By Zay N. Smith
Asteroid 2012 VJ38 was discovered yesterday.
It is passing between Earth and the moon as you read this.
But think nothing of it.
News Headline: “Santa arrives at Woodfield Mall.”
News Headline: “Visions of sugar plums: Holiday open houses get shoppers thinking. . . .”
Can’t you feel it?
Christmas (the season of which used to start the day after Thanksgiving until the voracious greed of merchandisers took hold) is in the air!
News Item: “. . . Justin Bieber expressed a certain existential malaise in the wake of. . . .”
Add existential malaises to the list of things that aren’t what they used to be.
QT Trickle-On Economics Update:
Citigroup, which laid off 4,500 workers this year, has given ousted CEO Vikram Pandit a parting bonus of $6.7 million.
News Item: “More than 466,000 people have signed an online petition that calls for Macy’s to ‘dump Trump,’ whose clothing line and fragrance are sold in. . . .”
Donald Trump has a fragrance?
Wait! Warning!
Do not try to imagine Donald Trump’s fragr–
Too late?
Sorry.
Henry Kisor, an Evanston reader, having received junk mail offering a “FREE PREPAID CREMATION,” writes:
“Wonder how that works.”
And adds:
“Only in the Ignited States. . . .”
News Item: An Arizona woman, upset at President Obama’s re-election, runs down her husband with a car because he failed to vote.
As the Tea Party slowly, slowly, becomes only a pleasant memory. . . .
News Headline: “Residents in more than 30 states file secession petitions.”
News Headline: “Petition calls for stripping citizenship and exile for anyone who signs petition to secede.”
Left alone, some problems solve themselves.
Mary Lu Larsen, an East Hazel Crest reader, regarding QT’s citing the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, writes:
“I believe it was Stephen Leacock who wrote of an English lord in his drawing room beneath a coat of arms with the family motto: ‘Hic haec hoc huius huius huius.’ ”
Which reminds QT of the Latin teacher who went out one night and was set upon by a bunch of hoodla.
QT will go back to English now.
News Headline: “Murgan Salem al-Gohary, Egyptian jihadist, wants Sphinx and pyramids destroyed.”
QT almost forgot to check.
We are now up to 1,530 Google hits for “tap-dancing militant Islamic fundamentalists.”
Have you noticed something?
QT, if it does say so, is possibly the only columnist in the nation who has managed to make it through the week without mentioning David Petraeus.
Oh.
Woops.
News Item: Australian drought causes shortage of cockroaches needed to pour over contestants on the “I’m a Celebrity. . . Get Me Out of Here!” TV reality show.
Will people take climate change seriously now?
QT Modern Corporate Gibberish of the Week:
Avanade has acquired Azaleos.
News Item: Cray’s Titan supercomputer sets record as world’s fastest, performing 17.59 quadrillion calculations per second.
Then again: Aren’t we taking the computer’s word for it?
QT Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language:
Ellen Hinsch, a Columbia, S.C., reader, regarding QT’s noting that peas are a fruit, writes:
“Regarding the definitions of fruits and vegetables and peas and the poor tomato: Although peas and tomatoes are technically fruits, we can forgive the oversight of those who believe them to be vegetables because peas and tomatoes generally keep company with other vegetables, and one is judged by one’s associates. Also, ‘intelligence’ is knowing that the tomato is a fruit; ‘wisdom’ is not putting it in a fruit salad.”
But we haven’t yet considered the legal definitions.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1893 that the tomato is a vegetable.
Or we might want the current Supreme Court to revisit the case.
And learn that tomatoes are people, too.
Write to QT at qt@beachwoodreporter.com
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QT appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Posted on November 14, 2012