The Internet News Bureau is sometimes good for yuks. Although it sounds like a legitimate news syndicate (House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt told INB on Wednesday that...) it's actually a PR service for enterprises that are either too dubious or too obscure for the likes of PR Newswire. I subscribe to INB's email alerts, which punctuate my workday with pulse-quickening announcements like, "1800USAHotels.com Provides Direct Inventory Management Interface to Hotel Property Management Systems." Not funny, unless your sense of humor is very, very dry. This press release, however, tickled my ribs enough to prompt further investigation:

VENTNOR, NJ - June 11, 2002 (INB) -- Say hello to the popcorn of the new millennium. And get ready for a loquacious surprise. The popcorn kernels actually talk! The invention was inspired by a two year-old, popcorn-loving boy from Atlantic City, New Jersey named Adam Snyder.

It all started when Adam and his dad, Merwin Snyder, an optician, were making popcorn one evening. When the kernels began to pop, Adam shouted, "Popcorn...popcorn talks." Believing that the popcorn was talking, Adam began talking back to the popcorn. So, Adam's creative dad developed a way to make the popcorn kernels speak in a human-like voice from inside the microwave bag.

TALKING POPCORN is now being sold on four continents. In China, TALKING POPCORN is used as a fun, new learning tool in several schools, to help children learn to speak English. How the popcorn speaks is a secret. Follow the easy instructions, and soon you, too, will hear the popcorn saying things like, "Happy Birthday", or "Let's Have a Party".

Will Adam or his dad become the next Orville Redenbacher of popcorn fun? As long as the popcorn keeps talking, it just might happen.

As I noted in the AlicuBlog that day, if it can say "Let's have a party," it ought to be able to say, "Someone dosed you about an hour ago," or "You're killing us, fucker!" At the time, I thought the popcorn would talk while it popped in the microwave oven. Not so, I found out when my free (plus $3.95 shipping) sample arrived in the mail.

Talking Popcorn is a bag of generic microwave popcorn. Taped to the outside of the cellophane wrapper is a long, ridged plastic cord, like the "zip ties" that various tradesmen use to secure bundles of wire and such things, and which riot police have begun using instead of handcuffs.

Place the cord, ridged side up, between the first knuckle of your index finger and your thumbnail, then slide your thumbnail down the length of the cord. You hear, after some practice, something that sounds like "Happy Birthday."

I hate to be a curmudgeon, and I'm not in the business of trampling the dreams of fathers of little boys in New Jersey, but I have to say I am unimpressed. I cannot in good conscience recommend this product to Alicubi's readers, who would buy Talking Popcorn by the pallet if I gave it my stamp of approval.

Here's a suggestion, Mr. Snyder, for Talking Popcorn II. Manufacture microwave popcorn bags to which a sound box is affixed. Hot air escapes from the bag through the chambers of the sound box, each producing a unique pitch, reproducing the modulation of the human larynx. This allows the kernels to "talk" while they're popping in the microwave oven. I'm sure you'll agree this would be an improvement over the crude phonography you currently employ.

Our partnership has great potential to yield boku bucks--beach house and yacht for me, and all the medication that boy of yours needs. But don't ask me to work out the technical problems, Snyder. I'm just an idea man.

--Martin F. Downs