Tuesday, December 18, 2012

POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR
Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric and whimsical observations about the absurdities of contemporary life:
  • I'll start using a "man bag" when women start carrying wallets in their hip pockets.
  •  New this year:  The jimjustsaying Chia Pet--the perfect stocking stuffer for that person on the fringes of your Christmas gift list!  ("Ch-ch-ch-chia!)
  • (Jim thus joins an elite roster of Chia figures, including  Garfield, Scooby-Doo,  Shrek, the Simpsons,  Daffy Duck and SpongeBob.) 
  • Morning in America: "Synthetic drugs are coming out so fast, quicker than tests to find them. We can have people die of overdoses, and medical technology hasn’t caught up yet with what they overdosed from.”--Dr. Stephen Cina, Cook County Medical Examiner, in the Chicago Sun-Times. 
  • Our cat  used to get one piece of mail a year--a reminder from the vet about his annual checkup.  But that’s it. 
  •  Apparently, pets are immune from the junk mail/mailing-list plague, because he never got any catalogs, credit-card offers or charity appeals.  (I assume dogs are similarly blessed, although I lack actual evidence.) 
  • Adage updated :  It's  the gift that counts. 
  • Which brings me to this thought:  Is it better to re-gift than to re-receive? 
  • Jargon Word of the Week:  Deceit Perfume--an aerosol, developed for the Iranian military, that works like an air freshener to conceal the acrid smell of gunpowder and available in various scents, Wired magazine reports. 
  • Fading words:  Skedaddle and shindig. 
  • "If it weren't for problems, the workday would be over by 10 a.m."--Woody Allen
  • Three fruits most people have never eaten:  Persimmon, guava and kumquat. 
  • Is there low fructose corn syrup?  If not, the world is waiting . . . . 
  • Whatever happened to Emo Phillips? 
  • Master Card, Visa,  American Express . . . . Diner's Club?  You hear so little about that one these days I was surprised to find out it still exists.  But in fact Diner's Club  was acquired by Discover in 2008. 
  • "You can avoid reality, but you can't avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."--Ayn Rand 
  • "When I started here in the Senate [1989], a blackberry was a fruit and tweeting was something only birds did."--Retiring Sen. Joe Lieberman (D., Conn.) in his farewell speech on Dec. 12. 
  • What do the Dalai Lama,  Billy Graham, Nelson Mandela and J. K. Rowling have in common?  They have all been featured speakers at a Canadian ballpark--the Rogers Centre, where the Toronto Blue Jays (and other pro sports teams) play. 
  • Season's readings: Pope Benedict XVI says in his new book that there were no oxen, donkeys, or other animals at Jesus’s birth. The pope also says the entire Christian calendar is based on a 6th Century monk’s miscalculation of when Jesus was born. 
  • A man after mine own  heart:  " “I never cared for fiction or storybooks. What I like to read about are facts and statistics of any kind. If they are only facts about the raising of radishes, they interest me. Just now,  I was reading an article about mathematics. Perfectly pure mathematics. My own knowledge of mathematics stops at 12 times 12, but I enjoyed that article immensely. I didn’t understand a word of it; but facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are always delightful.”--Mark Twain in an interview with Rudyard Kipling
  • Another Media Word (a word you see or hear only in news reports and never hear a normal person use in real life):   "perfervid."  
  • 'It's useless to hold a person to anything he says while he's in love, drunk or running for office."--Shirley MacLaine
  • People who wear white socks outside the gym or the ball field are candidates for immediate counseling.  (There's never a fashion policeman around when you need one!) 
  • Another Stupid Warning Seen on an Actual Product: On a blender: "Not for use as an aquarium." 
  • Health term of the week:  NERD (Non-erosive reflux disease): Chronic heartburn with no evidence of acid damage in the esophagus. 
  • Snack food product that doesn't exist but probably will:  Dorachos.
  • Today's Latin Lesson: Est is melior ut redonum quam ut resuscipio?  ("Is it better to re-gift than to re-receive?")