POPCORN

BY JIM SZANTOR 

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

• SZSEZ Travel Tip:  With all the brouhaha about patdowns and body scanners, and with the day before Thanksgiving being one of the busiest travel days of the year, if I were you, I'd swing by the airport a day or so in advance.  That way you can get pre-groped  . . . and make matters a lot easier on your actual departure day.  (You'll thank me later.)
• Maybe someone will invent a gadget you can plug into your USB port.  Then, in the privacy of your own home, you can stand naked in front of your computer screen and be "virtually violated," sparing you the indignity at the airport itself!  (I'll thank them later!)
• We've had many memorable Thanksgivings, my wife and I, except during the Carter administration energy crisis.  Turkey Day in '78 was a disaster.  What happened was, my wife misunderstood the President.  She turned the oven down to 68 degrees! 
• There’s no such thing as a “clean bill of health.”  Everybody’s got something.
• The bogus rumor about President Obama’s trip to Asia costing $200 million a day . . . underscored just how far ahead of his time Mark Twain was when he said,  a century before the Internet,  "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."--Thomas Friedman in The New York Times.
• Never eat at a place called Mom's, never play poker with a man named Doc . . . and never write the name of the Bears quarterback in ink.
• Eye-opener: While the debt-ridden U.S. government shells out for nearly half of all global defense expenditures, our most loyal, stalwart, shoulder-to-shoulder allies--Britain and France--pitch in just 3.8 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively, of the world total. Somebody's getting a free ride, and we're getting stuck with the bill.--Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post.
• Should have seen this coming: The phone book--or at least the residential white pages--is going the way of the rotary telephone and the phone booth. Verizon, the largest provider of landline phones in the Washington, D.C., region, is asking state regulators for permission to stop delivering the residential white pages in Virginia and Maryland. Instead, the directories will be available online, printed or on CD-ROM upon request.
• "Blood is thicker than water, and much more difficult to get out of the carpet."--Woody Allen.
• People who have two or more fairly new vehicles sitting out all night exposed to the elements because their multi-car garage is filled with useless junk should consider counseling or, preferably, electro-shock therapy.
• Redundancy patrol:  "Continue on," "convicted felon," "pre-order."
• Ever wonder how some of the “classic” TV shows of the past would have fared if remote controls had been around and there had been more than a hundred channel options?  (“ ‘Gilligan’s What’?  Never heard of it.”)
• Speaking of television, can the Prison Channel be far behind?
• Book Title of the Week:  "Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier," by Michael Fertik and David Thompson.
• Jim's Law of Household Finance:  Nothing ever really "pays for itself."  That's about the biggest self-delusion there is.
• There will never be a Gilbert Gottfried Lookalike Contest.
• Twelfth entry in the Wisconsin Town I Didn't Know Existed Until I Saw It Mentioned in an Obituary Sweepstakes: Pickerel, Wis. (r.i.p. Nancy Tilleson, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Nov. 16, 2010). Previous entries: Athelstane, Walhain, Duck Creek, Breed, Anston, Sobieski, Amberg, Osseo, Angelica, Brazeau and Waukechon.
• People who pick up food and actually eat it while still surfing the buffet table should be deported to the most desolate region of Afghanistan.
• New weather word: When snow flurries are so light that they’re barely visible, they almost look like airborne lint. I call it “slint.” Tomorrow’s forecast: Most sunny, turning partly slinty by afternoon. Chance of slint: 60 percent.
• Today's Latin lesson:  Ego can't puto Ego ate universitas res! ("I can't believe I ate the whole thing!")