Sunday, June 14, 2020

POPCORN

By Jim Szantor

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

  • I think I know Joe Biden’s problem: He’s got two left tongues!
  • I wonder if Donald Trump’s hotels have bibles in all of their rooms? (If they didn’t, they probably do now!)
  • Pandemic ponderings: How do you call In sick if you’re working from home?  Or if you’re a student, does your mother have to call in for you? And what about tardy slips?
  • I’ve got a hunch that people who refuse to wear masks (aka “covidiots”) are the same people who don’t return their cart to the cart corral and leave their messy debris on their fast-food table.
  • For perspective on the Covid-19 virus and the widening Mideast war(s), we turn to Albert Camus:
  • "Everybody knows that pestilence has a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet plagues and wars always take people equally by surprise."--"The Plague, Part 1"
  • There will never be a Whoopi Goldberg Lookalike Contest.
  • Another in a series of jimjustsaying's Occupations No Child Has Ever Aspired To or Fantasized About:  Phlebotomist.
  • Overheard: “My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance. We'll see about that.”
  • "Progress isn't made by early risers.  It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."--Author Robert Heinlein in The Village Voice.
  • When is the last time you saw a juke box?  (And what did they do with all those jukes?)
  • Introducing jimjustsaying’s Golden Rule 2.0: Treat others the way they treated you after you have treated them.
  • Baseball Prank for the Ages: The picture on California Angels infielder Aurelio Rodriquez’s 1969 baseball card is actually a photo of Angels batboy Leonard Garcia, who duped the Topps photographer.
  • Musing:  How many other imposter cards got out there undetected?
  • Faded phrases: “Hang up the phone, “roll down the window” and “flip through the channels.”
  • Vinpocetine, oscillococcinum and bladderswack leaves. Three nutritional (?) supplements I didn't know existed until I opened a Swanson Health Products catalog.  (Kind of hard to work into a conversation, but there you have it.)
  •  You can tell a lot about a person by whether they prefer hard shell of soft shell tacos.
  • I had a dream that the Family Dollar company started a budget burger franchise:  One Guy.
  • Overheard: "If you take the bull by the horns, then what?"
  • jimjustsaying’s restaurant math observation: The combined cost of a cocktail, appetizer and dessert often eclipses the cost of the entrĂ©e.  (And they’d probably sell more of each of those if the prices were just a tad less exorbitant.)
  • I saw a sale display for Snickers Fun Size bars.  Fun size?  Aren't all Snickers fun? What do they call the regular-size bar--the Ordeal Size?  The Root Canal Size?  The Ninth Labor of Hercules Size?  
  • jimjustsaying's Snack Food Find of the Month:  Buffalo wing-flavored sunflower seeds.  Who knew?
  • Three things I've never done:  Put something in mothballs, put all my eggs in one basket, put on the dog.
  • Redundancy Patrol: "Close proximity," "join together," "serious crisis."  
  • jimjustsaying's Term That Doesn't Exist But Should of the Month: Sudsorian Calendar:  The calendar used on soap operas that allows one day's events to be stretched over a three-week period.--Rich Hall and Friends, "Unexplained Sniglets of the Universe"
  • A true friend is one who likes you despite your accomplishments.—Novelist Arnold Bennett
  • Newspaper Headline Nickname of the Month:  Lovey.  As in Laverne “Lovey” M. Krickeberg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 31, 2020.
  • Today's Latin Lesson: Terminus via opus. (End road work.)