POPCORN

By Jim Szantor

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

• Political strategist and forensic blood-spatter expert:  Two occupations that no kid ever fantasizes about!
• If Norman Rockwell came back to life today, do you think there's anything he'd want to paint?
• Does Anderson Cooper have two first names . . . or two last names?  Discuss!
• To the lady who wrote in:  Yes, there is a reason why surgeons wear light blue scrubs.  It seems that when scrubs were first introduced, they were often white--but soon fell out of favor because they gave off a bright glare under bright operating theater lights. A lot of manufacturers switched to blue or green after that.--Quora Digest
• Three bad ideas for a business:  Just Cufflinks.  Just Umbrellas. Just Shoelaces.
• I noticed, ahead of me at a stoplight, a Chevy Avalanche.  Now, how is that a good name for a vehicle?  Who signed off on that?  Has anyone ever benefited from an avalanche?  What's next, a Toyota Typhoid?  A Honda STD?  
• I wonder how many people have text-messaged while having surgery under local anesthetic?  Don’t laugh;  somebody’s probably doing it at this very moment.   (Send me a Tweet from the surgical suite?)
• Headline of the Week:  "Amazon to sell Christmas trees. "  (Still on the drawing board, I'm thinking:  Curbside pickup on Jan. 2???)
• “When it’s 100 in New York, it’s 72 in Los Angeles. When it’s 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it’s still 72. However, there are 2 million interesting people in New York—and 72 in Los Angeles.”--Neil Simon
• You're an old-timer if you can remember taking glass soda bottles back to the store for the deposit money.   (You're a young person if you have never seen a glass soda pop bottle.)
• I don't care what anyone says:  We didn't have erectile dysfunction ads in prime time when Mr. Rogers was alive.
• Let's see if I've got this right:  "KIds under 3 eat free."  Senior sodas, senior coffee.  Where's the middle-age break?  No wonder the middle class can't get ahead--they're locked out of the discount loop.
• Quiet as its kept, my wife and I are in the running for heavy TV exposure next spring:  "Naked and Afraid, Senior Division."   (Always wanted to get naked in the steaming jungles of Botswana!  I'm sure there's an all-but-invisible but heavily poisonous insect with my name on it.)
• Why is the Mute button the hardest one to find on any remote control?  It's in a different place on every model.
• Obituary headline:  "Pharmacist and master cribbage player."   Cribbage.  Now there's a game for the Facebook/Twitter/Buzzfeed Generation!
•  "Death and taxes and childbirth.  There’s never a convenient time for any of them."--Novelist Margaret Mitchell
• Combine  hydrogen peroxide, oxalate estes, butyl benzoate, dimethy phthalate and fluorescent dyes (anthracene derivatives, lumongen Red 300), and what have you got?  Glow sticks, of course.   (Kind of hard to work into a conversation, but there you have it.)
• When researchers at Bell Labs and Hughes Aircraft actually began producing laser light in the 1960s, they never imagined that its first mainstream use would be scanning bar codes at checkout counters.
• "He who is not contented with what he has would not be contented with what he would like to have."--Socrates 
• Three TV shows I never watch:  "Project Runway," "Total Divas," and "Babe Winkelman's Outdoor Secrets."
• jimjustsaying's Word That Should Exist But Doesn't of the Month:  Buyercade.  n.  That plastic or rubber bar that separates your items at the checkout from the others.
• Political speech I'd love to (but probably never will) hear:  "Win or lose, I promise to have all of my campaign signs and posters taken down the day after the election."
• Drudge Report headline:  "People have sex in airports to pass time."  Comment:  Well, you've already got your shoes off . . . .
• Memo to anyone who purchased the "Leave it to Beaver" boxed DVD set:  You either have too much time on your hands or too much money or very questionable taste in pop culture.   (Not my Guilty Pleasure, either.)
• Today's Latin Lesson:  Et vectigalia solvere singulis tractandis justo.  ("Just pay separate postage and handling.")