Questions

Today, I will be getting all philosophical on your ass.

(I'm fairly certain Plato never introduced one of his discourses in such a manner, but that's only because neither Aristotle or Socrates had as nice an ass as you do.)

(That last parenthetical was addressed only to those of you with nice asses, of course. If you have a crummy ass, my apologies and sincere condolences.)

The following are serious questions. If some of them appear flippant, that's just your prejudices coming into play. Or my ignorance. Either way, I truly want answers to these questions. If you've got some, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave them in the comments (no matter what sort of ass you've got.) If I learn something, we can all be astonished.

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We know there's a sucker born every minute, but how often do they die? And might this death rate be the reason for our current mess? How many of them are voters?

How many angels want to dance on the head of a pin?

Are extra-terrestrials just space perverts? If not, why all the anal probes?

When, exactly, did it become known as World War ONE? When, exactly, will it become known as World War THREE? Or will the government just call it "Operation Whole Earth"?

Why in hell did it take so long for someone to throw a forward pass in football?

Latin is a dead language, right? What did it die of? And why has it persisted as the language of doctors, lawyers, priests, and pretentious blowhards?

(Of course, if you like Latin, De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum, as my grandfather said when he was arrested for putting LSD in the town water supply.)

I know the biological processes involved in an acorn becoming a tree, but where did the processes themselves come from? Everything evolving from some sort of primordial soup is a better explanation for animals than for plants. I mean, why would you evolve roots and seeds when you could just as easily have evolved legs along with a penis or vagina? While we're on this ridiculous train of thought, did penises evolve or were they there on the first creatures to crawl onto land? If they weren't there, then vaginas evolved simultaneously with penises, right? I mean, one is of no earthly use, in a reproductive sense, without the other. And what about bees, he inquired in a non-sequitorish sort of way. What did they do before the flowers decided to become flowers and not naked mole rats? Or, if you want to go with the flowers evolving first, what did they do while they waited for the bees to get their act together? Play canasta? There are far too many things that need other things to propagate their species for me to buy into the supposition that they evolved together. If you've got the answers, lay them on me. Until then, I believe in creation.

(By the way, is it just my perception, or do the folks who most strongly believe in evolution seem to get the most upset when a species becomes extinct? Isn't that the way the whole thing is supposed to work? Conversely, why don't religious folk get more upset about the lack of dodos and passenger pigeons? God must have put them here for some reason, but we went and killed them all, anyway. The whole thing is bollixed up.)

How much would automobiles cost if they weren't advertised? If the costs of airing the commercials, creating the commercials, having advertisements in print media, etc., were removed, how much lower would the prices be? My suspicion is "significantly lower", but does anybody have decent math on this? And, as an aside, how much tax revenue would various state and local governments lose via lessened sales taxes on the lower-priced vehicles? When you give it the same few seconds thought I've invested in the matter, it seems that a high rate of inflation is in the best interests of those states that have sales taxes. That's rather scary.

Where did the Pharisees and Sadducees go? They were big stuff during the time of Jesus, but there don't seem to be any around now. What became of them?

If we made Mexico the 51st state, would we suddenly have a huge influx of Guatemalans coming across our southern border?

An awful lot of people say, "That tastes like shit!", but how many of them really know?

If you wash dirt, what's left?

If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, does that mean the road to Heaven is paved with bad intentions? And what about the road to Purgatory? What's that paved with? Indifference?

Why doesn't anybody take the best idea I've ever had seriously?

If circumcision is such a swell idea, why don't those in favor of it do it to all the male animals they own?

(My luck, that's the idea that will get taken seriously...)

Here's one for the topologists in the crowd: If you print a dialogue on a piece of paper, then twist that paper into a Möbius strip, does it become a monologue?

Okay, so the glass is either half-empty or half-full. Does a pessimist think an optimist drank the other half? Does an optimist think it will become fuller? Does Fuller think it will become a brush?

Is anybody listening? If so, why?

Soon, with less vexing stuff.