Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for October 10, 2017

She was Led to the stairway to basement.

Fainting, or swooning, was more likely for women wearing tight corsets. (If you can’t inflate your lungs, you run out of oxygen more readily.)

A dry goods barrel holds 105 quarts (by volume), which is a hell of a lot of ammonium carbonate. If you keep it dry, you could repackage it and sell it as baker’s ammonia.

It must be exhausting to keep introducing yourself.

A barrel of smelling salts in a breaks open capsule form. Break the barrels seal and inhale the vapors.

The vapors is actually a very real thing for older internal combustion engines with carburetors. When they get warm, you can arrive at a situation where there is so much vaporized gasoline in the vicinity of the carburetor air intake that it can’t get enough oxygen to sustain ignition. Of course, modern women are all fuel injected, rather than carbureted.

Further exposition is available by doing a web search for “roger taylor i’m in love with my car”.

Does Vicks® vapor rub do the job.

Is there a way to plug the vapors?

When I suffer from the vapors, people clear the room.

Probably a rubber couch.

Ushering out the syncope syndrome season.

I suffer from a free-floating vaporous apparition. A real nasty one, too.

I have a vapor lock for sale.

What caliber is that barrel?

No, I’m not “Turning Japanese”.

Fashions may come and go, but it seems that belittling women never goes out of style.

Back in the day, a bargain basement couch was great for swooning and spooning and cuddling-sooning… but that was before we got too big.

And no more waking to Victorian-era doctors molesting you as an excuse to treat “hysteria”.

Pro Tip: If you invent a shrink ray, make sure you have your own air supply and a sealed environmental suit or ship. You won’t be able to breathe normal sized air molecules effectively and your higher energy density state will result in rapid dehydration, and very possibly explosive decompression.

OMG Tank U.

Ahh, the old Infinite Regression advertising ploy! But in the end (if it ever reaches an end), will it sell a tacky old (though “unused”) Swoon Sofa?

And who is so prone to fainting as to require a barrel of salts?! Sounds like something far more serious. Possibly fatal. —In which case, smelling salts will be ineffective. What a gimmick to push the couch sale, though!

As for me, I still utilize the highly customized Comfy Couch of Confusion, version 3.0, q.v. (a nod to residual Pibgorn fans who keep the torch lit)….

While supplies last..