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| Not a splinter in her back! |
1 If you try hard enough, you can outrun an explosion. If it lifts you off your feet, and throws you into the dirt, your back will be unaffected by the flying shrapnel.
2 If your town is threatened by an imminent natural disaster or killer beast, the mayor's first concern will be the tourist trade or his forthcoming art exhibition.
3 Natural disasters only occur after the local mayor scoffs at the possibility.
4 If an expert makes a prediction and is disbelieved, then it will come to pass exactly as he predicted. If he makes a prediction and is believed, it won't happen.
5 Women staying in a haunted house should investigate any strange noises while wearing their most revealing underwear.
6 Women's skin and hair can't be damaged by natural disasters, though their clothing can be shredded -- except for the bits required for minimal decency, which are made from completely indestructible fabric. The same rule applies to a female TV reporter.
7 If a man and a woman are exposed to the same conditions and the same environment, the man will need to wear more clothing than the woman.
8 If a man and a woman meet under circumstances under which any two normal people would instantly hate each other, they will marry before the picture is over.
9 Deadly reptiles will always attack a woman first, even if she's in the presence of thirty men.
10 Women are immortal unless they take off their shirts or they're ugly.
11 If a woman takes a bath, bubbles will cover the personal parts. If she takes a shower and reveals her personal parts, she will die.
12 If a blonde and a brunette are in equal peril, the brunette will die.
13 White characters have the best survival rate.
14 High class strippers with a heart of gold, will, if the plot demands it, turn out to have specialized technical skills and abilities.
15 Most human action is initiated by shy loners.
16 All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off. It is always important for the hero to debate for almost the entire duration of the count-down before cutting the red wire - at 01 seconds to go; and it will be the right wire to cut.
17 It's easy to pull the pin on a grenade with your teeth.
18 An explosive device capable of leveling a large office building will fit inside a toolbox or small backpack. Any grenade will set off a fiery explosion at least 100 feet high.
19 Potentially fatal attacks are always preceded by a false alarm a few seconds earlier.
20 Any lock can be picked by a credit card or a paper clip in seconds -- unless it's the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.
21 Cars that crash will almost always burst into flames.
22 A million dollars in cash or cocaine will invariably take up exactly the amount of space available in your briefcase.
23 The only people who ride city busses are "victims."
24 The universal medical procedure is defibrillation. Any time an EMT appears in a scene he/she will defibrilate someone before going back home. ER doctors defibrilate all patients, regardless of complaint.
25 If defibrillation doesn't work, the best way to revive someone whose heart has stopped is to scream "
You can't do this to me! I love you, goddammit!" at them.
26 There are only a few real medical problems. Cancer means "
I am being taken out of the plot soon and must tie up my affairs." Brain injuries and tumors mean the plot is going to hinge on amnesia. Bad skin problems signify the same character constellation that Elizabethans associated with bastardy.
27 A cup of black coffee/splash of cold water in face is enough to render the most inebriated person stone cold sober and capable of running a four minute mile.
28 Creepy music coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.
29 All minorities possess mystical knowledge. If they wind up in a fight where their choice of method is either Western technology or somekinda mystical tribal thing, the fight cannot end until the former has failed them and the latter has been invoked.
30 The Chief of Police is always black.
31 If an investigation proves dfficult, a Chief of Police will either suspend his star detective or give him 48 hours to finish the job. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.
32 Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.
33 During all police investigations it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
34 Action heroes never face charges for manslaughter or criminal damage despite laying entire cities to waste.
35 If you need to reload your gun, you will always have more ammunition -- even if you haven't been carrying any before now. If you are firing a revolver, you never have to reload.
36 The more people there are firing at you, the less likely they are to hit you.
37 You can only threaten someone with a gun if you are within arm's reach of them.
38 If a man with a machine gun and a man with a pistol have a gunfight, the man with the pistol will win.
39 One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one.
40 The world's most accurate, easy-to-use weapon is the .38 caliber revolver with a snub nose 3" barrel; it can kill a sniper on a rooftop 100 yards away.
41 Guns are like disposable razors. If you run out of bullets, just throw the gun away. You can always find a new one lying around the next time you need one. They are highly effective as missiles to throw at one's pursuer.
42 Give a man one gun and he's Superman. Give him two, and he's God.
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| Head shot, or foot shot, take your choice! |
43 No one ever aims at the legs of a monster that's chasing them. They just keep running away, pausing every now and then to pump bullets into its torso, until it overtakes and kills them. While running away from a pursuing vehicle, the vehicle traveling at 60 mph cannot catch up to a man running at 5 mph who insists on running in a straight line instead of turning into an alley or off the highway.
44 No matter how dead you think you've killed a bad guy, he can still get up at least three more times.
45 Cats are spring-loaded, and are most commonly found inside closets or cabinets which are equipped with doors that can't be operated by cats.
