10 Dumb Questions I Asked You Guys (And Your Dumb Answers)
On Aug. 29, 2015, I published a quiz filled with the 10 dumbest questions I could think of. Then I asked you, the readers, to answer the questions in the comments. In truth, I didn't expect many to respond. Thirty? Fifty? As I type this sentence the total is sitting pretty at 686 comments. Strip away the flotsam and jetsam of a comment section and we're left with 542 comments with actual answers. Some answered only the questions that inspired them, others answered one and fled the scene. An overwhelming majority actually answered the questions in full, and at great length.
I read every single word and tallied every one of your responses. All. Of. Them. At one point I began calculating the average word count of your answers. I stopped soon after because of math, but at that point the average count was hovering around 800. The median word count for books is 64,531 words, which happens to be the length of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Assuming my word count calculation remained steady for all your answers, in a week and a half I read the equivalent of 6.7 Brave New Worlds. The data-gathering process was 11 days of marking notches on a hand-drawn spreadsheet, because, for me, Excel might as well be the cockpit of a spaceship. (My girlfriend, who is an accountant, eventually transferred my pathetic scribbles into Excel for me.)
Sadly, the FBI took down my large cork board filled with newspaper clippings and maps connected
by strings before I could snap a pic.
Before we get into the results, I want to say thank you to the many hundreds who answered my very, very stupid questions. Without you, I still probably would have written this follow-up, but it would have been much angrier, stinking of gin, and loaded with misspelled racial slurs. You prevented a potentially ugly scene, except for one part between slurs where I would have given you a great guacamole recipe to fill space. My guac is yummy as fuck.
Anywho, on to the results ...
Question #1: The Results
Here was the original question:
How long has it been since you've seen your butthole? Explain why.
A. I see it every morning, as I ram my head up it
B. I look at it often. Quite often ;)
C. Months. Has it really been months? Man, you get older, you get a job and a serious relationship, and all of a sudden close friends start drifting apart. That's adulthood for ya. Makes you wonder why as kids we couldn't wait to grow up. Pfft! If we'd only known. *takes a swig of Scotch*
D. There's no way I could pick out mine in a police lineup. I'd need it to shout, "Gimme all your money, bitch!" to see if I recognized its voice
E. We are no longer on speaking terms
Here's how the responses broke down:
The origins of this question stem from that one time I touched my butthole and it got me to thinking, "I don't even know who you are anymore." That's a little backstory for anyone wondering what my process was for coming up with such an array of intellectually stimulating questions.
I wouldn't imagine there being too much recognition of one's own anus. Maybe you're like me and you can't imagine it looking different from any other. I saw it once a long time ago and didn't notice any distinguishing scars, or a gang tattoo, or an eye patch, and therefore had no reason to remember it. It's just a pucker.
That's why a majority of you, 33 percent, selected D. Buried in that answer is an admission: I've seen my butthole at least once, but it wasn't a memorable fellow. You were all echoing the feelings of commenter cptspith when he/she/sentient captcha said:
I really don't have the agility or flexibility to keep on intimate visual terms with the little pucker, but I certainly maintain a strong physical relationship with it, and would know an impostor if I felt one.
It was not surprising to find that only 9 percent of you look at your buttholes every day. But those who do were mystified by those who don't:
rossini138:
To be honest I find it weird when people don't want look at their own butt. It's basically the reason I bought a selfie stick.
The most interesting finding had nothing to do with the frequency of your anus-ogling. It was hemorrhoids. You people have got a lot of them, and they are ripping your assholes to shreds.
Starwrangler:
E - My hemorrhoids are bad enough to feel, there is no way I want to actually see what those things look like.
Hemorrhoids compel people to gaze into their stink knots, as if their butthole had lulled them into a trance to lure then in for an easy kill:
Kcjwl:
Something didn't feel right, like a little solid nugget was stuck on the edge. When I got home that afternoon I immediately went to my bathroom. I propped one leg up on the sink with my back to the mirror and spread my butt cheeks to get the best view. Staring back at me was a tiny little lump, the kind that a naive 20 year old has instant concern about.
natasliah:
D. I finger it sometimes looking for hemorrhoids though.
Hundreds responded, yet only one had pictures of their butthole mailed to them.
