The Popcorn Stand: Life’s most pressing questions, literally

A friend of mine, Alex Larson, posted on Facebook the pressing question “Is diddly squat more or less than squat?”

My answer would be diddly squat is exactly the same as squat. It doesn’t really sound right to say squat so my guess somebody one day just blurted out diddly squat.

So I believe squat and diddly squat are worth exactly the same. Nothing.

A guy I worked with, Rob Reneau, asked another pressing question, what was the greatest thing before sliced bread.

But I agree with George Carlin. I don’t know what’s so great about sliced bread. As Carlin said, it’s bread and you slice it.

We all ask these types of pressing questions. One of the pressing questions I’ve asked is why is Groundhog Day on February 2 and not on February 1?

I mean did the guy who came up with Groundhog Day say we’re going to do it on February 1 forget, but then just said, “Eh, that’s OK, we’ll just do it tomorrow.”

I’ve never really liked Groundhog Day only because I have to type Punxsutawney when writing about it.

Life’s pressing questions reminds me of a story about Joe Don Looney, a talented football player from the University of Oklahoma who had a not so great NFL career because let’s just say he was a character.

One time he was lying down and looking up at the sky and asked the assistant coach “what would it be like to be a star.”

The assistant coach started to tell Looney well if you study your playbook and work hard...looney interupted him and emphatically asked again while pointing up to the sky, “NO, WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE TO BE A STAR.” He literally meant what would it be like to be a star in the sky.

Which brings me to something that bothers me and that’s the use of the term literally as in “You literally blew me away.” Uh no, if I literally blew you away, you wouldn’t be standing there.

But I read somewhere it’s now OK to use literally figuratively because you actually mean figuratively. Literally now is apparently a contronym — a word that’s used for its opposite meaning.

So you can literally now use the word literally when you mean something figuratively. Got that?

I’m now literally wondering how I went from the subject of pressing questions to how the word literally is used.

It’s literally mind blowing. In a figurative sense.