The CEO of the Sofa Book

	Acknowledgments	XIII
Chapter I	September 2000	1
	Oliver Wendell Holmes has been agreeing with the CEO's opinions for nearly one hundred and fifty years
	The CEO's wife does so less frequently
	The CEO speaks on the subject of mobile phones in the manner of a 1959 curmudgeon inveighing against transistor radios
	Imagine if cheap devices to broadcast noise for idiots had allowed idiots to broadcast noise in return
	The UN is visited--a nice enough place until it was discovered by foreigners
Chapter II	October 2000	24
	The CEO considers stock market investments and decides that risk may be involved
	His wife suggests getting a job but wonders if anything is available in the field of monkey business
	The CEO considers employment and decides that work may be involved
	He conceives a brilliant idea for making his fortune by thinking like a toddler but cannot find a play group with a wet bar
Chapter III	November 2000	44
	The candidates for the 2000 presidential election are given a thorough examination although the mainstream media are allowed to do the part involving a check for prostate enlargement
	The mainstream media encounter themselves up there
	Hillary Clinton is praised for her abilities as a GOP fund-raiser
	The Political Nut, who often shows up in the CEO's household during the cocktail hour, thinks eBay could make political corruption more market-oriented
Chapter IV	December 2000	62
	The CEO argues that Las Vegas is superior to Venice as a vacation destination--having found himself in better shape after being pulled over in traffic by the Nevada Highway Patrol than he was after being pulled out of a canal by the Italian carabinieri
	Christmas gifts are chosen
	The CEO carefully inspects the catalog from Blunderwear--lingerie that would be a mistake for anyone other than the catalog models
	Hillary Clinton is embraced again--not, thank goodness, in her lingerie
	The CEO attempts to bring modern ideas of caring and compassion to great works of literature but discovers that banning the death penalty ruins many masterpieces
	At the end of A Tale of Two Cities, Sidney Carton has to explain to his parole officer that he's become a better person
Chapter V	January 2001	77
	Decadence is pondered and found to be a rotten old idea
	The CEO begins an essay on how to get properly inebriated but realizes he has important research to do
	He embarks, with his friend Chris Buckley, on a blind (drunk) wine tasting, the results of which have to be carried home flat on their backs in an SUV
	The Political Nut beats a dead horse but Bill Clinton keeps whinnying
	The impeachment is fondly remembered, and plans are made for a Bill Clinton/Ken Starr reunion tour
	The CEO meditates upon hypocrisy and decides that you can't fake it
Chapter VI	February 2001	108
	The CEO is perplexed by the quantitative nature of modern celebrity and wonders how many times Thomas De Quincey would have to be arrested for opium eating to become as famous as Robert Downey, Jr.
	The CEO is--thanks to the miracle of modern car alarms--able to teach his teenage godson how to parallel park by sonar
	The CEO lectures his young assistant on the virtues of the automobile: Consider having a hot date and needing to borrow your father's feet
Chapter VII	March 2001	136
	The CEO intends to write his memoirs but forgets
	He helps with his godson's homework instead, asking, "What's all this argle-bargle about the loss of certainty in modern mathematics? I was never able to get anything to add up the same way twice."
	The CEO explains the concept of "spring break" to his godson who hears the lyrics of "Where the Boys Are" with disbelief and disputes the idea that Connie Francis and George Hamilton were ever teenagers
Chapter VIII	April 2001	159
	The Democrats next door are vanquished by the CEO's logic and are forced to resort to low political tactics such as not letting the CEO borrow their string trimmer
	As an Oprah guest, Hitler is suggested: a larger-than-life personality who wrote a popular book about his struggle with personal issues
	The CEO argues against legalizing drugs, now that the statute of limitation has expired on his behavior in the 1960s
	Then the CEO argues in favor of legalizing drugs, if the federal government promises not to tell his wife
Chapter IX	May 2001	178
	A new baby-sitter arrives on the scene causing romantic disturbance--for those in love with Keynesian economic assumptions
	The CEO reveals his secret for avoiding stardom as a television commentator
	The CEO holds forth on the proponents of Earth Day and declares them "Dirt of the Earth."
	Counsel is consulted and a brief is filed on missile defense
	The CEO prefers a plea of guilty rather than nolo contendere
	The CEO's baby-sitter and young assistant are chastised for swiping tunes with MP3 technology--especially since none of the tunes swiped is "Volare" or "Moon River."
	San Francisco passes a law forbidding discrimination against the fat, and the CEO is outraged that the lazy aren't included
Chapter X	June 2001	203
	A blessed event occurs consisting of the arrival, in plain brown wrapper, of cigars from Cuba
	The CEO's wife has a baby, too
	The CEO's godson finds there are difficulties in dating a young lady who can do risk-analysis computations
	Breast feeding is an excellent method of getting a big baby to sleep, but the CEO is up in the middle of the night anyway
	The second anniversary of the air war in Kosovo is celebrated with suitable pomp
	The CEO declares the e-mail fad has run its course and buys stock in the Mimeograph corporation
	Wives are praised for not killing their husbands, particularly the husband the CEO's wife is married to
Chapter XI	July 2001	225
	India is traversed and the wild Indians are ... well, let's just say Dancing with Wolves got it all wrong
	The CEO proposes that an inexpensive second honeymoon could be had right in the living room if a second bottle of scotch can be procured
	The CEO's wife goes in search of the keys to the gun cabinet
Chapter XII	August 2001	247
	The CEO's godson's sister experiences rather more enlightenment than can stand the light of day
	The Political Nut counters with a more sensitive and less judgmental upgrade of the Ten Commandments
	Good feelings prevail
	The Political Nut decides to apologize for all the horrible things he's said about Democrats--especially the true things
	The baby-sitter tutors the CEO's godson in the higher mathematics of: [characters not reproducible]
	The CEO's young assistant gets a real job
	Hunter S. Thompson is shown, through rigorous textual analysis of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to be a heck of a nice guy
	The CEO's wife gets the CEO to shut up
	A happy ending is had by all