Meanwhile, looking at your own butthole is so rare for some that they began waxing philosophical about the nature of their anus' existence ...
MickDurden:
E. Nietzsche said it best: And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
And some of you talked about your butthole as if it were God:
L_Spearcraft:
#1- I have never really seen my man-hole. i have witnessed its works, and rejoiced in the glory of its semi-daily function. And that, for me, is enough. I do not need to see how the brown sausage is made. I'm just glad it is.
Frogasmol:
I know it's there, cause I can hear it, and see its effects on the world, but I never see it. My anus is like the wind.
Finally, there was one lengthy response to the question about butthole sightings, but I stopped after its opening line. It perplexed me, but at the same time I knew everything the person was about to say. Deep in my bones, with every atom, I just knew:
Project-Lab-Rat:
I once brought a nickelback album ...
Don't need to say another word. I get you. And I'm sorry.
Question #2: The Results
How small and thin do you let a bar of soap get before you replace it?
A. I throw them away after a single use
B. About halfway, after discovering they don't have a jelly center
C. When it's thin and bendy, like an orange peel that's socially acceptable to rub on my nipples
D. I use it until it looks like a milk-flavored breath strip
E. Until it no longer exists and I'm rubbing the memory of soap on my body
So those are the numbers. I don't want to talk about them. Nothing against them; they're fine, upstanding numbers. It's just that there are a couple other stats I'd prefer to discuss. As I read your answers, three patterns began to reveal themselves. They forced me to go back to the beginning and add in whole new fields to study.
The first new category of response caught me completely off guard. I had never heard of such a thing and was surprised to see it pop up in your written responses again and again and again. I'll let L_Spearcraft explain:
Whenever a bar of soap gets small enough i blend it to a new piece and keep on using it. I call it the Soap Bar of Theseus
OK. Interesting tactic. Sounds useful. Very original, L_Spearcr-
James.Dagaz:
Once soap gets small enough I just smash it onto a new bar, I've been using the same lineage of soap for over a decade. I like to believe there is a small molecular pocket of the original soap deep inside that I want to stay with me for as long as I can
Oh, a second person does it. That's ... interesting. Surely, there can't be a thir-
ToxicPhoenix:
C, and then it gets stuck to the next bar, because neverending soap is awesome.
PedanticTwit:
C. & E. Soap starts out in the shower. When it is reduced to an inconvenient sliver, it is moved to the sink and mashed together with the remains of previous bars.
hyenacub:
I use soap until it's gone. Or I save the scraps and melt them into new op. No sense wasting soap ...
lordbaruch:
Here's the key: you take the new bar of soap and use it once. Then, you take the old bar and press it onto the bottom of the new bar and let it sit until the next time you shower/bathe. The old bar will fuse to the new bar, that way you don't just throw away $0.10 worth of soap. I just realized how cheap this makes me sound.
allisons10:
Its a trick question. You never replace soap, you just add to it. When they become slivers reminiscent of communion wafers, you squeeze it into the new bar of soap until it becomes one with the new. I have essentially been using the same bar of soap for years. Although, one time I tried to push the limits of soap thickness and continued using it well past the smoosh-it-into-a-new-bar stage and lost it while washing my crack. It's an odd sensation to look at your washcloth and realize something is missing hence, I needed to stand over a mirror and look for soap and inadvertently caught a glimpse.
You people are playing god. Let the soap die with some dignity instead of Human Centipede-ing it for eternity.
That stupid little soap tactic is why I wanted to do all this in the first place. Not even in my dullest dreams could I imagine such a genuinely useful way to breath eternal life into a soap bar. Six percent of all respondents to question #2 fused old soap to new soap. Low, but still unexpected. I went from not knowing it was a thing to knowing 6 percent of people perform Super Saiyan fusion dances on their soaps.
The next oddity bridges the gap between the first and the upcoming third one:
Subpriminal:
I prefer to use shower gel and hand wash but back in my soap using days I would let it get thin and bendy and then fuse it with the new bar.
Ariste01:
I haven't used bar soap since I was a kid. I use body wash. However I was taught to glue the thin strip of the old bar to the new bar thereby eliminating any wasted soap.
