POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR 

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

• I'm strongly against the death penalty--with one exception: Defaulters on student loans.
• We've just had a remarkable run of balmy October weather in Northeast Wisconsin, our glorious Indian Summer.  (Oops; I mean our glorious Native-American Summer.)
• Consumer Imponderable No. 538: Toothbrushes keep getting bigger and bigger . . . and plastic toothbrush travel holders keep staying the same size!  Who will be the first to act on this discrepancy?
• Why is the badger the Wisconsin state animal?  No one I know has ever seen one; 90-year-old hunters and game wardens have never seen one. These beasts could be extinct for all we know! (Wisconsin--the Extinct Animal State.)
• Why do we  keep naming sports team after the same animals--lions, tigers, rattlers, eagles, bears . . . .? Show me a team that calls itself the Rhesus Monkeys, and theyve got themselves a season ticketholder for life!
• The military can’t find Osama bin Laden, nor can the CIA or anybody else.  Well, enough--it’s time to send in the psychics. You know, those fat housewives from New Jersey who are always being quoted in the supermarket tabloids, the ones who claim to have predicted JFK’s assassination, even though it happened when they were about 2 years old.  Give them a shot.  What have we got to lose?
• Crazy idea?  Well, as they say in those corny old movies (usually with chin being stroked), “It’s just so crazy, it just . . . might . . . work.”)
• Redundancy patrol:  "VIN number," "free of charge," "added bonus."
• Door County Crime of the Week (tie):  A guy from Troisdorf, Germany, fined $200.50 for "possessing firewood on Dept. of Natural Resources land that originated from more than 25 miles away"; and a woman from Waukegan, Ill., fined $162.70 for "too many people on campsite."
• Most ridiculous baseball sight of the year (again!):  Players getting pummeled with high fives in the dugout after hitting an RBI grounder in a one-sided game.  You'd think they'd just hit the Shot Heard 'Round the World to win all the marbles.
• First move I'd make if I were NFL commissioner:  Any touchdown would be automatically nullified if the player scoring it didn't hand the ball to the referee (instead of "spiking" it and dancing around like a deranged buffoon with itching powder in his pants).  Better yet:  Add 6 points to the other team's total!
• "Football combines the worst features of American life--frantic violence punctuated by committee meetings."--Syndicated columnist George Will.
• Back to baseball:  A faithful reader from south of the Mason-Dixon Line suggests "Maybe ESPN has a dress code" in response to my item about the three bozos broadcasting a baseball game in three-piece suits.  A good point--up to a point.  But if there is a code (a) not every ESPNcaster is following it (see Sutcliffe, Rick . . . among others) and (b) it is the network that should then lighten up, the whole point being the incongruity of it all, regardless of who made the wardrobe decision.  Doing baseball in three-piece suits is like going to a beach party in a tuxedo.  When in Rome . . . .
• Zadra's Law of Biomechanics:  The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the location.
• Overheard: "The IQ of a woman is inversely proportional to the amount of jewelry she wears.  The IQ of a man is inversely proportional to the wattage of his auto stereo system."
• Bumper sticker for a hyrid:  "0 to 60 in 5 miles."
• The six phases of an actor's career:  Teen idol, leading man, supporting roles, character parts, obscurity, infomercials.
• Did you know that the Coke bottle, that most American of symbols, was designed by a Swede who was new to these shores?
• Political blather commonly heard:  "Obama is not American enough!"  (Translation:  "Obama is not white enough.")  Well, racism aside, given how the last "real American" messed things up, maybe the more "foreign" the leader, the better!
• My suggestion on decreasing hate crimes:  No more protective custody!  Would a white supremacist skinhead attack a black man if he knew that he'd be thrown into a general population cellbock with 300 of "them"?
• If you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all."--College dorm graffito.
• "I'm sorry my karma ran over your dogma."--Pizza parlor graffito, Berkeley, Cal.
• Ninth entry in the Wisconsin Town I Didn't Know Existed Until I Saw It Mentioned in an Obituary sweepstakes: Angelica, Wis. (r.i.p. Debra J. "Debbs" Fischer, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Sept. 21, 2010). Previous entries: Athelstane, Walhain, Duck Creek, Breed, Anston, Sobieski, Amberg and Osseo.
• Book Title of the Week: "The Idiot's Guide to the Mafia"  (444 pages!)
• Today's Latin lesson:  Operor illa pardus planto meus tergum terminus vultus pinguis?  ("Do these pants make my rear end look fat?")

POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR 

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

• Politicians talk and talk and posture and promise, but when the smoke clears, the dirty dishes are still in the sink.
• I understand that one of the tropical storms really battered the Outer Banks of North Carolina the other day.  (Apparently the Outer Savings and Loans escaped unscathed.)
• I thought that "No Outlet" and "Dead End" were two ways of saying the same thing.  Perhaps not.  According to Snopes.com: "No Outlet can mean that though other streets may branch off of the road ahead, they don't lead anywhere either." 
• Speaking of which, what on Earth does "Obey Your Signal Only" mean?  Is it possible to obey two signals at once?  And which signal is yours anyway? (If you're in an unfamiliar area, sometimes you have no idea.) No law-enforcement officer has ever been able to explain this to me. It's a totally meaningless sign.
• "It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong."--Economist John Maynard Keynes
• First it was the baffling bedbug outbreak . . . and now comes word that Australia is suffering its worst outbreak of locusts in 75 years!  (They move slowly when the sun's up, but at night they can fly high and fast, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles. "A farmer can go to bed at night not having seen a grasshopper all year and wake up in the morning to find his fields full of them," said a University of Sydney expert.)
• Damage report: A mile-wide swarm of locusts can chomp through 10 tons of crops--a third of their combined body weight--in a day.
• All locusts are grasshoppers, but not all grasshoppers are locusts. But you knew that.
• So is that the extent of Bad Insect News this week?  I'm afraid not. Farmers in several Middle Atlantic states are battling a pest whose voracious appetite has left dry boreholes in everything from apples to tomatoes to soybeans. That would be the stink bug, which in addition to its ravages emits a pungent odor sometimes descirbed as skunklike.
• This just in:  "Some executions in the U.S. have been put on hold because of a shortage of one of the drugs used in lethal injections from coast to coast."--Associated Press, Sept. 27.  Whaa?  Has there been a run on the stuff?  Is this the new chic "drug of choice"?
• (Actually, The sole U.S. manufacturer, Hospira Inc. of Lake Forest, Ill., has blamed the shortage on unspecified problems with its raw-material suppliers and said new batches of sodium thiopental will not be available until January at the earliest.)
• What do these men have in common?  Darren Balsley, Rick Eckstein, Rick Knapp, Joe Vavra, Jim Skaalen, Alan Cockrell, Derek Shelton and Bruce Walton. Give up? They're all either major-league hitting or pitching coaches!
• (I can see how men with scant or undistinguished playing  careers can succeed as big-league managers, if they have studied the game extensively, are good motivators, etc.  But for what I call the "skill positions"--hitting and pitching coaches--one would think some kind of a proven track record would be mandatory in these "how-to" areas.  And there have been such types--Bob Gibson, Billy Williams, Kirk Gibson and a few more. Guys with some "street cred"!  But they've been in the minority.  Unless they have an extreme love of the game, the superstars take their millions and generous pensions and fade to black. So if you're a high draft choice who got $30 million just to sign your name, how much regard are you going to have for a guy with a career .219 batting average or a career Earned Run Average of 6.23 who never made more than $30,000 a year?)
• "That's just gravy on the cake."--Former Milwaukee Brewers/Boston Red Sox slugger George "Boomer" Scott, who made my Ballplayer Quote Hall of Fame with that beauty.
• Sunday Night Baseball, ESPN, mid-July. The cameras pan the stands, and you see about 40,000 sweltering fans in T-shirts and cutoffs.  In the broadcast booth?  Jon Miller, Joe Morgan and Orel Hershiser in three-piece suits.  Hey, guys, it's a damn baseball game, not a meeting of the G-4 Summit.  Lighten up, for God's sake!
• People who say "asterick" instead of "asterisk" should be jabbed repeatedly with colored hors d'oeuvre toothpicks.
• What's the difference between an epoch and an era?  (Maybe an era is an epoch that got more ink.)
• Book Title of the Week: "The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic At Work and At Home," by Dan Ariely.
• I didn't need a government commission to tell me the other day that the "recession is over."  I could tell two weeks ago when the truck weighing station on South U.S. Hwy. 43 was open after being closed for about two and a half years.
• "If you think you're funny, you're probably not."--Woody Allen
• "Cool is the enemy of funny: You can't be cool and funny at the same time."--ex-"Saturday Night Live" performer Tracy Morgan.
• Eighth entry in the Wisconsin Town I Didn't Know Existed Until I Saw It Mentioned in an Obituary sweepstakes: Osseo, Wis. (r.i.p. Grace Blahnik, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Sept. 9, 2010). Previous entries: Athelstane, Walhain, Duck Creek, Breed, Anston, Sobieski and Amberg.
• I know it sounds silly, but I'm always slightly taken aback to see the obituary of a M.D.--especially if he (or she) was less than 90 years old.  (And how much respect do you have for a doc whose stomach is in another area code?)
• Today's Latin lesson: Vos adepto quis vos persolvo pro.  ("You get what you pay for.") 

POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR 

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

• What do butterflies get when they're nervous?  Gorillas?
• Redundancy of the Week: "We're now living in a global world."  (Heard on Bloomberg Radio, Sept. 9, 2010.) I think he meant to say, "We're now living in a global economy."
• Broadcast malaprop of the week:  "[Rahm Emanuel and Jesse Jackson Jr.] talked about how [Chicago's] poor economic climate could really send the [mayoral] contest into a battle of racial epitaphs [sic] . . . "--Chicago Tribune/WGN TV political reporter Rick Pearson.
• Shampoo shopping quandary: Where can I go to find out if my hair is normal, oily or dry? 
• Men: Shouldn't it really be called a hisnia?
• You can tell a restaurant is poorly managed if they have a reprint of a bad review in the window.
• Hip-hop is to music as pesticide is to fruit and vegetables.
• Book Titles of the Week:  "Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep (Breeding, Care, Facilities)" and "Common Dragonflies of Northern Door County."  (A couple of gift ideas for all you early-bird Christmas shoppers out there.)
• When my wife saw a recent color photo of Jerry Lee Lewis, she thought it was Art Linkletter! Separated at birth? 
• Seventh entry in the Wisconsin Town I Didn't Know Existed Until I Saw It Mentioned in an Obituary Sweepstakes:  Amberg, Wis. (r.i.p. Wayne J. Bero Sr., Green Bay Press-Gazette, Sept. 8, 2010).  Previous entries: Athelstane, Walhain, Duck Creek, Breed, Anston and Sobieski.
• Obituary Headline Nickname of the Week:  James F. "Cheezy Jim" McMaster, late of Seymour, Wis. (Green Bay Press-Gazette, Sept. 9, 2010).
• "The trouble with Italian food is five or six days later, you're hungry again."--George Miller, film producer.
• Sports note from psychologist Ken Ravizza, Ph. D.: "Peak performance isn't about being in the zone; it's about getting a job done with what you have.  The phrase I use is, 'Comfortable being uncomfortable.' "
• Today's sure-fire conversation starter:  What do baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield and journeyman outfielder Dion James have in common?  They're the only two major leaguers who have killed a bird with a batted ball during a game.  (Randy Johnson killed one with a pitch! And big-leaguers Eric Davis and Pat Burrell (still active) killed birds with batted balls during minor-league games.)
• Piers Morgan, Larry King's replacement, on the other cable talk-show hosts: "I’m very familiar with Bill O’Reilly, Rachel [Maddow], Keith Olbermann. . . . But they’ve gotten increasing self-indulgent. They increasingly talk about each other--Rachel talking about Bill, Bill talking about Keith, Keith talking about Glenn and Bill. It’s all a bit of a laugh. I’m sure it’s all quite interesting to them, but I wonder how interesting it is to a bigger audience. . . ."  (Amen, Mr. Morgan, amen.)
• Overheard:  "My boss didn't impose a salary cap--it's more like an iron helmet!"
• If I can't find a dime's worth of difference between two political candidates, I'd vote for the one who promised to take ALL of his or her campaign signs down immediately after the polls close!  I'm as sick of looking at 'em as you are!  (Talk about visual pollution!)
• Jim's Law of Travel:  Never visit a country that was called something else when you were in high school.
• Years have passed since I have set foot in a comedy club. If the comic is doing badly, it's painful--and if the comic is doing brilliantly, it's extremely painful."--Dick Cavett.
• If Alcoholics Anonymous ever wants to modernize its name, here's a suggestion:  Booze Control.
• A person is presumed innocent until the surveillance video is shown on TV.
• Why do companies keep changing their products' packaging--especially well-established ones? You'd think that having a familiar look would give you an edge in this era of choice-creep explosion, an age when there are, at last count, 19 varieties of Cheerios and about that many kinds of Tylenol, plus myriad copycat store-brand products, ad infinitum, all fighting for shelf space in the Super Wal-Marts and Target Greatlands of America. (And they wonder why "market share" is down.)
• Sad sight seen more and more: Ghost malls--formerly thriving shopping meccas with just two or three remaining stores (sometimes just a beauty or nail parlor) among 85 soaped-up kaput storefronts.  Some of the stores probably closed before the new-paint smell faded away.
• You're an old-timer if you refer to a train as "the iron horse."
• Jim's Law of Doctor's Offices:  The shorter the wait, the better the magazines. The longer the wait. . . .
• Whatever happened to Rae Dawn Chong?
• Today's Latin lesson: Quis bonus pro anser est bonus pro gander. ("What's good for the goose is good for the gander.")
   

POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR 

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

• There are two types of men in the world:  Those who carry pocket knives, and those who don't.
• Quiz time:  The answer:  Ray Flaherty.  (The question appears later in this column.)
• One thing people forget when comparing baseball across eras:  They didn’t throw the ball out of the game every time it hit the dirt (standard practice now!) in Babe Ruth’s day.  If it didn’t go into the stands in some manner, they kept using it, no matter how dirty or scuffed. 
• (Tell me that didn’t give the pitchers more of an advantage back then--along  with the higher mound, the legal spitball, the absence of batting helmets, batting gloves and all that body armor. Plus they didn't have the "hitters' backgrounds" that are commonplace today; batters were often looking into a sea of white shirts. Still, Joe DiMaggio managed to amass a 56-game hitting streak that has endured nearly 70 years, among other remarkable offensive feats by other genuine giants!)
• Jim's Unusual Product of the Week:  Crop brand Organic Cucumber Vodka (Only $25.99 for a 750ml bottle).
•  "After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed and mourning over tragedies that were not my own."--Oscar Wilde
• Book Title of the Week:  "How To Really Get Postal Jobs."
• Which brings up a point: Time was when postal jobs--never mind how unglamorous or pedestrian (no pun intended)--were valued because of their "job security." But with reduced mail volume, the closing of numerous post offices and the specter of discontinued Saturday delivery, such jobs have lost their best feature.  Not surprising, given that even teaching and police and fire department jobs--other bastions of "job security"--are falling victim to layoffs, furloughs and "early retirements."
• Redundancy patrol:  “Collaborate together,” "continue on," ". . . see what happens in the future."
• When I was young, news of a divorce in our neighborhood/circle of friends was a virtual scandal, not accepted (or virtually expected) as it is now.  The thought of gay marriage would have been regarded as science-fiction improbable.  And who would have predicted "male-enhancement" commercials in prime time?  Heard some of the words now getting past the censors on late-night talk shows? On cable?
• Thus this question:  If past is prologue, what other taboos will eventually fall into the Accepted category? Where will society finally draw the line?  Child pornography? Incest?  Bestiality? Alternate-side-of-the-street parking? I would hope "None of the above," but I wouldn't bet on it.  (I’m just sayin’.) 
• What's the difference between a proverb, an axiom and an adage?
• "Both President Obama and Glenn Beck . . . were fulsome [italics mine] in their praise of the troops [at the rally], as well they should have been."--Frank Rich in The New York Times, Sept. 5.
• Oops--wrong word. The error, albeit a common one, is the misuse of "fulsome."  It does not, as many erroneously assume, mean "full," "abundant" or "lavish"; it means "insincere," "excessively flattering," "offensive to good taste, tactless."
• The Times' copy desk should have caught that and asked the estimable Mr. Rich which word he wanted to substitute. But that didn't happen.  Perhaps the Times has also fallen victim to the reduced staffing that has plagued the profession in recent years. ("Lavish" would have been my choice, as it has but one meaning and therefore invites no misunderstanding.)
• Rule of thumb:  Whisper anything you want remembered.
• Ever wonder why computer models have such strange, alphabet-soup-sounding names?  It's no accident, says Steve Fox, vice president and editorial director of PC World magazine.  Complex names (such as Widget-Tech Huzzah 5097B-15iJ Laptop) make it almost impossible to demand that Big Box Store A match the sale price at Big Box Store B  and also makes online price comparisons virtually impossible.
• Writes Fox:  "Dozens of models; thousands of configurations; indecipherable, protean prices?  Don't sweat it; just click the Buy Now button."
• I agree with Fox:  It's hard to believe that increasing customer confusion is an effective marketing strategy.  How can you ask for a product by name when the name is confusing and complex--or changes every month?  (As if instant obsolescence isn't enough, we now have constant confusion.  Lovely.)
• Quiz answer question:  In 1935, Flaherty, a New York Giants receiver, became the first athlete to have his number retired. (In this case, appropriately, No. 1.)
• Strange but true: Did you know that Ernest Hemingway was dressed and raised as a girl until he was 3 years old? (His mother tried to pass him off as the twin of his slightly older sister!  What's the joke here--The Daughter Also Rises?)
• "Zippy" by Bill Griffith is the best "comic strip" ever.  And to call it that is almost an insult, because what it is, is social/pop culture commentary at its witty, most perceptive best.
• Why you're running late:  According to a study cited in the Wall Street Journal, traffic can slow even without heavy volume, because of driver reaction time. Even when the number of vehicles shouldn't tax a road, "a small perturbation—such as a slight deceleration by one car—can ripple through the cars behind them, as they brake in reaction." 
• Japanese researchers assigned roughly two dozen drivers to cruise along a closed circular track at about 20 miles per hour. After some time, a jam developed, and the cars within it ground to a halt--even though no one ahead of them actually stopped!
• Postgame (or perhaps even pregame) cliche of the year, if not the decade:  "It is what it is."  (What it is, is lame beyond description--a vacuous locution.  But I guess they got tired of saying older lame stuff like "We'll go get 'em tomorrow!")
• Today's Latin lesson:  Fines finium may adicio. ("Restrictions may apply.")
   

POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR 

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

• I think the car dealer lied to me.  "All the bells and whistles"?  I've counted five bells--but no whistle!  I'm taking it back!
• August is finally over--the only month without a holiday or special commemorative day of any sort.  (Go ahead, check your calendars.)  You won't find anything--no fringe holidays like President's Days, no "Hallmark holidays" like Mother's or Father's Days, no mainstream religious holidays, not even a Secretary's Day.
• That's why August would be perfect for one of my pet projects--establishing Turnabout's Fair Play Month. What would happen?  Simply this:  Sometime during the month, your doctor would have to get naked in front of you . . . and your accountant and/or broker would have to show you his or her tax return!  Why?  Simply to correct the power imbalance in those relationships: They know things about you that you don't know about them, hence the undeniably universal need for such an observance. 
• You'll know society has truly hit rock bottom when, in addition to cell phones going off in church (already happening), people start answering them and talking on them!
• We lost a great one the other day. Edward Kean, head writer for "The Howdy Doody Show," died at the age of 85.  He wrote the show's theme song ("It's Howdy Doody Time"), created such characters as Clarabell the Clown and Prof. Phineas T. Bluster and coined the word "cowabunga."  Talk about your contributions to society!
• (With all due respect, Mr. Kean had degrees form Columbia and Cornell Universities, became a stockbroker after leaving "Doody" and "on the side, played "beautiful piano and played in hotels and restaurants," his wife said.)
• Caught myself the other day referencing "an old proverb." Oops.  Aren't all proverbs old?  Are there any new proverbs?  Probably not. How long does a sage truism have to age before we can call it a proverb? (I'm just sayin'.)
• This baseball statue thing is getting out of hand.  One could well debate whether ANY baseball player deserves one (is there a statue anywhere of Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine?), and a recent list published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contained a real eyebrow raiser.
• That would be Frank White of the Kansas City Royals, a career .255 hitter, who is one of two Royals so honored (George Brett, a former batting champion and a Hall of Famer, is the other). (I don't care if White, a fine fellow, was the first graduate of the long-defunct Royals Baseball Academy; he's as deserving of a statue as Tiger Woods is of an audience with the pope!)
• The St. Louis Cardinals, by the way, lead the statue standings with no fewer than 11 honorees! That's a lot of bronze, brother!  On the other hand, the Angels have only one statue-ee . . . and he's not even a player.  That would be former team owner Gene Autry.  (What? No Bo Belinsky statue?)
• While on the topic of baseball, what's with this concussion "epidemic"?  It seems each year there are more and more of them, with two players in recent years (Corey Koskie and Mike Matheny) having that injury end their careers.  And this year one of the top players on one of the top teams (Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins) has been out for an extended period with that head injury. It could well affect the outcome of the American League Central race.
