On Halloween, I kept seeing people whose costumes consisted of everyday clothing drenched in blood. Then I saw a man on crutches with his leg in a massive cast, and I assumed this was his costume. It wasn’t. Then I saw a guy wearing surgical scrubs, so I assumed he was working at a nearby hospital. Until I noticed that, walking beside him, was another guy wearing a nurse’s uniform, with his face painted like Heath Ledger as The Joker. From now on, whenever I see someone in terrible physical distress, I’m just going to give them candy and hope that covers it.
There’s another Paul Rudnick, who is some sort of brilliant scientist, and light years smarter than me. But I did see one of his recent tweets, which included what was most likely an abbreviation: “Anal Chem.” Anal Chem also sounds like the name of a hapless character in Middle European folklore. “There goes poor, hopeless Anal Chem, leaving our little shtetl with has hat on backwards, as usual.”
The Home Shopping channels have been selling Christmas items for months, by instilling viewer paranoia: “Sure, it’s only July, but my sister already has all of her Christmas gifts wrapped and waiting in her bedroom closet.” Today two female hosts were promoting a set of illuminated letters, a foot high, which spelled out such thoughts as LOVE, HOPE and KIND. One of the co-hosts thoughtfully suggested that the letters could also be used to spell CAVE and POOL. Or, come to think of it, EVIL or POKE.
