Pétanque's the best, bar none
I discovered the perfect sport. You don't have to be in great shape to play it. You barely have to stand. You're thinking: golf. Wrong. Compared to the sport I'm talking about, golf is brutal, sometimes forcing you to physically walk 15 feet from your cart to your ball. Whereas the sport I'm talking about involves almost no walking, and in fact little movement of any kind, except for signaling the bartender. The most strenuous part of this sport is pronouncing its name: ``pétanque.''
( DAVE BARRY, 01/04/2004 03:01 AM EST)

2003: A Dave odyssey
It was the Year of the Troubling Question. The most troubling one was: What the heck happened to all those weapons of mass destruction that were supposed to be in Iraq? Apparently there was an intelligence mix-up. As CIA director George Tenet noted recently, ''Our thinking now is that the weapons of mass destruction might actually be in that other one, whaddycallit, Iran. Or Michigan. We're pretty sure the letter ''i'' is involved.''
( DAVE BARRY , 12/28/2003 03:01 AM EST)

Got rig envy? Try Viagra
Let's say you're a middle-aged guy. It's a Sunday afternoon, and you're planning to relax by watching a little football, defined as ''11 consecutive hours of football.''
( DAVE BARRY, 12/21/2003 03:01 AM EST)

Feeling sick? Blame your computer!
It's time once again for Keyboard Korner, the computer-advice column that uses simple, ''jargon-free'' terminology that even an idiot like you can grasp; the column that shows you how to ''take command'' of your personal computer, if necessary by reducing it to tiny smoking shards with a hatchet.
( DAVE BARRY, 12/14/2003 03:01 AM EST)

A forest of lights can only mean that it's Christmas in Miami
I love Christmas in Miami. Oh, sure, it's not like Christmas up north. We don't have Jack Frost nipping at our nose: We have Harvey Heat Rash nipping at our underwear regions. And we never look outside on Christmas morning to discover that the landscape has been magically transformed by a blanket of white, unless a cocaine plane has crashed on our lawn.
( DAVE BARRY , 12/07/2003 03:01 AM EST)

It's windy under the sea
A question that we have all asked ourselves hundreds of times is: How do herring communicate? I'm pleased to report that we may, at last, be getting closer to an answer, thanks to an important recent discovery by fish scientists. This discovery involves a bodily function that some readers may find distasteful to read about (even though I bet they do it) so before I tell you what it is, here is a:
( DAVE BARRY, 11/30/2003 03:01 AM EST)

We've got the dirt on guy brains
I like to think that I am a modest person. (I also like to think that I look like Brad Pitt naked, but that is not the issue here.) There comes a time, however, when a person must toot his own personal horn, and for me, that time is now.
( DAVE BARRY, 11/23/2003 03:01 AM EST)

Flu season: Time to ship the kids away
Winter's here, and you feel lousy: You're coughing and sneezing; your muscles ache; your nose is an active mucus volcano. These symptoms -- so familiar at this time of year -- can mean only one thing: Tiny fanged snails are eating your brain.
( DAVE BARRY, 11/16/2003 03:01 AM EST)

Scientists launching spacey idea
Just when you think all the great ideas have been thought of, scientists dream up a concept so radical, and so innovative, that you wonder if they've been smoking reefers the size of Yule logs.
( DAVE BARRY, 11/09/2003 03:01 AM EST)

This just in: We all go nuts for local news
I have here a news item that alert reader Diane Moore clipped out of the Oct. 21, 2002, issue of the Pana, Ill., News-Palladium (actual motto: ``Containing More News About the Pana Trade Area Than All Other Newspapers in the World'').
( DAVE BARRY, 11/02/2003 03:01 AM EST)

Art of piñata bashing
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction: Were they a real threat? Did they, in fact, exist? If so, will they ever be found? Beats me. Now that I've cleared that up, I'd like to devote what little space I have left to the issue of piñata safety.
( DAVE BARRY, 10/26/2003 03:01 AM EST)

PRO PLAYER STADIUM
Take that, N.Y.: We have snook and mullet
And so the Fall Classic has returned to the place where it truly belongs -- to historic Pro Player Stadium, which has hosted the World Series every six years, without fail, dating to 1997.
( DAVE BARRY, 10/22/2003 02:01 AM EST)

Web takes a byte out of vampire stereotype
Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowperson are starting to appear in the store displays at the mall, and you know what that means!
( DAVE BARRY, 10/19/2003 02:01 AM EST)

THE WORLD SERIES
It's the Marlins against the world
OK, Marlins fans: We have to go through this one more time. I'm talking about getting disrespected by the fans of the other team, because we're not deserving enough.
( 10/18/2003 02:01 AM EST)