• And if this isn't The Year of the Concussion, it must be The Year of the Oblique Muscle Strain.  Good Lord, if you're a big-league ballplayer and can't swing a bat without having to go to the hospital, you're obviously in the wrong line of work. 
• About the Hawaii team's success in the Little League World Series (they made it to the final game, finally losing to Japan):  Shouldn't teams that can practice in 80-degree weather 12 months a year have some kind of a handicap?  Especially when playing a team from Ohio?  Talk about your proverbial uneven playing field!
• Book Title of the Week:  "Arrested: What To Do When Your Loved One is in Jail."
• It's 90 degrees and feels like it.  It's 25 degrees cooler--at least--in the fast-food place. Yet invariably there's some idiot eating in his car--usually with the engine running, burning precious fuel and polluting the air so unnecessarily.  Maybe we need an EPA police force to ticket these people--and get those trucks and cars you see spewing billows of noxious blue smoke off the road.
• "There's so much comedy on television.  Does that cause comedy in the streets?"--Dick Cavett
• We didn't have iPads and Blackberries when I was growing up, but we never had a massive egg recall, next to nobody had a peanut allergy and E. coli was unheard of. (Aids? That was an antacid--produced and marketed by the Life Savers company in the 1960s.  "Double-action relief," 15 cents.  Who else would tell you these things?)
• I'm not a big Michael Moore fan (for one thing, I don't believe everyone in a business suit is the devil incarnate), but he's right about one thing he said on "Larry King Live" recently:  "Nothing works in America anymore.  And you can't even get anyone on the phone to tell them about it."
• When Brett Favre finally does retire, will ESPN go off the air?
• Why do people post signs saying "Garage Sale" when they're selling just about everything but the garage?  Ditto "Yard Sale."  The yard is not for sale!  (But I guess "Family Discards Sale" probably wouldn't net much business.)
• As if energy drinks weren't enough, now I've spotted (at Walgreens) Rush High-Power Lip Balm.  With "caffeine, taurine and B-12."  What, no steroid deodorant?  No atomic nasal spray?  Stay tuned.
• And now my wife calls my attention to--get this--Skin Renew, "the first 2-in-1 eye roller.  Refreshing eye care with caffeine."
• There are two types of people in the world:  Those who drive straight in to parking spaces . . . and those strange souls who always have to back in.
• Sixth entry in the Wisconsin Town I Never Heard Of Until I Saw It Mentioned in a Newspaper Obituary: Sobieski, Wis. (R.I.P. Willam Scott Russell, Green Bay Press-Gazette, August 24, 2010).  Previous entries:  Athelstane, Walhain, Duck Creek, Breed and Anston.
• Speaking of Wisconsin, Sept. 18 marks the start of Ruffed Grouse hunting season in Zone A (wherever that is).  According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the ruffed grouse population appears to be on the downward side of its 10-year cycle.  (I wish I could say I saw that coming, but I'd be lying.)
•  Today's Latin lesson:  Narro abyssus ut meus parum amicus! ("Say hello to my l'il friend!")

