions and you find a human body with multiple Stab wounds. You should. Call an ambulance. B. Notify the police. C. Wad it up in White paper and stuff it in a Box. The Correct answer is professional movers wad everything in White paper. If in 1990, George Bush had sent in professional movers to re solve the Kuwait problem today the entire iraqi Mil itary Force tanks and ail would be individually wadded up inside several million cardboard boxes strewn All Over the desert each Box labelled with Only the word or possibly it would taks Divadi s to Unpi in army la � tech of in out to More Tor Porritt where the muck did they put the mimed men Thini t pitty much our situation we re in new extremely Box Mac nude House. We moved because our old House Gat whom cd by Hurricane Andrew. We thought about Fuin a i up but then we got Esti mates from contractors contractor of you be this us what contractor where the tree landed on this truss us houses have trusses contractor to his assistant. Go Back to the truck and fetch me More zeros for this estimate. It turned out that our old House needed major work. To get it Back to its original condition we would have had to go through a three step process step one we move out. Step two we move into temporary lodgings. Step three we die there of old age. The reason for step three is that major Home Ren ovations ask anybody who has been through them Are never completed within your personal life time. Major renovations Are something you do for posterity. Clergyman and so today we pay our last respects to a person who had a dream the dream that someday somehow her House would once again have working bathrooms. Roars of laughter from the audience especially the plumbing contractor so we decided to sell our House in what is legally known As whom cd the buyer who is named Frank was not troubled by this at All. Frank is a positive optimistic individual by which i mean he is clinically insane although of course i would never say this in print because he bought our House. Frank is totally unafraid of major Home renovations. He strides confidently around and says things like i m Gonna move the entire House next door for a few Days while i dig a new basement and then i m we Admire Frank s Zeal and we plan to say so at his funeral. Meanwhile we re adapting to our new House. We be never had a Brand new House before where everything works and the Walls and floors arc spot less and there is no lingering odor coming from be Hind the cabinets where apparently a mouse died. Don t worry Frank after a while you get used to it and so when we entered our new House for the first time As the owners we Felt a sense of euphoria that lasted for a full 10 seconds which is How Long it took for our Small auxiliary backup dog Zippy to locate a White carpet and poop on it. I am not making this up. I believe the sound of the door closing was still echoing through the empty House when Zippy let Loose. I Don t hold this against him. Inside his brain which is made of the same material As his toe nails he believed he was doing the right thing according to the Laws of dog logic As follows 1. It is bad to poop inside our House. 2. This is not our House. 3. Therefore this is a Good place to poop. We plan to do much More with our new Home. We re going to put gouges in the floors and we plan to do a lot with hand smudges. We like to think that in terms of our Basic decor theme Zippy set the tone. We can t wait to get started. We re looking for Ward to Many Happy years Here during which we Hope to eventually locate the Box containing our son. Trio Miami Herald military life in Europe by Charles Kaufman upcoming memorable firsts in the us military after the ban on Gays is removed the officers club the first tune a Gay officer asks the mule Post commander to dance. The officers club the first time a lesbian officer asks the Post commander s wife to dance. No or officers club the first time two Gay soldiers slow dance. As pan of the new Gay awareness military training the first ceremony for inductees into the homosexual military Hall of Fame the first Gay male soldiers seen at the pm trying on women s uniform items. T age sunday february 23, 1933
