POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR

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

• Why don't bottle caps have that little piece of cork inside them anymore?
• Remember when you had to go to a carnival sideshow to see a tattooed lady?  Now she’s your kid’s third grade teacher!
• Famous last words:  “No, we won’t finance it.  Who wants to see a movie about a guy in a bat suit?”
• Jim’s Law of Restaurant Comfort:  The more modern the restaurant, the more uncomfortable the chairs, booths or tables.
• One of my favorite proverbs: "Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana."
• Is there more than one form of the word “smithereens”?  Smitheroons?   Smitherites?
• Update on why there’s no pork-flavored cat food:  According to a SZSEZ correspondent, various reasons have been advanced, namely that cats don’t digest it well to it being too expensive to produce at a price people would pay for pet food.
• There are two kinds of people:  Those who refer to a popular outdoor summer pastime as “gallff,” and those who refer to the popular summer pastime as “gowlff.”  (I’m on the side of the angels with “gallff.”)
• Speaking of sports: Who are these people who hold up banners at ballgames? 
• Memo to street pothole repair crews:  Please level the patches off with the street surface; stop mounding it up higher in the apparent belief that traffic will “tamp it down.”  It never does.  So what you’ve done is replace a jarring hole with a jarring de facto speed bump, a dubious “improvement.”
• (Don’t these guys drive on roads themselves and notice this?  Apparently not. They must parachute in from the Planet of Obtuse Laborers and return there after the job is done.)
• What’s in a Name department:  Speaking of roads, there’s a Louie’s Road in Forestville, but nobody seems to who Louie is.  Or was.  Investigative reporting still has a long way to go.
• Want to know one huge cause of global warming?  On a hot day, lie down on your lawn in a T-shirt and shorts, flat on your back.  You won’t be uncomfortable. Then go lie down on your asphalt or concrete driveway.  You will be uncomfortable. Case closed.
• I don’t know about you, but I tend to re-evaluate a person after I find out he (or she) has a pit bull or a python for a pet.
• Two statements that could be applied to just about any conflict, controversy or issue:  “There’s enough blame to go around.”  Or . . . “The truth probably lies somewhere in between.”
• I love it when we get into what I call the “sweet spot season”:  Too warm for the furnace, cool enough not to need the air.  Then life is especially good.
• Why there won’t be a second American Revolution, despite all the Tea Party rage and discontent now being observed and covered to a fare-thee-well by the media:  Too many distractions!  The Original Colonists didn’t have 300 TV channels, DVDs, video games, You Tube, Facebook and myriad other pastimes and diversions.  How can people get seriously involved in anything when it might mean missing “Dancing With the Stars” or “American Idol“ (to mention just two cultural abominations).
• I’d be the last one to condone or applaud the kind of violence and behavior (death threats, racial slurs) attributed to the so-called Tea Party movement, yet . . . For eons, commentators  (usually of the liberal persuasion) have, when discoursing about social or political ills, wailed, “ . . . but where’s the outrage?”  Well, now there’s outrage aplenty, but not the right kind apparently.  I guess the outrage is too outrageous.  More’s the pity.  We need some politically (and morally) correct outrage, am I right, people?
• Today’s Word Never Uttered Outside the Context of a Nursery Rhyme: “porridge.”  As in, “Who’s been eating my porridge?” asked the bear.
• (And therein lies another of my failed franchise ideas:  Jim’s House of Porridge.)
• Updating the opera: “The Stylist of Seville.”  “The Pre-nup of Figaro.” 
• I still feel cheated!  I got my college diploma in 1966 (UWM), but all I got was a piece of paper.  You too? I’m still waiting for the sheepskin!  (Has ANYONE ever actually gotten a sheepskin? If so, how has it held up over the years?)  Was there an under-reported worldwide sheepskin shortage? Were they pulling the wool over our eyes?
• Three “S” words that sound exactly like their meaning:  Suave, smut and spoof.
• About those electric cars that are supposed to help save the planet and end our dependence on foreign oil:  Where are all these charging stations going to be?  Will there be 400 of them in each hotel parking garage?  In each Motel 6 parking lot?  And even if there are, what’s to prevent some mean-spirited miscreant from unplugging my/your car during the night? 
• If you’re getting the impression that these automakers haven’t thought this thing through, we’re thinking alike. 
• How rich is the man who invented crime scene tape?
• Overheard:  “My neighbor’s grass is greener, but mine is taller!”
• Last year my car had a recall for the thingamajig, and this year my wife’s car has a recall for the whatchamacallit!  Who do I blame, what’shisname?