Tons of readers mentioned that they use shower gel instead of bars, and 2 percent of them specifically mentioned that back in their bar days they would meld the slivers to newer bars to create immortal soap abominations. With your days of conducting unethical surgical procedures on soap bars behind you, you moved on to a soap that can't be sewed onto to the ass of another just like it.
And thus we made it to our final group:
WhitneyW:
F. None of the above, I use body wash.
Simple. Direct. WhitneyW provided all the information I needed to understand that my question did not apply to her. Good job, WhitneyW.
I praise because WhitneyW was a rarity. WhitneyW had class. More than half -- 56 percent -- of people who mentioned they use shower gel were real assholes about it.
Lawson:
I use body wash like a civilized adult because this is 2015, not 1932
FearlessRooster:
I don't use bar soap, what am I, a peasant?
jmayhp:
Why are you neanderthals still using bar soap? Civilized people use body wash.
Begbert2:
I don't use bar soap! At all! Ever! Ha ha, you fuckers!
Rhonson:
I'm a little offended that you would even ask this question. I use shower gel.
ScubaStan:
F I don't use soap i use body wash since I'm a big kid. That being said though before i grew up id use it till it was gone, and then when i didn't realize that it needed to be replaced, id just wash myself with the shampoo, its all the same. Probably.
See? I didn't ask if you drive a Model T, or if you've visited the phrenologist lately. I asked about bars of soap. They're still pretty common, as evidenced by the literally hundreds of others who answered the question. Relax. Don't be one of those goofballs on a "Kids Are Given A Thing From 10 Years Ago And They Gawk At It Like It's A Fucking Alien Artifact" videos. "WHO FROZE THIS SHOWER GEL?! WHAT?! PEOPLE USED IT LIKE THIS?! BUT ... BUT WHY?!?!?!"
Is it the cleanliness of the soap bar you're worried about? Well, a bar of soap is perfectly hygienic. But you'd better watch out for what might be living on your loofah.
Question #3: The Results
If you could blame one of the world's problems (Column #1) on one person/group (Column #2), who would get blamed for what? Most importantly, explain why.
Column #1
A. Climate change
B. Gun violence
C. Sexism
D. Racism
E. Neo-Nazism
Column #2
1. Everybody at Home Depot on a Saturday afternoon
2. The unattainable mental image of your ideal soulmate
3. Butter sculptors
4. Some guy named Rick
5. The 1972 Miami Dolphins
Hey, here's a snazzy chart!
Chill, chart! Too snazzy!
Coming in at 35 percent, the second-highest percentage on the chart, are the 1972 Miami Dolphins, whom a lot of you blamed for climate change. The '72 Dolphins had a perfect season -- won every regular season game, every playoff game, and won the Super Bowl. And now they are slowly raising global temperatures to near-apocalyptic levels.
Aventium:
A and 5 - Climate Change and 1972 Dolphins
Climate change is probably the biggest item listed. All the rest affect either a section of society or even all societal interactions, but only Climate Change means that my beach house will lose all its value when the seas rise and I'll have to move to some place like Nova Scotia or something. And it's all the 1972 Dolphins' fault because Mother Nature is angry. She is angry with the folly of a group of men holding so desperately to such a long past, albeit impressive, sporting feat. When your arrogance and smugness makes one actually root for the 2007 Patriots, you know you have crossed a line. A line that Mother Nature will not have crossed.
batphocks:
NFL commentators blow so much hot air each year about "Will there be a perfect team this year?" that average temperatures have risen steadily since the 70's
Fuck it. Let's blame them for gun violence too:
Breenogg:
Gun violence on the 1972 Miami Dolphins, of course. Every time a modern team flirts with perfection only to stumble, they pop that damn champaign, the ensuing sound causing a veritable riot of Floridians to pull their guns at the noise and start shooting up the joint
As a Miamian, I can say that is 100 percent true.
Your other favorite thing to do (well, for 32 percent of you) was blame sexism on the unattainable mental image of your ideal soulmate:
allie280:
Not every man will have insane abs and not every woman will be blonde with big boobs. I mean, I am, but not everyone else is. And that's okay.
