POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR 

Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric and whimsical observations about the absurdities of contemporary life:  

• Cigarette sales must be down: You don't see as many dumped ashtrays in store parking lots or gutters anymore. 
• Spotted in bookstore: “Sex for Dummies.”  (Not spotted:  “Abstinence for Dummies.”)
•  It's amazing the wide variety of substances that are marketed under the name of French dressing.
• How many times will they have to enlarge Door County Memorial Hospital before we have to stop going to Green Bay for everything ?
• Speaking of which, why did Aurora BayCare in Green Bay name its cancer clinic The Vince Lombardi Cancer Clinic?  Didn't Vince Lombardi die of cancer?  (Yes, Sept. 3, 1970.)  And not too long after he was diagnosed with it? (Yes, a mere 10 weeks of being diagnosed with colon cancer.)
• So why didn't they name said cancer clinic after someone who actually beat the disease?  I don't care if it was Bruno Lipschitz.  Call it the Bruno Lipschitz Cancer Clinic!  Name if after someone who could actually give us hope!
• I'm amazed that the wide (and I do mean wide) world of vitamins and "nutraceuticals" is still unregulated.  There could be sawdust in those capsules I/you just paid $12 for.
• Literary note:  My high school graduating class (Mary D. Bradford in Kenosha, Class of '61) had a Jane Eyre. And a Thomas Wolfe.  (Can he come home again?)
• You’re an old-timer if you remember having to get up constantly to adjust the “horizontal hold” on your TV set.  Where was remote control when we really needed it?
• And, of course, there were those rabbit ears—something younger folks probably think is the new appetizer down at the local brew pub.
• “Whoever said money can’t buy happiness didn’t know where to shop.”--Gertrude Stein
• Will there be disposable garbage trucks?
• Jim’s Law of Consumer Awareness:  The savings are rarely if ever “passed on to you.”
• Favorite all-time supermarket tabloid headline: “Vampire bats trained to perform liposuction!”
• How good can a doctor be if he still has time to write a newspaper column?
• Silliest sports cliché (mostly heard in baseball):  “I’m trying to stay within myself.” (As opposed to, what, jumping out of your skin?)
• When is the last time you saw a woman wearing a jumper?  Do they still make them?
• Why do dry cleaners bother to tell us “Not responsible for goods left over 30 days”?  I figure, if I haven’t missed it by then, they’re welcome to have it.
• "In God we trust, all others pay cash."--American proverb.  "Trust in Allah, but tie your camel."--Arabian proverb.