Farrago

True terror--Afghans behind the wheel!

 Afghan Sgt. Maj. Barakatullah Kolistani, who trains army recruits, is confident that his fledgling soldiers are learning the discipline, strategic skills and marksmanship needed to defeat the Taliban.

But Kolistani, one of the base's senior enlisted soldiers, is worried about their proficiency in another key skill: driving. Particularly when it comes to the 8,000-pound-plus U.S.-supplied Humvee, the vehicle of choice in the nascent Afghan army.

Afghan and American trainers at the NATO-run Kabul Military Training Center, where 10,000 recruits receive instruction at any given time, are shocked to discover just how bad the Afghans drive.

"We're losing them faster from vehicle accidents than combat," said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, commander of the 22,000-acre training center, a former Soviet base that still houses a graveyard for Soviet tanks.

More than half of Afghan army injuries result from vehicular accidents. Since 2005, 141 soldiers and recruits have died in rollovers and collisions, many caused by excessive speed, inability to negotiate curves or an unwillingness to yield to other vehicles.

About 80 percent of the recruits are illiterate. Many are from rural villages and have never steered a vehicle more complex than a horse-drawn cart. Those who have driven a car have, in many cases, done so primarily in the clogged, chaotic streets of Kabul, the nation's capital, where traffic resembles a demolition derby.

Even for vehicle-savvy young Americans, the Humvee is a challenge. It is wide and top-heavy and difficult to drive around corners; the braking system is demanding and the ride jarring.

Pickup trucks, also supplied by the Americans, present their own problem: Many Afghan soldiers seem oblivious to their comrades riding in the open bed. A common accident involves a driver hitting a bump at high speed, ejecting the passengers in the back.

 Kolistani, who fought beside the legendary Ahmed Shah Massoud in his unsuccessful effort to keep the Taliban from taking power after Russian troops withdrew from Afghanistan more than two decades ago, knows that mastering the intricacies of the M-16 assault rifle is important.

But he would like even more hours devoted to driver training.

"To fight," he said, "you must drive."

--Tony Perry in The Los Angeles Times, Aug. 29, 2010

A state of masochism (home of The Scenery Tax)

News item:  "Wisconsin dodges top 10 tax list again."  Turns out the Dairy State ranks 13th, with11.8 percent of state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income." 

The "leader"?  Alaska, where residents pay a whopping 34.7 percent--more than a third of personal income--in such taxes.  That's in addition to paying a lot more for consumer goods (18 percent higher in Anchorage, 28 percent higher in Fairbanks and 36 percent higher in state capital Juneau, according to "The Alaska Almanac") and living in fear of The Big One," the mega-quake that top geologists are not just always predicting but are surprised hasn't already happened!

