POPCORN

                                                            BY JIM SZANTOR

Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric 

and whimsical observations about

 the absurdities of contemporary life

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--I was a teenage professional kickboxer.

--Why don't they just have Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania vote for president and be done with it?

---I see Hillary Clinton has resurfaced on TV, largely to plug yet another book (as if the country is hungering to know just a little bit more about her). I think I've finally put my finger on what her wardrobe reminds me of:  Indoor/outdoor carpeting!

--"To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top."--Robert M. Pirsig, author of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values."

--Magazine renewal notices that say "Last Chance" really mean that there are two more coming.  Maybe more.

--I have only some of my computer files stored in the so-called cloud, so you could say I'm only partly cloudy. 

--"The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards."--Novelist Arthur Koestler

--jimjustsaying’s Newspaper Obituary Headline Nickname of the Month:  “MacDaddy.”  As in, William S. “MacDaddy” Skadden (Door County Daily News, Sept. 5, 2024).  R.I.P., MacDaddy.

--I'd pay a princely sum to see Donald Trump on "Dancing with the Stars."

--jimjustsaying’s Party Ice-Breaker of the Month”: “Say [actual partygoer’s name here], did you know that Cheetos are sold in more than 36 countries, but the flavor and composition are often varied to match regional taste and cultural preferences--such as Savory American Cream in China and Strawberry Cheetos in Japan?”  (Kind of hard to work into a conversation, but there you have it.)

--Snack Food Find of the Week:  Larry the Cable Guy's Fried Dill Pickle Tater Chips.  (Full Disclosure:  Larry and I go way back.   Heck, I knew him when he was Larry the UPS Guy!)

--When is the last time you ordered--or made--French toast?  And what's so French about it anyway.  Did they invent bread, milk and the egg?

--I've never liked anyone who had "the III" after their name.

--I'll come right out and say it:  "60 Minutes" is a shadow of its former self without Mike Wallace and Andy Rooney.   

--As a baseball player, I actually "went deep" once, but more often than not, I went shallow. But that was before I launched my short-lived kick-boxing career . . . .) 

(Hilarious way to take in a Major League game: Tune in the game on TV with the sound muted but listen to the Spanish language radio station play by play.) 

“Un drive profundo al centro, el jardinero central mira hacia arribay¡ se ha ido!”(A deep drive to center, the center fielder looks up, and it's gone!)

--Memo to all sports announcers (especially radio guys): No one has ever complained about a play-by-play announcer giving the score too often.

--Baseball bucks:  The latest figures show that each player receives a check for between $20,000 and $60,000, depending on tenure, usually on the first day of spring training.  That’s their share of the MLB licensing fees, priced into every team shirt, cap and jacket that fans can’t get enough of.

And all of them get $117.50 per day meal money when they are on the road.  But many actually spend only a pittance of that (usually on breakfast), as the clubs provide food in the clubhouse after every game.

--Redundancy patrol:  The umpires will huddle together to come up with a ruling."--Milwaukee Brewers analyst and language mangler Bill Schroeder.  . . . "They were teammates together in the minor leagues."--Unknown New York announcer on a Sirius-XM radio broadcast of a Cubs-Yankees game.

--Good news and bad news:  The good news: My blog got a huge plug on “GMA” the other day.  The bad news?  It was on "Good Morning, Afghanistan"!

--I haven’t played pool since 1979, or about the last time “Saturday Night Live” was actually funny.

--I’m allowing myself one ethnic joke per year: Jewish guy to his Mexican wife: "Oy vey, Maria!"

DRUDGING AROUND: Male staffer says FEMALE senator forced him to perform sexual favors . . . Animal sacrifices surge in NYC; chickens and pigs mutilated in twisted rituals . . . Firefighter accused of starting deadly forest fires so he could be “hero” . . . 1 in 4 say they won’t have kids due to finances . . . Snoring “cure” one step closer . . . Self-medicating gorillas may hold drugs clues . . . “Snowflakeism” Gen Z hires are easily offended, not ready for workplace . . . Italy opens door to chemical castration for rapists and pedophiles . . . Prince Harry spotted at grungy NYC tattoo parlor . . . Parrots overwhelm town with screeching, poo and power outages . . . Montana man to be sentenced for unthinkable crime against sheep. (Thanks, as always, to Matt Drudge and his merry band of aggregators.)

--When's the last time you saw a kid playing marbles—or jacks?  Skipping rope?  Playing hopscotch? You’d almost think they’d been banned!  (And if they were, that would probably goad people into doing them again, if in fact they knew what they are?  Taking time out from TikTok, one presumes.)

--Tennessee Williams and Tennessee Ernie Ford:  Discuss!

The Regrettable Rules of High-Tech Happenstance (per PC World magazine).

 
1.  The likelihood that any digital device will fail is directly proportional to your need for that device to work properly. 

2. Your laptop will wait to die until just after your warranty for the system has expired.  The encouraging news is that taking out an extended warranty of one year will likely extend your machine's life by exactly that length of time.

3.  Voice-mail messages always break up and become unintelligible just as the caller is leaving his or her call-back number.  Note that this rule applies only to important calls that you absolutely need to return.

4.  "While supplies last" is a synonym for "until the guy right in front of you buys the last one."

5.  You know the next great version with all the features you really want?  It won't be released until right after you've bought the previous version. (And if you decide to wait for that next great version, it will be delayed.  Probably for a long time.  Or maybe forever.)

--Memories are made of . . .  what?

As one neuroscientist put it, “When we retrieve a memory, we also rewrite it to some degree, so the next time we go to remember it, we don’t retrieve the original memory but the last one we recollected.”

Instinctively, we believe in the accuracy of these revised memories, treating them as entirely factual when they may be far from it. Simply put, for those who demean themselves, memories can be both inaccurate and unfair.”—Philip Chard

 --You know you're getting old when everything dries up or leaks!

--I saw a recent documentary on Michael Jackson, and it's a good thing he wasn't convicted of those child molestation charges.  I mean, who was going to hold his umbrella for him in prison? (And those outfits he wore.  He looked like one half of a Russian ice-dancing team.)

--There will never be a Whoopi Goldberg Lookalike Contest.

--Media Word of the Week (a word you only see in print but never ever hear a normal person use in real life):  "soupçon."

--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!

--Tattoo on right arm:  "See other arm."--Demetri Martin

--The question: What are public hugging, selling chewing gum or forgetting to flush a public toilet? Answer: Real crimes with big fines in Singapore (according to news reports).

--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!

--When did car names go off the track and away from such stellar monikers as Thunderbird, Firebird, Cobra and Mustang? . . . Now we're in the era of Aveo, Traverse, Flex, Element, Azera, Borrego, Sedona, Evora, Outlander, Cube, Murano, Kizashi, Yaris, Venza, Passat, along, of course, with the alpha-numeric soup of A6, RL, TL, Q5, STS, CR-V, LX, RX and MKS. 

How long before they run out of names . . . and start naming vehicles after body parts? ("Hey, Ralph, still driving that Kia Kidney?" "No, Bob, I got me a new Pontiac Pancreas. It was between that and a Mitsubishi Mitral Valve.")

"The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop."--P.J. O'Rourke

 Today's Latin lesson: Ego don't teneo ultum super professio tamen Ego teneo quis Ego amo.  ("I don't know much about art, but I know what I like.") 

 Many thanks to Barb Dwyer, this month’s Popcorn intern.