StacheMan:
C2. I kinda feel like one of the causes of sexism is that we subconsciously compare all potential mates to our mental image of the ideal soulmate and, because the mental image is by nature an unobtainable ideal, the human never measures up, and we resent that, but can only relieve our consistent disappointment by taking it out on the potential mates because human psychology is messed up sometimes. And that a lot of us are assholes, can't forget that.
Great responses all around, but what I really want to talk about is that 38 percent up there at the cross-section of A and 4. At that corner you stood and screamed like a homeless person to make one thing abundantly clear: Rick sucks.
Everyone blamed Rick for everything. Some of you blamed Rick for everything in Column #1. It happened so often I eventually started marking notches in every category, because you told me to. Oddly, a handful of you asked me to do the same for the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Zero people felt like any other people/phenomena should bear the blame for everything, except Rick and the Dolphins. But man, did you hate Rick more than anything:
Tiffany21NYC:
C. Sexism/4. Some guy named Rick I did Rick a fucking favor by letting him do an over the sweater pity feel for less than 73 seconds. He lost his goddamm mind and told the whole school I took off my bra and let him wear it like Mickey mouse ears. It's not my fault I developed early. fucking delusional assholee. On the flip side, I suddenly became VERY popular with the fellas and even a couple of gals.
GHJKL:
My soulmate's name is Rick. He works at my second favorite Waffle House. He also doesn't know I exist.
GP0948:
Imagine, just imagine, all the gun violence being committed by a single unstoppable hate-engine of a man. A world where the name "Rick' is spoken with a hushed fear unknown to our lives.
I think the other options were too nebulous. Rick reduced the world's problems to one man. One man? Pfft! Launch his ass into the sun and be done with it. Rick is an easy solution to a complicated world. Oh, Rick made sexism? Feed him to sharks. The fuck are we waiting for? According to everyone, Rick is the rock that got caught in the gears of human evolution. Pull that fucker out and in 10 years we're eating our meals in pill form as we fly our jetpacks though a Utopian megacity on Mars. People hated Rick so much their hate would spill over into answers to other questions:
KillerOfBananas:
10. I dunno, answering these questions? No, wait, it would be having sex with Rick. Fuckin' Rick, man.
Honestly, I just needed to pad the list, so I tossed in one of the dullest names I could think of. I had no idea people's eyeballs would fill with fire when they saw the name Rick. It's good to know there's one name we can turn to if we ever want to heap all of the world's problems onto one person.
Make that two.
Question #4
You can choose only one body part to grow on your body-part farm for the upcoming harvest season. Which body part do you grow? Explain what people would do with these body parts after picking them up from the grocery store.
A. Thumbs
B. Knee caps
C. Uvulas
D. Elongated earlobes
E. Testicles so large they always win the blue ribbon at the state fair's testicle-growing competition
F. Other (name the body part and its use)
Piiiiiieee chaaaaaaart!
Forty-six percent of commenters looked at my options and then used their middle fingers to type every body part that I didn't list. I'm going to take this as a personal attack.
So what body parts were you all so eager to write in? Boobs, dicks, vaginas, and butts. I really over-thought this. Boobs, dicks, vaginas, and butts are like The Beatles to you guys. I thought about counting up all the times you chose them, but I don't have a spare month.
When you weren't choosing one of the Fab Four, you were, rather surprisingly, choosing to do nice things with your body-part farm. Odd things, but nice.
Purpleravenhawk:
F. Scalps, so that people could grow their own hair in different colors and styles, chia-pet style.
And charitable.
LiveFromHades:
F - Straight up lower backs. Because chicks are going to need replacements when they're too old for their tramp stamps and that butterfly morphs into a bat with mange.
What a humanitarian!
squidouttawater:
F. Spines The sadness of any day is when you look around and see so many people slumpt over, unable to stand up for themselves. It doesn't have to be this way. By donating just a few dollars a day, you too can give these millennials a spine. For the first time in their lives they'll be able to stand tall and look you in the eye. You'll be giving pride to a whole generation. Operators are standing by.
When you did choose one of my answers, you chose to elaborate with beauty and grace.