(No wonder alcoholism is rampant in that state.  Do people drink so much there because of the conditions . . . or do they put up with all this because they're too inebriated to notice?)

But there are benefits--or are they bribes?  Residents receive Permanent Fund Dividends annually, ranging from $600 to $1,500, according to Wikipedia.  But in 2008 they each got $3,269 per person when a one-time $1,200 Alaska Resource Rebate was added to the dividend amount.  2009?  It was a mere $1,305, which probably doesn't make much of a dent in the higher living costs. Alaskans probably pay that much more than consumers in the pejoratively labeled Lower 48 in three months' worth of groceries or dining.

How do you say "You don't have to be crazy to live here, but it helps!" in Inuit?

POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR 

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

• Why are the "comedians" on cable TV's "Comedy Central" always dressed like the guy who empties your septic tank?
• It's getting harder and harder to find a good palm reader. (Hmm, I wonder if Consumer Reports has ever  done anything . . . .)
• Sudden thought: What if they found out that an endangered animal was eating all the endangered plants?
• Book Title of the Week:  "From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time."
• Memo to Oriental buffet restaurants that serve "pizza":  Stick with what you do best.  There's no Moo Goo Gai Pan at Pizza Hut!
• "Jimmy Fallon, meet Arsenio Hall."
• If vampires don't cast a reflection, how do they shave or do their hair and makeup?
• Fifth entry in the Wisconsin Town I Never Heard Of Until I Saw It Mentioned in a Newspaper Obituary sweepstakes: Breed, Wis. (R.I.P. Lois M. Scott, Green Bay Press-Gazette, July 23, 2010).  Previous entries:  Athelstane, Walhain, Duck Creek and Anston.
• Baseball should have a Hall of Moments for guys like John Paciorek.  He played just one game in the major leagues (Houston Colt 45s, 1963), but he went 3 for 3, scored 4 runs, drove in 3 runs and also walked twice.  (Other than that, as the late Hall of Fame broadcaster Jack Brickhouse would have said, he didn't do a thing!)
• (Why just a one-game career?  He had a bad back, but his day--literally--in the sun is the envy of all who never got even that far.  That is, the rest of us.)
• And always remember, sports fans:  Odds are, the star of today's game could well be the first-base coach of tomorrow.
• The Law of Unintended Consequences will never be repealed.
• Entertainers you probably thought were dead but were still (at this writing) with us:  Tony Martin, 97; Kay Starr, 87; Doris Day, 86; B.B. King, 84; Tony Bennett and Chuck Berry, 83; Patti Page, Andy Williams and Fats Domino, 82; and Vic Damone and Eddie Fisher, 81.
• SZSEZ advice: Never play poker with a man named Doc, never eat at a place called Mom's--and never go into a store called a Shoppe.
• Why the jobs picture is in the toilet:  CEOs see profits down 30 percent and the payroll-plus-benefits tab down 40 percent, and say, "Why hire?"  (Hey, you wouldn't hire, either, if the roles were reversed! But people always want to expect noble deeds from people that they would never perform themselves.)
• Life is getting too complicated, what with innumerable passwords and PINs (not to mention the number and price of ink cartridges our printers take . . . and take . . . and take.) 
• When was the last time you saw a pink bubblegum cigar?  (Probably about the last time you saw someone using a cigarette holder!)
• Kitti’s Hog-Nosed Bat, which lives only in Southeast Asia, is the smallest living mammal--less than three-centimeters long and under two grams.  (Kind of hard to work into a conversation, but there you have it--your Science Fact of the Day.) 
• Three things no one has ever had a craving for: Water chestnuts, bean sprouts and Worcestershire sauce.
• "You can have an opinion on the New York mosque, for or against. But there aren’t two sides to the question of whether Obama is a Muslim. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, 'Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.' ”--Maureen Dowd in The New York Times, Aug. 22, 2010
• Today's Latin lesson:  Vestri praecessi may discrepo. ("Your mileage may vary.")
• There will never be a Richard Belzer Lookalike Contest.