Shit I’m Always Trying To Solve

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.

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By Lee Wallender

Deception, influence, fakes, illusions, themed environments, simulations, secret places, secret infrastructure, imagined places, dreamscapes, movie sets and props, evasions, camouflage, studio backlots, miniatures.

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