#551 Twisted Surprises

I think I’m getting old. I can’t handle all the surprises in this twisted world.
There’s a new commercial out by McDonalds in which two gentleman who have the youthful voices one would expect to address one another with the appellation “dude” are conversing on the relative merits of a Big Mac or a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.
The set-up is that no decision in life is as difficult as choosing between these two culinary icons.
One of the “dudes” extols the virtues of each. Slavering praise on the wholesome grease-dripping goodness of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and then turning his presumably additive-mutated tastebuds to the joys of a Big Mac.
At which point in the commercial he says, “And besides, nothing eats like a Big Mac”.
That’s right. He uses the word “eats” like verb, but not like the verb we usually use it as. Not a subject eats an object. But an eating comparison.
You can say nothing tastes like a Big Mac or nothing lingers like a Big Mac in your gut. But nothing “eats” like a Big Mac?
Nothing sounds worse.
I was also surprised when I went by a graduation the other day and I saw all these cars in the parking lot with paint on their windows. One of the car windows intended to say 2007 graduates.
Except graduates was spelled g-r-a-d-u-a-t-s. No final “E” in graduate.
As if they didn’t want to confuse it with the identically spelled but different sounding long A’d graduate.
Us 2007 gradu-ats didn’t have to pass the WASL.
Then there was this assault on my surprise-weary consciousness.
I was sitting with a friend at a coffee shop and this big Hummer stops at a light out front. It’s pulling a long cargo trailer.
My friend says, “Look! I didn’t think it was true, the name on the car says Hummer Hybrid.”
“Wow,” I said. “A Hummer hybrid. Of course in this case hybrid means gas and diesel.”
“You think?” he said.
“Either that,” I paused for comedic effect, “or the trailer is for holding all the batteries.”
He wasn’t surprised.
America ya gotta love it