46 The strongest force governing human survival is the possession of a name.
47 It is possible to use a helicopter to sneak up on someone.
48 A monster can always sneak up on you, no matter how big or clumsy it is.
49 It's easy to walk through an unfamiliar forest on a moonless night.
50 A leap from a hotel roof is completely safe as long as you can land in the pool.
51 Most laptop computers are powerful enough to handle realtime videophone contact, and can override the communication systems of any invading alien civilization.
52 Any self-respecting modem can handle about two gigabytes of data per second. Computers, when turned on, instantly are ready to use. When breaking into an encrypted system, the hacker needs only a few keystrokes to break into NSA's mainframe.
53 Interbreeding is genetically possible with any creature from elsewhere in the universe.
54 Attractive women sometimes fall for weird-looking aliens, but attractive men only fall for attractive women.
55 The feasibility of an idea is inversely proportional to its initial apparent plausibility.
56 All writers are wealthy; all publishing companies are glamorous; all artists are self-supporting and have large, attractive, well-lit loft studios.
57 If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St. Patrick's Day parade -- no matter what time of year it is. If you can't find a St. Patrick's Day parade, try for a Chinese New Year celebration and hide in the dragon.
58 A pudgy older star who's visibly falling behind his partner during a chase scene will catch up with him while the camera's looking away.
59 If a gas station and a man with a machine gun appear in the same scene, before the scene ends the gas station will explode. The same is true of fuel drums.
60 If you are trapped in a tunnel, in a sinking ship, or a burning building, a cute little girl, a nun, and a feisty granny will be trapped with you.
61 It's easy for anyone to land a plane, provided there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.
62 The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there. And you can travel to any other part of the building you want without difficulty, or making a loud thumping sound which echoes.
63 No ship, base, or compound ever has more than one emergency radio.
64 By the 24th century the concepts of circuit breakers, fuses, and uninterruptable power supplies will have been lost.
65 Although in the 20th century it is possible to fire weapons at an object out of our visual range, people of the 23rd century will have lost this technology.
66 In the future, everyone will spend their time standing around explaining everyday objects and practices to each other in terms of their 20th-Century equivalents.
67 No monster-killing stratagem can be used more than once, even if it only failed through some bizarre fluke. Neither can it be refined and tried again. You have to start over with a completely different approach.
68 No matter how badly a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system is never damaged, and oxygen supplies are always ample.
69 All aliens have single monolithic culture: one language, one religion, one outfit, one planet. All aliens can speak English.
70 Good chess players can see 15 or 20 moves ahead, in detail, from a middle game, where there are still many pieces on the board.
71 It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts -- your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.
72 You're very likely to survive any battle in any war -- unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
73 Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.
74 When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.
75 You can see the Eiffel Tower from every window in Paris.
76 All telephone numbers in America begin with the digits 555.
77 A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating, but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
78 Medieval peasants had perfect teeth. The British use dentists to make their teeth crooked.
79 The jungles of Vietnam were filled with Nautilus machines.
80 Stripping to the waist makes a man invulnerable to bullets.
81 Magical forces cluster in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
82 Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.
83 If you have sex in the woods, you will die in the woods.
84 All beds have special "L"-shaped sheets which reach up to the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.
85 All grocery shopping bags used to contain a bunch of celery. Now they all contain a baguette.
86 Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments. When being pursued, never use the rear view mirror to monitor your pursuer; always turn completely around to look out the back window, no matter how fast your are traveling.
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| 60 mph over speed bump - minor damage |
87 If there is a large bump in a downhill road, a speeding car will fly over it and hit the ground in shower of sparks. Unsecured passengers will not be injured, and no tire damage, broken axles, or suspension failures will occur. The car will then execute a sharp turn involving a skid.
88 If, during a fencing match, the combatants demonstrate their skill by cutting through all the candles on a candelabrum, the light level in the room will remain constant.
89 A slight blow to the head can cause total amnesia, but neither that nor a blow sufficient to knock a person unconscious is enough to cause concussion or other brain damage.
90 Losing a hand causes the stump of your arm to grow six inches.
91 Gunshot wounds will not disable you as long as you still have an important task left to do. Victims of gunshot wounds will rarely exhibit more than a hand sized blood splotch.
92 No one dies in an elevated position without falling from there to the ground, even if they have to jump to do it.
93 Anyone who falls from a high place while dying will let out a loud sustained shriek, even if they've just been shot several times in the chest.
94 No one involved in a car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion will ever go into shock.
95 Any government-developed virus or biological agent will have no known cure.
96 An electric fence, powerful enough to kill a dinosaur, will cause no lasting damage to an eight year old child.
97 Electricity will travel any distance through water to electrocute the villain, rather than go immediately to ground (e.g. a toaster tossed into the shallow end of a swimming pool will nail the bad guy over by the diving board).
