THINGS WE LEARNED FROM THE MOVIES
-If you try hard enough, you can outrun an explosion.
-During all police investigations, it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
-It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting.
-All telephone numbers in America begin with 555.
-All watches and clocks are synchronised to the second.
-Beds have special L-shaped cover sheets which reach up to the armpit level on a woman; but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.
-Any elevator will automatically go to your floor without pressing any buttons and take as long as your conversation to reach the right floor.
-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.
-Nearly everyone speaks English, no matter where they are from. Even aliens from outer space, despite the fact they have never been to Earth, seen an Earthling, or even heard of Earth or Earthlings.
-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.
-Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at the precise moment that it is aired.
-A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating, but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
-It is not necessary to say hello or goodbye when beginning or ending phone conversations.
-Kitchens don’t have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you should open the fridge door and use that light instead.
-During a very emotional confrontation, instead of facing the person you are speaking to, it is customary to stand behind the person and talk to the person’s back.
-When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your bedroom will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.
-You can always rely on your car keys already being in the ignition when you get in the car, but if it’s an emergency, you won’t be able to find the keys anywhere.
-If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.
-If you stick your head out of cover during a gun fight, it will never be hit, especially if you look backwards to hold a conversation with someone behind you.
-Cars that crash will invariably burst into flames.
-No matter how badly a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system is never damaged.
-Stripping to the waist can make a man invulnerable to bullets.
-A million dollars in cash or cocaine fits perfectly in a briefcase.
-If you find yourself caught up in a misunderstanding that could be cleared up quickly with a simple explanation, for goodness sake, keep your mouth shut.
-Cars that fly off cliffs spontaneously combust in mid-air for no apparent reason.
-Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.
-If you need to reload your gun, you will always have more ammunition – even if you haven’t been carrying any before now.
-A cough is usually the sign of a terminal illness.
-All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts, so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.
-An electric fence that’s powerful enough to kill a dinosaur will cause no lasting damage to an eight-year-old child.
-When in love, it is customary to burst into song.
-Many musical instruments – especially wind instruments and accordions – can be played without moving your fingers.
-If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you meet will know all the steps.
-If you type a partial password on someone else’s computer, the system will give you additional prompts that will enable you to guess the rest.
-When confronted by an evil international terrorist, sarcasm and wisecracks are your best weapons.
-A cup of black coffee or a splash of cold water in the face is enough to render the most inebriated person stone cold sober.
-One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them than 20 men firing at 1 man.
-75% of all Americans live in either New York or Los Angeles. The remaining 25% that live outside those cities are violently racist rednecks, inbred hillbillies, or separatist militants.
-If being fired at by Germans, hide in a river – or even a bath. German bullets are unable to penetrate water.
-Cemeteries generate their own weather. Usually rainstorms… and not just gentle sprinkles, but biblical downpours.
-Laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of an invading alien civilisation.
-If staying in a haunted house, women will investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.
-Word processors never display a cursor on screen but will always say: Enter Password Now.
-There will always be a doctor in a plane or building with the right medical supplies.
-Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper clippings – especially if any of their family or friends have died in a strange boating accident.
-No matter how fuzzy the photograph, it can be enlarged and enhanced to show the finest detail.
-Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are assigned a partner who is their total opposite.
-All single women have cats.
-A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.
-You never have to use the spacebar when typing long sentences.
-When they are alone, foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.
-Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.
-If you are a hero, you never face charges for manslaughter or criminal damage despite laying entire cities to waste by your actions.
-The entire British population lives in London.
-All Australians live in the Outback.
-You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.
-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.
-If someone shoots a fully automatic weapon at you, running behind a banister or railing will ensure that the bullets hit only the posts.
-You can tell if somebody is British because he will be wearing a bow tie.
-People rarely use the bathroom, and if they do, they’re usually dead within minutes.
-When driving a car, it is normal to look not at the road but rather at the person sitting beside you or in the back seat for the entire journey.
-Close blood relatives usually look nothing like each other, or have only a passing resemblance.
-Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.
-A monster can always sneak up on you, no matter how big or clumsy it is.
-Taxi drivers don’t require exact or even approximate payment – the first bill you pull from your pocket is always correct.
-No matter how catastrophic the disaster, pets will always survive it.
-Having a job of any kind will make a father forget his son’s eighth birthday.
-Honest and hardworking policemen are traditionally gunned down on the eve of retirement.
-The more a man and a woman hate each other, the more likely they will fall in love.
-If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long.
-The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.
-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.
-Once applied, lipstick will never rub off – even while scuba diving.
-It’s easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.
-All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.
-Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gasses, lasers, and man-eating sharks, which will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.
-If you are blonde and pretty, it is possible to become a world expert on nuclear fission at the age of 22.
-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 buddy’s.
-Should you decide to defuse a bomb, don’t worry which wire to cut. You will always choose the right one.
-At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil.
-Large, loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people – whether they are employed or not.