Sentientmonkey:
E. I know not what World War Three will be fought with, but World War Four will be fought with huge-ass testicles.
FieldMarshalFry:
Knee caps, always a steady supply of people needing new knee caps that has nothing to do with roaming gangs of knee capers who I am not in any way affiliated with.
WillyGilligan:
A. Thumbs - It's none of my business what they are doing with them. All I know is that they sell like hot cakes.
Pretty sure executives of handheld back-massager companies have said that exact thing in board meetings.
And it was this question that prompted the most unsettling answer of them all:
ninjaking:
I'd run a uvula farm. Nothing too commercialized. I'd want to keep it classy. But I'm not selling my product to grocery stores. I'm fastening freshly grown uvulas to the inner surface of one of those big thick cardboard cylinders that they use to wrap rolls of carpeting around. Then coat the inside with a low friction lubricating solvent so the millions of little uvulas become slippery. Then I sneak up behind people and jam the uvula tube onto them. I think they'd be freaked out at first but they'd eventually appreciate the uniquely stimulating tactile experience. It'd feel like being digested through the duodenum of a giant. That's a difficult thing to replicate.
The only Fleshlight with the David Lynch seal of approval.
Question #5: The Results
What is the percent chance of you eating food recently dropped on the ground when no one's around? I'm not talking about wet, slimy stuff like ham that you'd have to be a deranged pervert to eat off the floor. Something dry, like a cracker or cookie.
A. 100% -- ain't no shame in my game
B. 80% -- but as I'm doing it I'll act like it's 0% to make myself feel better about how I am trash
C. 60% -- and I'll even pretend the 5 Second Rule is a legitimate excuse for being 100% disgusting
D. 40% -- largely dependent on remembering if I've recently walked on that specific spot
E. 20% -- because I almost find that disgusting. Almost. I'm this close
F. 0% -- because I'm a liar
G. Other -- because Luis sucks and only let me choose increments of 20. (Luis' Note: Fine. Write your highly specific answer. Just, please, don't write 73%. I do not like that number)
Perchance, a chart for thine sweet ass:
Hustlebones:
A. I am disgusting and will surely die alone because this may very well be my least disturbing habit.
GHJKL:
73.001%. I concur with Lewis. 73 isn't a good number.
Who the fuck is Lewis?
Readers were of two schools of thought on this one. Thirty-six percent chose A, admitting that you will eat dropped food 100 percent of the time. When people weren't scrounging Cheeto dust off the kitchen floor like it was $1,800 of spilled cocaine, they answered G ("Other/73%").
I figured most people would have no dignity and would select A without hesitation. But I can't judge. I used to be like you. I use to eat anything off the floor, rationalizing my shame away by telling myself I was eating my own dirt, so I'd be fine. That all ended when a friend ate a slice of ham off the floor and was spraying from both ends for the next few days. I was mortified. I've assumed my feet spoil everything they touch ever since. Now I immediately throw away any food, wet or dry, that has made contact with the floor. For some of you, your logic for selecting A wasn't as sound as my flimsy-ass excuse:
Bequito:
Considering I don't live somewhere gross and disgusting like LA or NY I totally eat food I dropped on the ground
Oh, didn't you hear? Dirty surfaces had an initial limited release in New York and L.A. but have since expanded to many other cities.
A lot of you are going to have that moist-floor-ham moment, and you will be forever changed.
This question had the second-highest voter turnout, with just over three-quarters of all commenters having answered. Eighteen percent of them chose G. Built into G was the option to choose it for the sole purpose of pissing me off. It was a significantly dumber version of the famously depressing Milgram experiment. I gave you a button that you were told would hurt me. Depending on your written answers, you could choose G with no effect, like so ...
Klaws:
0%. I have a cat. Any upwards facing surface in my house, no matter how often I clean it, has most likely had prolonged contact with his butthole. Regardless of how much he cleans it, indirect contact with food items? No thanks
... or choose G to do harm. An impressive and spirit-lifting 89 percent chose to do no harm. You're too kind. The other 11 percent are sociopaths, like a person named QualitySocks. Here is the only thing QualitySocks wrote in response to the entire quiz:
73%
People got off on the idea of me thrashing in pain like a demon mid-exorcism after reading each 73 percent.
