ROGER SIMON COLUMN
NOVEMBER 7, 2005
SIMON SAYS:
Are neckties really getting skinny again? Can I get my old ones out of the basement?
If we can ban people from bringing nail clippers aboard airplanes, we can ban people from bringing cell phones into movie theaters.
When is the last time you had a really good cassoulet?
Paperback Pick of the Month: "The Battle of Salamis" by Barry Strauss. (It's about a sea battle between the Greeks and the Persians in 450 BC, not warring luncheon meats.)
Arnold Schwarzenegger's reversal of popularity is not so surprising. He got to the California governor's chair only via a screwball election in 2003 that pitted him against one of the most unpopular men in the state (Gray Davis) and one of its most inept campaigners (Cruz Bustamante.) Had Sen. Dianne Feinstein chosen to run for governor that year, not only would Schwarzenegger almost certainly have lost, but he probably would never have chosen to run.
Things I Never Knew (And Probably Could Have Done Without Learning): An acronym is an acronym only when you can pronounce it as a word: OPEC, scuba, NATO. If it doesn't form a word, and is read as letters, it is not an acronym but a pronounced abbreviation: YMCA, ABC, NFL.
Buying a new laptop makes buying a pig in a poke look easy.
Unhappy with the ruinous re-design of TV Guide? Then try Zap2It.com. You can configure it for just the channels you watch and print it out each day.
You think the Democrats are in confusion? Try to name the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Go ahead and try.
On the other hand, there was this exchange between Chris Wallace and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on "Fox News Sunday" this week:
Wallace: "By the way, and we only have a couple of seconds left, do you like the ring of that, sir, President McCain?"
McCain: "Except for the fact that I make my kids hum 'Hail to the Chief' every morning, I don't think about it."
Which reminds us of the old joke Ted Kennedy likes to tell: "I don't think about the presidency any more. Of course, I don't think about it any less."
Ounce for ounce, gasoline is still cheaper than the soda you get from vending machines.
Just in case you were wondering: The lowest Gallup approval rating for a president was Harry Truman's 23 percent recorded in 1952 during the Korean war.
How come old Doonesbury cartoons are so much funnier than new Doonesbury cartoons?
Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, a pirate ship attacked the cruise liner Seabourne Spirit off the coast of Somalia on Saturday. No word yet as to whether the pirates had parrots on their shoulders and said, "Argghhh."
Is there anything as beautiful as a Japanese maple at this time of year?
Which is the richest country in the world? Wrong, it's the British Virgin Islands, followed by Luxembourg, Norway, and the United States. How about the most taxed? Wrong, again. It's Belgium, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, and France. The United States comes in at No. 21. So quit yer gripin. (Info provided by the nifty website, nationmaster.com.)
Green tea, white tea, black tea, oolong, jasmine, pu-erh, yellow, organic…Just bring me Lipton.
There is more to big-store discount shopping than just price. At my local Costco, I once bought a fax machine and 5 pounds of veal. Talk about one-stop shopping. And they have terrific birthday cakes. (True the fax machine was made in Asia, but the veal and birthday cakes are all-American.)
Why can't anybody make a quiet vacuum cleaner?
I congratulate "The West Wing" on their live (though scripted) episode on Sunday. It was almost as dull as a real presidential debate.