Road Apples by Tim Sanders
April 29, 2013

Spicklerisms

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I recently received a couple of e-mails from an old college chum, Larry Spickler. I may have mentioned him before, since he comes from a long line of professional Spicklers who did most of their spickling in Europe. Larry currently does his spickling in Michigan, but he can still spickle with the best of them. I know this because the e-mails he sends are generally excellent e-mails, even the forwarded ones. He has a nose for the preposterous, which would make sense to you if you'd ever seen his nose. Sorry, but I couldn't resist that.
Here are some newspaper funny story lines harvested from an e-mail Larry sent called, not surprisingly, “Newspaper Funny Story Lines”:


“STATISTICS SHOW THAT TEEN PREGNANCY DROPS OFF SIGNIFICANTLY AFTER AGE 25" We had a sneaking suspicion that this was true, but it's reassuring to know that we were right.


“WORKER SUFFERS LEG PAIN AFTER CRANE DROPS 800-POUND BALL ON HIS HEAD” Our guess would be he was wearing his hard hat but had neglected to put on his support hose that morning.


“COW URINE MAKES FOR JUICY LEMONS” And we personally knew a farmer who used to put horse manure on his strawberries, even after we suggested he try cream and sugar instead.


“BARBERSHOP SINGERS BRING JOY TO SCHOOL FOR DEAF” And, perhaps not coincidentally, that very same day a troupe of French mimes was beaten senseless at a nearby school for the blind. We believe there must have been a scheduling mixup.


“TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE WILL BE BROADCAST LIVE ON NORTHWOODS PUBLIC RADIO” And later, WOOP radio will broadcast nude photos of a well-known newscaster, and offer the first listener to correctly identify that newscaster an all-expense paid tour of his or her neighbor's storage shed.


“RALLY AGAINST APATHY DRAWS SMALL CROWD” Go figure.


And for those of us who really didn't know, the “BRIDGES HELP PEOPLE CROSS RIVERS” headline made everything perfectly clear.


And yet another carefully Spickled e-mail, “For People Who Have Everything,” contains a series of photos of products, which include:


TRANSPARENT TOASTER - This is a remarkable, highly anticipated product. I looked at the photo, which showed two glass plates connected to a base, with a slot in between for the bread. The toaster operator could watch his bread, and when it reached his own special range of perfect toastiness, which always was completely different from what everybody else in the family wanted, he could remove it and there it would be–toasted perfection. “Dang,” I said, “I want one of those!” But then I read some reviews on the Internet, and found that it worked perfectly, unless you wanted your bread ... well, toasted. Apparently the new concept product doesn't exactly toast bread yet, it only warms it a little. It looks very cool, but you could watch it all day and the prospect of toast would be mighty slim. I already know how to watch a toaster for several minutes waiting for my toast to pop up, blissfully unaware that somebody who shall remain nameless has unplugged the toaster so as to plug in the blender or some other unnecessary device. So much for the transparent toaster.


TOILET SEAT LIFTER - This product was designed to “end the battle of the toilet seat.” It is officially called the Peace Maker, and it has a pedal mounted near the floor on the front of the toilet which allows the gentleman who is standing in front of the toilet to step and raise the seat with little or no effort, and then after he's done he may remove his foot (by which I mean remove it from the pedal) and allow the seat to fall slowly back into place. I'm not sure what mechanisms have been put in place to prevent the woman of the house from pinning herself to the back of the toilet by accidentally stepping on that pedal while seated, but I assume all of that has been worked out. We don't need The Peacemaker, since we already have a toilet seat lowering device, which is me. I learned long ago the price I had to pay by leaving the toilet seat up, and I learned it well. I am automatic, believe me.


THE THING - INFANT PILLOW - There is a creepy photo of a baby, with a disembodied hand and arm resting ever so gently on his little fully pampered buttocks. The caption reads: “The Zany is an ergonomic infant pillow designed by a mum to mimic the size, weight, touch, and feel of her hand and forearm to help her baby with comfort, support, protection, and development. The Zany can help calm your baby and help your baby sleep better through the night.” Now the word “mum” indicates that the British had something to do with this product, and maybe British babies are different from babies over here in the colonies, but when our boys were babies, they'd have caught on to the fake hand and arm in a matter of nanoseconds, and then proceeded to eat as much of it as they could. Teeth or no teeth.


ILLUMINATING CAR SLIPPERS - This product shows a photo of two bare feet tucked into a pair of red, automobile-shaped house slippers the size of orange crates (or actual hybrid cars). The caption says that if you get up at night to get a drink of water, or go to the toilet, the remarkably bright LED headlights on your slippers will “light up the floor 30 feet in front of you.” What the ad doesn't say is that if your wife is anything like mine, the first time you trip over those two fuzzy little Chevy Volts on your feet, fall on your tailfins, and shoot your high beams skyward, she will retaliate with the first heavy object she can find, and then call the police.


While Larry's newspaper headlines and product ads are very entertaining, we'll have to leave the products to others. Maybe if Larry wants to get a pair of those house slippers with hubcaps and headlights and take them out for a test drive some dark night, he can let me know how things turned out. There will probably be a column in there, somewhere.