POPCORN

By Jim Szantor

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

(Cue jaunty  flamenco guitar music and film clips of Jim cavorting with a coterie of adoring, attractive females.)

            His credit cards have no expiration date.                            

If  his blood pressure goes up, the stock market goes down.

When he delivers a speech, Hillary Clinton pays HIM $250,000.

He's Jim Szantor, the most interesting man in Wisconsin.   

"I don't drink beer often, but when I do,  I prefer Spotted Cow.

Stay thirsty, my friends."

• You didn't hear it from me, but I understand Subway is going to move quickly to name a new spokesman:  Bill Cosby!
• Headline I wanted to see but didn't:  Lions 1, Dentist 0.
• Memo to TV weathercasters:  Why do you call rain “a rain event”?  Will refreshments be served?  Are there guest speakers?  Are tickets available?  
• Seems like there's an app for everything these days--for everything you only do once in a while but few if any for what you do daily.  
• Where, for instance, is the bedmaking app?  The dishwashing app?  The clothes-folding app?   The tooth-flossing app?  The world is waiting.
• jimjustsaying's solution to the gun problem:  A bullet tax.  Forget fighting the NRA; instead, levy a $100-a-bullet tariff.  Because if you really want the gun for self-protection and not to shoot up a movie theater, is a couple hundred bucks really too much to pay?
• Speaking of violence:  "There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no cause that I am prepared to kill for."--Mahatma Gandhi
• Newspaper headline:  "NY Stock Exchange says software upgrade caused outage."  
• Don't you love those "upgrades"?   Shades of  "We had to destroy the village in order to save it" of Vietnam War-era infamy.
• "An uneasy conscience is a hair in in the mouth."-- Mark Twain
• Seems as if everything in baseball is sponsored these days:  "Here's the Brewers starting lineup, brought to you by Milwaukee-area Chevy dealers." . . .  "Let's set the Brewers Pepsi defense for you." . . . . "This pitching change is brought to you by . . . ."
• (What's next?   "This between-innings Announcer Bathroom Visit is brought to you by Quilted Northern, the official bathroom tissue of the Milwaukee Brewers . . . .")
• All Over-Rated Team (in this case, the G Team):   Whoopi Goldberg,  Jim Gaffigan and Greg Gutfeld.
• If it isn't bad enough that the media apparently has no intention of abandoning the ubiquitous "gate" suffix to anything remotely scandal oriented, along comes a new one:  "ghazi." 
• As in "Brunchgazi," stemming from a highly publicized incident in a Portland, Me., restaurant in which a diner owner loudly berated a screaming toddler, a tactic that proved surprisingly effective (though it has earned the man considerable scorn in some quarters).  Others, though, have lauded the man and lambasted oblivious parents who let their carpet rodents scream on endlessly without intervening or removing them from the premises.
• jimjustsaying's Party Ice-Breaker of the Week:  "Say (actual fellow partygoer's name here), did you know that there’s a spider that secretes a webbing 25 times more powerful than steel, a moth that sends sonic illusions to jam bats’ radar and a termite that can shoot poisonous glue out of its face?"   (Thanks to Wired magazine for making me the sparkling party conversationalist people say that I am.)
• Sixty-second  Wisconsin Town I Didn't Know Existed Until I Saw It Mentioned in a Green Bay Press-Gazette Obituary: Cloverleaf Lakes, Wis.. (R.I.P., Lloyd Schoenfeld, Green Bay Press-Gazette obituary, July 1, 2015).  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,  Forest Junction, Thiry Daems, Black Creek,  Mountain, Ledgeview, Lunds, Suring, Lakewood and Beaver.
• Who is your favorite TV doctor?  Dr. Oz?  Dr. Drew?  Me, I'm sticking with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.  At least he's not afraid to give his full name.
• I wonder how uneasy aviation experts feel when they have to fly to scenes of airplane tragedies?
• Wise words:  Some people feel more alive when  they travel . . .  because at those times sense perception--experiencing--takes up more of their consciousness than thinking.  They become more present.  Others remain completely possessed by the voice in the head even then. Their perceptions and experiences are distorted by instant judgments.  They haven't really gone anywhere.  Only their body is traveling, while they remain where they have always been:  in their head."--Eckhart Tolle, "A New Earth"
• Shouldn't those  public-service ads (or those tags at the end of beer commercials) say "Please drive responsibly" instead of "Please drink responsibly"?  If you're home alone, I don't much care if you drink irresponsibly (as long as you don't "drunk dial" me!)..   
• Today's Latin lesson:  Ego sententia nos erant in haud dico album! ("Hey, I thought we were on the no-call list!")