Monday, August 1, 2011

POPCORN


BY JIM SZANTOR 
Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric and whimsical observations about the absurdities of contemporary life: 
  • It's hard not to laugh when you see someone drive off with their purse or their briefcase on the roof of their car.
  • Is there a support group for support groups?
  • Idiotic Actual Product Warning Label of the Week (on a Japanese food processor): "Not to be used for the other use."
  • Somebody broke into my house the other day and left their Cubs season tickets!
  • Comic relief gleaned from reading about the Rupert Murdoch scandal: A "bribe" is called  a "backhander" in Great Britain.  Beautiful!
  • (SZSEZ's Runner-up British-ism of the Week:  A speed bump in England is called "a sleeping policeman.")
  • A few reasons the Los Angeles Dodgers are in financial trouble: In addition to owing the recently departed Manny Ramirez $21 million and Andruw Jones $11 million, they still owe $2.7 to Marquis Grissom. 
  • (Footnote:  That would be the same Marquis Grissom who hasn't played for the team since 2002.)
  • Isn't it more than a bit freaky when it's raining cats and dogs and the TV radar is showing absolutely nothing? 
  • "I was the kid next door's imaginary friend."--Emo Philips
  • Obituary Headline Nickname of the Week: "Mr. Wonderful."  As in Norman A. "Mr. Wonderful" Burkee (Kenosha News Obituary, July 13, 2011.)  R.I.P., Mr. Wonderful.
  • Idiotic Actual Product Warning Label of the Week II:  On Sainsbury's peanuts: "Warning: contains nuts."
  • "l'idee," "tiblel" and "conferep."  Those were the latest verification words I had to type in to e-mail a news story to friends.  Do not adjust your computer.  (Had these been real typos, it would have been an SZSEZ first.  Thank you.)
  • Why don’t fast-food joints just put the condiments out on a counter and let people do their own thing rather than take the time to customize the orders back in the kitchen (where they mess them up with irritating regularity)?  Maybe then fast food would be fast food.
  • On second thought: This could be a bit of a problem at the drive-up window.
  • I try to take life one day at a time, but sometimes, several days attack me at once!
  • If you could pinpoint when society's biggest problems (drugs, gangs, poor scholastic performance, the teen pregnancy epidemic) really took hold, my guess would be that it coincided with two things:  the end of the military draft and the end of the Stay-At-Home-Mom Era.  I'm confident most sociologists/anthropologists would connect those dots fairly easily.
  • (Does anyone really think that you can take two weighty societal elements like those off the table without any significant consequences?)
  • Do we sneeze in our sleep? Sneezing cannot occur during sleep due to REM (rapid eye movement) atonia--a bodily state wherein motor neurons are not stimulated and reflectory signals are not relayed to the brain.
  • Sufficient external stimulants, however, may cause a person to wake from their sleep for the purpose of sneezing, although any sneezing that would occur afterwards would take place with at least a partially awake state of mind.  (Kind of hard to work into a conversation, but there you have it--courtesy of Yahoo Answers.)
  • Whatever happened to Preparations A through G?
  • If you think that Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Henry Mancini, Lennon-McCartney or Simon and Garfunkel are the most-heard composers of all time, consider this:  It's Mike Post. 
  • That's because he wrote the themes to "Law and Order," "Hill Street Blues," "NYPD Blue," "The Rockford Files," "L.A. Law," "The White Shadow," "The Phil Donahue Show," "Wiseguy," "Hunter" and others.  Every time one of those shows airs, he hits 10 million or more listeners at once; it's very hard for any songwriter to equal that with radio/jukebox exposure.
  • (If Post had a rival, it could be Eliot Daniel.  He wrote the theme for "I Love Lucy."  Think how many times THAT nauseating ditty has been heard around the world!)
  • He said it:  "There are Republicans here who are gay, but as long as they don’t acknowledge it, it’s OK.  Republicans only tolerate you being gay as long as you don’t seem proud of it. You’ve got to be apologetic."--U.S. Rep. Barney Frank.
  • "I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five."--Steven Wright
  • About those Seven Deadly Sins:  I think there should be an Eighth--Ingratitude.  (All-time favorite proverb:  "No good deed goes unpunished.")
  • How credible is a television faith healer with thick glasses?
  • Redundancy patrol: "Band together," "point in time," "end result,"  "price point."
  • Today's Latin Lesson: Tunc annus totus amplitudo liberi ero vetus satis futurus exertus ut adultus! ("Next year all the grandchildren will be old enough to be tried as adults!")
  • Periodic reminder:  I don't always agree with everything I say!