Web Lite: Things You Learn from the Movies Part II

1. Large, loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people--whether they are employed or not.

2. At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil.

3. Should you decide to defuse a bomb, don't worry which wire to cut. You will always choose the right one.

Corollary: There is no technology sufficiently advanced to make bombs without accessible control wires.

4. Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communications system of any invading alien society.

5. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts. Your enemies will wait patiently to attack you by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked them out one by one.

6. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your bedroom will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.

7. If you are blonde and pretty, it is possible to become a world expert on nuclear fission by the age of 22.

8. Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement.

9. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gasses, lasers, or man-eating sharks. This will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.

Corollary 1, (aka the "James Bond Loophole"): The same megalomaniacs will further extend the time required for the hero to escape by explaining in detail their plan for world domination.

Corollary 2: Just prior to dispatching the hero, most villains will hold their gun close enough to allow the hero to seize it or knock it away.

10. All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets that reach the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.

11. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.

12. It's easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.

13. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off--even while scuba diving.

14. 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.

15. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German or Russian officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German or Russian accent will do.

16. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.

17. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating, but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

Corollary: During a fight, especially if the martial arts are involved, both heroes and villains can shake off nearly 200 lethal-force blows suffering only momentary lapses in attention.

18. If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long.

Corollary: Heroes may dive or be thrown through plate glass windows with impunity. The same action will "delete" villains from the universe unless, of course, they are the primary antagonist and therefore able to sustain repeated projection through windows, plasterboard, or brick walls.

19. If staying in a haunted house, women will investigate any strange noise in their most revealing underwear.

20. Word processors never display a cursor on screen but will always say: Enter Password Now.

Corollary: All computers offer step by step program instructions in plain English sentences and huge block letters readable from across the room.

21. Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.

22. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off.

23. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.

24. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you meet will know all the steps.

25. Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.

26. When they are alone, foreign military officers prefer to speak to each other in English.

27. When confronting villains intent on murdering either them or their loved ones, most women are unable to gather the strength to pull a gun trigger.

28. Although current weapons are both accurate and lethal, weapons of the future will be difficult to aim and will only leave burn-holes in the uniforms of their targets.

29. Any villain can be knocked out by being hit on the head from behind with a self-destructing flower vase or chair. Heroes will always fail to realize that these states of unconsciousness are only temporary and that the villain is likely to pop up again and attack as soon as the hero is distracted.

30. By donning masks that cover only their eyes, heroes can disguise themselves even from people to whom they've been married for 20 years.

31. Having chased villains into dark alleys, caves, or warehouses, heroes will always plunge in alone as opposed to:

A. Calling for the SWAT team to back them up.
B. Tear gassing or fire bombing the hiding place or
C. Waiting outside until the villain either finally emerges or starves to death.

Web Lite seeks to recycle those bits of cyber-flotsam that come from no one in particular and tumble into our inboxes from time to time.