Mr Hyperbole, Dave Barry, sounds off on 2003

These paragraphs made me laugh. Source: 2003: A Dave odyssey

Can young people wear their pants any lower? Their waistbands are now at approximately knee level. Where will this trend end? The shins? The feet? Will young people eventually detach themselves from their pants altogether and just drag them along behind, connected to their ankles by a belt?

Late in the month, a massive “Storm of the Century” blizzard batters the Northeast with icy blasts and holds the region in its wintry grip, blanketing New England with white stuff as emergency crews struggle to keep the news media supplied with weather clichés.

In an inspiring story of courage, hiker Aron Ralston, trapped in a remote Utah canyon, frees himself by amputating his own right arm. Somehow he manages to fashion a tourniquet and hike back to civilization, where he is slapped with a $17 million negligence lawsuit by lawyers representing the arm.

In yet another sign of declining national educational standards, a 12-year-old Vermont girl wins the National Spelling Bee in Washington by spelling “horse.” She actually spells it “h-o-r-s,” but the judges rule that this is “close enough.”

On the literary front, the blockbuster bestseller of the year is the long-awaited fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter Reaches Puberty and Starts Taking Really Long Showers.

In a medical breakthrough, a Houston-based team of surgeons, working for 17 hours in a risky, first-of-its-kind operation, are able to separate a 21-year-old woman from her cellular telephone. She expires within hours, but doctors report that the phone is stable, and they expect its condition to improve dramatically “once it finds a new host.”

In immigration news, federal agents in 21 states descend on Wal-Mart stores that are allegedly employing illegal immigrants. The agents emerge hours later, glassy-eyed, holding bags filled with hundreds of dollars worth of bargains but unable to remember what they went in there for in the first place.

Ever notice how Dave Barry resembles Mike Myers?

Posted by jservice at January 02, 2004 09:55 PM