98 You can only electrocute someone while you are looking directly at them.
100 Circuit breakers don't work.
101 Once applied, lipstick will never rub off -- even while scuba diving.
102 A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of RFK Stadium. When entering a dark room, possibly occupied by a dangerous villain, never use the wall switch to turn on the lights but instead, light a match.
103 Computers never display a cursor on screen but will always say:
Enter Password Now. Computers, when the hero has finished downloading key data before the owner walks in, can turn off the computer instantly with no sound or queries asking if you want to save the document.
104 If you input a partial password on someone else's computer, the system will give you additional prompts that will enable you to guess the rest.
105 When paying for a taxi, don't look at your wallet as you take out a bill -- just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.
106 Kitchens don't have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you should open the fridge door and use that light instead.
107 If an old fashioned landline phone line is broken, communication can be restored by frantically pressing the cradle switch and saying, "
Hello? Hello?"
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| Deranged Killer On the Loose! |
108 If there is a deranged killer on the loose, this will coincide with a thunderstorm that has brought down all the power and phone lines in the vicinity.
109 It is not necessary to say "
Hello" or "
Goodbye" when beginning or ending phone conversations.
110 During a very emotional confrontation, instead of facing the person you are speaking to, it is customary to stand behind them and talk to their back.
111 Answering machines do not have messages from aluminum storm door salesmen or collection companies.
112 Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning even though their husband and children never have time to eat it.
113 Having a job of any kind will make all fathers forget their son's eighth birthday.
114 Incriminating evidence will always be found as photograph number four in a stack, or in the next to bottom drawer. Important data storage will have labels like "
tape of Senator Foggbotham with underage girl" or "
List of all nuclear launch codes."
115 Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings, especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident. The scrapbook is large enough to cover the kitchen table, but fits easily into a nearby cabinet.
116 Villains are fond of explaining everything to anyone in sight.
117 Villains are improbably competent and inventive, but can only make money by pulling stupid robberies. They will risk everything they have and are to get revenge on some guy who once thwarted them.
118 Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch-enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gases, lasers and man-eating sharks that will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.
119 Any priest is either kindly or the villain. While nuns can deliver exposition, nuns are never villains.
120 Everyone knows the words to every song you want to sing and will sing along with you. They can even carry the solo part so that they can sing the song back to you, even if they have never heard the song until you sang half of it.
121 If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.
122 It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting, without need to feed the parking meter.
123 Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at that precise moment.
124 Dogs always know who's bad and will naturally bark at them.
125 Most dogs are immortal.
126 Larry King plays himself.
127 You can stop a runaway car by crashing it into a wall at the bottom of a long hill, but not at the top. There is no point in using the emergency brake on a runaway car until the emergency has concluded
128 The most unstable object in creation is a roadside fruit seller's cart.
129 If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long.
130 Light level is not a reliable gauge of whether it's night outside. You have to judge by the cricket noises.
131 You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.
132 All loose ends are always tied up.
133 Large, loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people whether they are employed or not.
134 At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil.
135 Should you decide to defuse a bomb, don't worry which wire to cut. You will always choose the right one.
136 When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your bedroom will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.
137 Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement.
138 All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.
139 Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments. Tires will squeal on any surface, at any speed.
140 If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you meet will know all the steps.
141 If a woman is being chased by a monster or villian, it is neccessary that she wear high heeled shoes for the chase, usually in her most reavealing outfit. It also stands to reason that if she is chased and a man is with her, she will always fall, hurt her ankle or foot, and need the man to carry her or help her run to safety.
142 If a woman is near a body of water and in danger... she will nearly always fall or otherwise end up in the body of water, no matter the distance to it. She will also likely be wearing a transluscent white blouse. This also appears to be a universal law of nature, if she is caught in the rain.
143 If a grenade is thrown at you, there is always time for you to go pick it up, look, aim and throw it back and always kill your enemy who originally threw it.
144 No matter how large an explosion is, you can always hear bad guys yell in pain over the percussion of the explosion.
145 If there is a war or battle, you can always see your enemy, they are only going to use their least lethal weapons first against you (pistols, rifles, grenades, then artillery... often in that order) and the good guys always see the enemy and are able to kill them with the least amount of effort.
146 A firearm becomes more lethal and accurate if you hold it "
gangsta style", turned sideways, rather than with a vertical grip.
It is possible to fire a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, held sideways, with a perfect shot pattern, and enduring no ill-effects from the recoil from each round.
147 When murderers or other criminals are caught, they are all to willing to divulge every secret just before having a final battle to the death.
148 When murderers or other serious criminals are caught, they confess everything the moment handcuffs are put on them toward the end of the movie, even if they are caught by an unarmed old woman who was just too clever for them but posed no threat whatsoever to them.
