Dave Barry

So for a while there, Eddie was one happy ship's officer. But like most men whose brains are in their dicks, he was not really thinking things through. (Chapter 5)

It was the standard airport-security operation, which meant it appeared to have been designed to hassle law-abiding passengers just enough to reassure them, while at the same time providing virtually no protection against criminals with an IQ higher than celery. (Chapter 11)

Experiences like that led the band to develop the Retaliation Song. The way it worked was, if they were forced to perform a song they hated, they'd retaliate by playing a song that was even worse. For example, if the band had to play "My Way," it would counterattack with Bobby Goldsboro's sap-oozing piece of dreck, "Honey" (She wrecked the car and she was sad, and so afraid that I'd be mad, but what the heck!). One night, at a wedding reception, an extremely drunk man ordered the band to perform "The Ballad of the Green Berets," and then, a half hour later, demanded that it be played again. That night, Arrival struck back with the hydrogen bomb of retaliation songs: "In the Year 2525," the relentlessly ugly Zager and Evans song with the disturbingly weird lyrics (You won't find a thing to chew! Nobody's gonna look at you!). Some guests actually fled the room. (Chapter 3)

I am a huge fan of females as a gender, but they tend to display baffling lack of enthusiasm for violent destruction. Show me a group of individuals who are spending a Sunday afternoon entertaining themselves by using explosives to blow up, say, major appliances, and I will show you a group of males.

The main reason why Deeber's car ignition had never been wired to a bomb is that reporters have poor do-it-yourself skills. (Chapter 1)

• Under Florida’s “stand your ground” law, it is legal to shoot anybody for any reason as long as you are standing on the ground.

On any given night, Key West’s main party drag, lower Duval Street, makes Bourbon Street look like Sesame Street.

Even veteran air travelers find Miami International Airport disorienting. It's often crowded, and it seems to have been designed so that every passenger, no matter where he or she is coming from or going to has to jostle past every other passenger. The main concourse looks like a combination international bazaar and refugee camp. There are big clots of people everywhere: tour groups, school trips, salsa bands, soccer teams, vast extended families, all waiting for planes that will not leave for hours, maybe days. There aren't enough places to sit, so the clots plop down and sprawl on the mungy carpet, surrounded by Appalachian Foothill-sized mounds of luggage, including gigantic suitcases stuffed to bursting, as well as a vast array of consumer goods purchased in South Florida for transport back to Latin America, including TVs, stereos, toys, major appliances and complete sets of tires. Many of these items have been wrapped in thick cocoons of greenish stretch plastic to deter baggage theft, which is an important airport industry. Another one being the constant "improvements" to the airport, which seem to consist mainly of the installation of permanent-looking signs asking the public to excuse the inconvenience while the airport is being improved. The airport air smells of musty tropical rot, and it's filled with the sounds of various languages - Spanish predominantly, but also English, Creole, German, French, Italian, and perhaps most distinct of all, Cruise Ship Passenger. (Chapter 11)

Despite countless hours of practice, dozens of auditions, many artistic disputes, seven demo CDs, and two radical changes in hairstyle, Arrival never arrived. It wasn't that they were bad; it was just that, as they reluctantly came to understand, they really weren't anything special. They were competent. The problem was, there were competent bands everywhere. Competence wasn't the key to stardom; you needed something else. Whatever it was, Arrival didn't have it. (Chapter 3)

Monica was glad Walter was married, so she didn't have to go into any of the other reasons she didn't want to get involved with him, such as the fact that he had the intellectual depth of mayonnaise. (Chapter 7)

To begin with, sponges are not plants. They are multicelled animals, although they have no mouth, internal organs, brains or nervous systems. They cannot move, but they can reproduce, eat, grow and obtain Florida driver’s licenses.

I’m kidding about that last one, sort of.

As it happens, the Herk household did have a dog, named Roger. Roger was the random result of generations of hasty, unplanned dog sex: Among other characteristics, he had the low-slung body of a beagle, the pointy ears of a German shepherd, the enthusiasm of a Labrador retriever, the stubby tail of a boxer, and the intelligence of celery. (Chapter 2)