Q: Why do some people pronounce strength as strenth?
Q: Why do self-styled badass, bro-type guys like to shake hands sideways, palms flat?
A: Likely solved. A friend suggested to me that it’s a dominating move, especially since their hands are on top, facing downward.
Q: Why does Pink in the movie Pink Floyd’s The Wall have to break the razor in half in order to shave his eyebrows?
Q: Why do people on airplanes drink tomato juice? Tomato juice is rarely consumed elsewhere.
Q: Why has the word “midget” gone out of fashion?
Q: What’s the name of that zippy 1960s-era tune that seems to symbolize the 1960s and which was also in The Secretary and which has bedeviled me for 27 years?
A: Solved. It’s called Music To Watch Girls Go By by The Bob Crewe Generation.
Q: Why are those “ziplocs” built into products nowadays not worth a damn?
Q: Why do so many beefy, bulked-up gym guys have the legs of a 12 year-old girl?
Q: What is that funny-but-poignant commercial from years ago where children say they want to “become middle management” and “be a yes man,” etc.?
A: Solved. It’s an ad for Monster.com. “When I grow up, I want to file all day. I want to claw my way up through middle management. I want to be replaced on a whim. I want to have a brown nose. I want to be a yes man. Yes woman. Yes sir, coming sir. Anything for a raise, sir.”
Q: In some book I read years ago, Boston-born poet Robert Lowell pronounced “poem” as “perm.” What book was that? I’ve been looking for this for years.
Q: Why do short (5’8″ or shorter), stocky guys hold their cellphone-holding arm straight out, nearly horizontal?
Q: Why do guys wearing blue dress shirts with white collars (think Larry King) look like imperious pricks? How come adding in reading glasses makes the prickery increase x10?
Q: Why do people use “proceeded to” as shorthand for “I was wronged”? Usually it’s part of a snippy anecdote about how they were wronged by a bureaucrat or customer service rep.
Q: Why does blonde hair on any man over age 40 just doesn’t look right, natural or not?
Q: How come any guy walking around with his arms crossed looks gay?
Q: Why is the word “vibrant” a loaded term with political implications that is often used when the writer really wants to say “squalid”?
A: Solved. I suppose that, since I’m the only person who has ever written an article on the connection between vibrant and squalid, I am now the world’s authority on the topic.
