Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States Read Online Free PDF

people engaging in inhumane scientific research during the colonial era. Another person doing this was Benjamin Franklin, who, in a famous experiment, sought to prove his theory that if you flew a kite in a rainstorm, a huge chunk of electricity would come shooting down the string and damage your brain. Sure enough, he was right, and he spent the rest of his days making bizarre, useless, and unintelligible statements such as: “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Eventually he became so dodderingly pathetic that he had to be placed in charge of the U.S. Postal Service. Also around this time women and minority groups were accomplishing a great many achievements.
     
    But getting back to the Boston Patriots: Later that night, they boldly carried out Bob’s bold plan of dressing up as Native Americans and throwing tea into the harbor, but for some reason this did not result in Independence. “Maybe we should also toss in some lemon,” somebody suggested. And so they did this, and then they tried some Sweet ‘n’ Low; still no sign of Independence. Also the harbor was starting to look like a toxic-waste dump, which did not go unnoticed by early ancestors of future president George Herbert Walker Piedmont Harrington Armoire Vestibule Bush.
     
    This angered the king, so he ordered Parliament to pass the Stamp Act, under which every time the colonists made a purchase, the cashier would give them some stamps, and they had to paste these into books, which was even more boring than churning butter. When the colonists had acquired a certain number of stamps, they were required to go down to the Royal Stamp Redemption Center and exchange them for cheap cookware (4.5 million) or tacky folding card tables (13 billion). As you can imagine, this was less than popular with the colonists, whose anger was eloquently expressed by Tom Paine in his fiery pamphlet Common Sense, which, in its most famous passage, states: “How many fondue sets does any one colonial family need?”
     
    This further enraged the king, who, as you have probably gathered by now, had the political savvy of a croissant. He ordered Parliament to pass the Irritation Acts, whose entire purpose was to make life in the colonies even more miserable. These included:
    1. The Sneeze Shield Act, requiring that all colonial salad bars had to have
    shields suspended over them—allegedly for “sanitary” purposes, but
    actually intended to make it difficult for short colonists to reach the
    chick-peas. 2. The Pill Blockade Act, requiring that colonial aspirin bottles had to come
    with wads of Cotton stuffed in the top, making the aspirin virtually
    inaccessible, especially to colonists with hangovers. 3. The Eternal Container Act, requiring that colonists who purchased
    appliances had to save the original packing cartons forever and ever,
    passing them down through the generations, or else they would void their
    warranties.
    All of these factors caused the tension in the colonies to mount with each passing day.
     
    It was amid this climate of rising tension and anger, with a 50 percent chance of lingering afternoon and evening violence, that the First Continental Congress was held. It met in Philadelphia, and its members, realizing that the actions they took in this hour of crisis could very well determine the fate of the New World, voted, after many hours of angry debate, to give themselves a pay raise. There was no turning back now. Clearly, the stage had been set for the Discussion Questions.
     
    DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
    1. Do you think Unitas should have started for the Colts? 2. What the hell are chick-peas, anyway?

CHAPTER Six
Kicking Some British Butt
    The Revolutionary War began with the famous Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, immortalized in the well-known verse:
    Out of the bed and onto the floor; Fifty-yard dash to the bathroom door!
    Whoops! Our mistake. This verse comes from the famous song “Midnight Attack of Diarrhea,” which used to absolutely slay us when we