Sunday, May 4, 2014

POPCORN

By Jim Szantor
Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric, and whimsical observations about the absurdities of contemporary life.
  • You know you're having a bad day when you get a paper cut from a get-well card!
  • I was enjoying the rare spring sun on my long exercise walk  the other day.  I called it multi-basking.
  • "The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades."--Demetri Martin
  • 50th anniversary Mustang musings:  Cool car, even cooler name.  I actually think the name had a lot to do with the car's  appeal.  Would it have sold like hotcakes if it had been called, say, the Ford Muskrat?  Would the Corvette have  achieved iconic status as the Chevrolet Centipede?  The Ford Thunderbird as the Ford Pterodactyl?  Discuss.
  • Why does everyone at every company I deal with need to know my account number?   Especially when they have initiated the interaction? Whatever happened to names?  
  • It's only a matter of time before we're given account numbers at birth, right out of the womb! ("Mr. and Mrs. John Jones proudly announce the birth of their first son, 54863790281.")  Your middle name?  That, of course, would be your password.  (At least 8 characters, including capitals, numerals  and symbols, please.)
  • "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."--William James
  • I wonder how many people would pay $45 a ticket to see "The Nutcracker" in July?
  • Dental Datum of the Month: The Army's annual price tag for dental emergencies now tops $40 million, so it's adding gum with an antimicrobial peptide to its oral hygiene "strategy."  But it will be years, writes Mat Jancer in Wired,  before the weapons-grade chewables get FDA approval.  (Kind of hard to work into a conversation, but there you have it.)
  • "If I laugh when a guy goes flying  on a banana peel, is that a schadenfreudian slip?"--cartoonist Bill "Zippy" Griffith
  • Memo to bill senders:  Please stop sending 15 other things besides the bill.  (Some people suggest sending that stuff back to them--so they can put it in their landfills. Great idea.)
  • "Most pitchers live in mortal fear of losing their fastball.  Since I don't have one, I have nothing to fear but fear itself!"--former All-Star relief pitcher Dan Quisenberry
  • Only a politician can be a lame duck and a scapegoat at the same time.
  • "Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you."--Ogden Nash
  • Overheard:  "My wife asked if I could picture her as a dominatrix, and I said she'd have to lighten up a bit."
  • Sign in Florida store window:  "Bathing suits half off."
  • Jargoneering:  Cli-fi, we learn from Jonathon Keats of Wired.Com, is climate fiction, a subgenre of dystopian fiction set in the near future, in which climate change wreaks havoc on an otherwise familiar planet.  
  • Sign spotting:  Veterinarian/Taxidermist  (Either way, you get your dog back.)--Atlanta Journal-Constitution
  • Another in a series of jimjustsaying's  Media Words (a word you see or hear only in news reports and never hear a normal person use in real life):  "maven."
  • Fifty-fourth Wisconsin Town I Didn't Know Existed Until I Saw It Mentioned in a Green Bay Press-Gazette Obituary:  Thiry Daems  (R.I.P., Darrell Joseph Jadin, Door County Daily News.Com  obituary, April 20, 2014).  Previous entries: Athelstane, Walhain, Duck Creek, Breed, Anston, Sobieski, Amberg, Osseo, Angelica, Brazeau, Waukechon, Sugar Camp, Kossuth, Lessor, Kunesh, Pulcifer, Cato, Florence, Greenleaf, Eaton, Poygan, Hofa Park, Hilbert, Hollandtown, Beaufort, Glennie, Harshaw, Bessemer, Crooked Lake, Tigerton, Goodman, Readstown, Dousman, Butternut, Montpelier, Cecil, Red River, Gillet, King, Laona, Kelly Lake, Glenmore, Tonet, Stiles, Morrison, Dunbar, Askeaton, Wild Rose. Neopit. Ellisville, Pickett, Flintville and Forest Junction.
  • jimjustsaying's Faded Word of the Week:  "Skedaddle."
  • Today's Latin Lesson: Ego eram precor parumper tardus tepidus secundum nostrum districtus hiberna. tamen non is tardus.  ("I was praying for a gradual warmup after all our heavy snow . . . but not this gradual")


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