Stupid Questions

There really is such a thing as a stupid question.

A question is a request for information. It seems to me that the information requested should be of some use - like something you can act on, or at least conceivably interesting to the person asking. It seems though, that I get at least one a day (and often more) that leaves me absolutely befuddled as to why a person would waste the breath to ask such a thing.

No, I don't mean greetings like "What's up?", attempts at polite conversation like "So what did you do this weekend?", trivia that might be interesting like "How many lines of coke did that one chick on 'One Day at a Time' do before each taping?", or questions that show ignorance of the subject. I'm talking about questions that illicit answers which the asker can neither act on nor possibly find interesting.

I'm talking about things like a fellow passenger (who has flown before and is thus not particularly excited about doing so now) asking you "What kind of aircraft are we gonna be flying on?" What the hell difference does it make and what good is this information going to do you? Is this guy going to not get on if it's a 727 instead of a DC-10? Is he going to sit in a different seat based on what type of craft it is or something?

Then we have the questions that lead me to conclude that many folk are astounded that other folk actually know something.

One of my all-time favorites is: "How do you know that?" A great example of this is in the Batman movie with Michael Keaton. He tells this guy that a particular suit of armor is Japanese and the dude responds with the question above. Now, Keaton had a good answer ("Because I bought it in Japan..."), but I thought: "How the hell you would reply to a question like this if you simply saw it in a museum and recognized it for what it was?" Do people honestly think you recall precisely when and where you learned every bit of information in your head, or do they truly want a 3 hour dissertation on the various features of Sengoku period samurai armor which differentiate it from every other type of armor? The damn thing was so obviously Japanese that only a Mongoloid who had never so much as seen an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would think otherwise. I could understand if the subject in question is some incredibly obscure thing that 90% of people wouldn't know, but I hear this type of query all the time about all sorts of shit:

"I think that's a 9/16" bolt."

"How do you know?"

"Because it looks like it's 9/16 of an inch in diameter, maybe???"

"The prefix 'Necro' comes from the Greek"

"How do you know?"

"Errr...because I read something other than the Weekly World News?"

So next time someone asks you something...instead of simply answering think about the question. Perhaps you'll discover the same thing I have; that there are literally legions who would consider "Daddy, are we there yet?" a logical question even when asked while still on the interstate.

Natalee Holloway: The Next JonBenet Ramsey?

I sincerely hope that Ms. Holloway is found, but if not, how long are we going to hear about her every hour on the hour even when there is absolutely nothing new to report? Even though it's only been a couple of months her media exposure is looking like straight JonBenet.

For those that are wise enough to not bother watching or reading news media, JonBenet Ramsey was a little girl who was murdered in 1996. And we're still hearing about it..9 frigging years later! Not that it isn't (or more accurately wasn't) newsworthy, but how many other kids have been murdered in the interim, the ones we've never heard of? Similarly, how many other Americans (or just people for that matter) who aren't Natalee Holloway have gone missing since May, yet don't get so much as a blurb on The O'Reilly Factor?

It's all quite simple. The media tells us what it thinks we should care about, and decides what is going to be force-fed to us ad nauseum and what we will remain absolutely ignorant of. It decides who and what is important or unimportant, and people being the sheep they are never know the difference. It never seems to strike anyone as odd that we are still reading speculative crap about a girl who was murdered shortly after Clinton was elected, or why a Google search of "nuremberg trials" - the most important trial of the 20th century - gets 869,000 hits while "Natalee Holloway" gets a mind-boggling 1,710,000.

Why did the media choose these cases? Easy. Because one was a beauty pageant queen and the other was a hottie. Same with Laci Peterson. If any of these girls looked like Ernest Borgnine, you'd never have heard of 'em. So ugly chicks take note, because the media hath spoken. Get yourself killed or disappear and nobody will care, because yo ass just ain't newsworthy. Unless you get eaten alive by toads or abducted by a piratical midget or something.

Now that would be cool.

Back in the Sandbox

I'm currently in Iraq, better known as the Stinking Pus-Encrusted Armpit of the Earth. So although I witness plenty of stupidity, it is unlikely that many who read this would be able to relate without long explanations. It may be awhile before anything new pops up here.

Meanwhile, get 'Need For Speed: Underground 2'. It rocks.