Let's namecheck Hoyt Curtin here.

“Cottontail,” “Lester Leaps In,” “Salt Peanuts” are all written on top of the harmonic structure of “I Got Rhythm.” So is the Flintstones theme, and about a schmillion more. “Scrapple from the Apple” is the changes to “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Donna Lee” is “Indiana.” But wait. In 1928, Sigmund Romburg composed the operetta The New Moon which included the song “Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise.” In 1954, jazz guitarist Johnny Smith wrote a new tune on those changes. In 1960, some pickers in Tacoma cut a twangy version: The Ventures' “Walk, Don't Run,” courtesy of Siegmund Rosenberg from Kanizsa, Hungary.

Jamaica me hungry.

Goat and chicken are somewhat anomalous words in our language; often we use separate terms for an animal and its edible flesh. Maybe because ground cow or thin-sliced salty pig abs sound a bit off-putting. Or maybe not. We eat fishes and usually call them by the right name, except Patagonian toothfish which sounds profoundly inedible. We eat duck and rabbit more often than sweetbreads or lights, no euphemisms required. This is all because yesterday I ate a mess of curried goat. Also jerk chicken, which, isn't it enough to dismember, cook, and devour the bird without the character assassination?

Omnivoracious

Name any food; somebody you know doesn't like it. Watermelon? I know these people. Lamb? Again, some close friends won't touch it. Eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, falafel, and chocolate. Brussels sprouts, catfish, cilantro, lentils, and spaghetti. Spaghetti! Seriously, how did these folks ever get born? What possible evolutionary scenario can explain the persistence of a tendency to be a picky eater? It's like deciding you don't want to look at anything red, or you'll listen only to music with all high notes. Me, I'll eat just about anything. Except mint ice cream. That's just gross, like a bowl of cold toothpaste.

It's all about the fiber.

They’re selling custom-made rubber mats to protect the carpet in your vehicle. Which, correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t carpeting a special option not so long ago and rubber mats the default state? I’m going to make a mint selling expensive aftermarket manual window cranks. It’s like how the cheapest bread is the whitest bread, but then you have to pony up for the bran supplement.  I know who’s buying those mats though- a generation ago they’d have put clear plastic over their cloth upholstered sofas. So much classier than just buying a plastic sofa in the first place.

The valley remains canny.

Here's some disappointing news: You're never going to get an Asimov-style humanoid robot. They were only ever invented (by Karel Capek) as a way to talk about an awakening laboring class. There's no way anybody is going to ever build a truly autonomous C3PO type robot, because what could you possibly use it for that would justify the massive R&D investment? Maybe it could hand out brochures at tradeshows. More bad news. No time machines. Not ever. Because, look, no matter how far in the future it happened, if they were ever to be invented we'd have always had them.

That funny green color

Don't you wish you'd saved your old comic books? They'd be worth a fortune now. And that idea for a computerized map in the dashboard- why didn't you get on the stick and patent that sucker? Easy Street is where you'd be navigating now, pal. The fallacies here are multiple. For one thing, there's no way of knowing what to save ahead of time (National Geographic?) and your vague ideas aren't inventions (Flying Belt?). Still, in hindsight, now that all us boomers are turning into geezers, I'll bet GM wishes it had held onto the Oldsmobile badge a little longer.

My weekend was uneventful

I think we can all agree that the only important function of a Sunday newspaper is to convey color funny pages into the home. There are also sections where people with perfect houses sit proudly in rooms containing absolutely none of the normal detritus of human life. We see no midden heaps awaiting excavation. They do not have last week's Sunday paper scattered across every horizontal surface like I do. Which means these people won't suddenly have their attention transfixed in passing by a colorful insert announcing something called a “Furniture Event.” Maybe their lives are one long Furniture Event.