Wednesday, January 30, 2013

POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR
Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric and whimsical observations about the absurdities of contemporary life:
  • Never trust a man with a pocket watch, an ascot or a manicure.
  • Life ain't easy these days.  Not when the movers and shakers keep moving the goal posts instead of leveling the playing field, while the rest of us have to have a multitask mind-set while fighting a never-ending learning curve.  So all you can do is hit the ground running,  play hardball when you have to step up to the plate, and at the end of the day, pick all the low-hanging fruit.  
  • Let's face it, the fat cats have us on an emotional roller-coaster, no matter how much they try to downsize the elephant in the room.  So cut to the chase, and before the whole ball of wax reaches critical mass,  we'll take stock of the benchmarks and the Big Picture and come to the realization that we must go back to the drawing board.  It is what it is.  
  • So it turns out some of Subway's foot-longs  aren't really a foot long.   I guess someone outed them to the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Sandwiches.  
  • It's interesting to hear that there's growing opposition in China to the one-child rule.  Why the uprising?  Shortage of workers!  It always comes down to money, doesn't it?
  • Speaking of money, brokers admit that they lie through their teeth.  In fact, sometimes they "even lie through other people's teeth," concedes a Wall Street veteran . .  . ."--Columnist Joe Queenan in the Wall Street Journal.
  • Media Word of the Week (a word you only see in print but never ever hear a normal person use in real life):  "Soupcon."
  • Baseball players are smarter than football players.  How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many players on the field?" - Jim Bouton
  • The Manti Te'o nonexistent girlfriend mishigas at Notre Dame makes this quote from novelist Paul Auster (in the Toronto Globe and Mail) seem all the more prescient.  "The real is always way ahead of what we can imagine."
  • Useful Scottish word with no English equivalent:   Tartle.   The nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can't quite remember. 
  • Department of Curious Verbiage:  "The robbery took place in broad daylight."  As opposed to narrow or marginal daylight?
  • Art-ifacts:  In the early 20th Century, the "Mona Lisa" was receiving so much fan mail that it had its own mailbox at the Louvre.
  • I've seen funnel clouds, double rainbows and cats and dogs, but I've never ever seen a phone "ringing off the hook."  And neither have you.  
  • Last one out of the Baseball Hall of Fame, please turn out the lights.
  • Jargon Word of the Week:  "Fiberhoods."  Neighborhoods, according to Jonathan Keats in Wired magazine, with fiber-optic cable to give homes and schools 1-giga-bit-per-second Internet service.  
  • Google is making districts in Kansas City compete to become the first fiberhoods, fast-tracking those that rally the most residents to pay $70 a month for the privilege.   (Bringing brand new meaning to "There goes the neighborhood. . . .")
  •  If a cow could laugh, would milk come out its nose?
  • Overheard: "My dentist told me my teeth are OK, but my gums are going to have to come out."  
  • I love when people engage the "either-or” syndrome; as if both outcomes could not be applicable. Guy says to me:  "Am I crazy, or is it really warm in here?”  "Well, now that I think about it . . . ."
  • Actual notice attached to a Pentium chip:  If this product exhibits errors, the manufacturer will replace it for a $2-shipping and a $3-handling charge, for a total of $4.97.
  • "A drunk driver is very dangerous. So is a drunk backseat driver if he's persuasive. "--Demitri Martin
  • Action:  Lance Armstrong confesses to Oprah Winfrey.   
  • Reaction:  When did Ms. Winfrey join the clergy?  I guess the ordination wasn't televised.   (Obviously, she didn't take the vow of poverty.)
  • I guess there was a changing of the confessional guard while I wasn't watching.  Barbara Walters out, Oprah Winfrey in.  (Diane Sawyer didn't make the cut.)
  • Today's Latin lesson:   Quis est in is mihi? ("What's in it for me?")