MemeofTheWeek:
73%, because fuck you Luis.
One person, completely living up to the low standards of the Milgram experiment, didn't even know the person he was hurting ...
DarthPotHead:
73%. because fuck Luis, whomever he is.
Some of you were smartasses about it ...
ninjaking:
Like Joey from Friends I eat 100% of food off the floor be it dry or wet. For example if I dropped 73 toaster strudels on the ground in a parking lot, 73 of those are going in my mouth. #paleo
KJackson85:
somewhere between 72 and 74%
A lot of you were smartasses about it. Like Tiffany21NYC, who peppered her answers with the number 73 ...
Question 1
D. We interact approximately twice a day, but haven't seen each other in years. My husband, however saw it 73 minutes ago.
Question 3
C. Sexism/4. Some guy named Rick
I did Rick a fucking favor by letting him do an over the sweater pity feel for less than 73 seconds
... but then pussied out when it came time to pull the trigger.
Question 5
A. 100% unless the dog gets to it first. Then we thumb wrestle for it.
It's OK, Tiffany21NYC. It means you're human. Meanwhile, the rest of you aren't even reading this because you're out looking for a neighborhood cat to beat with a stick.
Question #6
You're the captain of a starship on a five-year mission to explore new worlds deep in the farthest reaches of the Milky Way galaxy. You'll make first contact with new, exotic forms of sentient alien life with whom you'll get into wild adventures of dare-doing and swashbuckling, occasionally engaging these species in debates on war, love, death, and morality. What kind of shoes do you wear and why?
A. Super comfortable loafers
B. White shell-top Adidas with black stripes
C. Crocs with the heel-strap down
D. A sensual stiletto
E. Chuck Taylors, because in the background of this bright and shiny sci-fi future is a dystopian totalitarian government that controls everything and has chosen Chucks as the shoe of the oppressed galactic federation
F. Other (name the shoe and explain your choice)
Once again, I gave you the option to fill in a blank and you ran with it. With an overwhelming 55 percent in favor of selecting their own shoe, most respondents were bursting with joy to tell me they were going to be gallivanting all over alien worlds and sexy alien ass at the farthest reaches of the Milky Way galaxy with their feet comfortably snuggled within ...
Doc Martens. Oh, joy.
Fflewddur.Fflam:
Doc Martens. Comfortable enough to walk around a spaceship all day, ankle support and tread for rough terrain during away missions and tough enough to kick someone should I fumble my phaser on the draw.
KellyConnell:
Doc Martens. They are durable, stylish, rugged, and have Air Sole technology.
cptspith:
(Doc Martens). Seriously, these things are astoundingly comfortable and give excellent support. Don't bullshit around with your feet, they'll make or break your entire posture. No joke, no shit; take care of your feet or you'll ruin your whole life.
That's either solid advice from cptspith, or a threat.
Doc Martens. They're a solid ... piece of matter. Not a flashy or funny choice. Just practical. Maybe a little too practical for the purposes of this column. Let's say the Docs looked like this:
All the dependable practicality of a Doc Marten, with the floral arrangement of the sheets in a grandmother's guest bedroom. The Zorpdoolians of planet Zorpdoolia will lose their tits over these things. You'll be getting Zorpdoolian pussy and/or dick left and right, because they have two sets of genitals that come at you from the sides like velociraptors.
Other than Docs, there wasn't much consensus on which type of shoe you'd all wear. That kind of thing would drive me bonkers if I were trying to build a creepily benevolent totalitarian galactic federation from the ground up. If I chose an uncomfortable shoe, citizens would think about starting a revolution with every step. The shoes have to also make people feel unique even though not wearing them is against the law. And they have to go with everything, from the gray Monday-Wednesday-Sunday jumpsuits to the off-gray Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday jumpsuits. Hell, citizens should like them so much they might even wear them on beige jumpsuit casual Fridays! (The shoes of my choice are required, by law, to be worn on beige jumpsuit casual Fridays. OTHER SHOES WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. OTHER SHOES ARE PUNISHABLE BY DEATH.)
It was a clusterfuck of a shoe closet you guys assembled. I was too lazy to tally your huge array of choices, so here's a small sample of the diversity of footwear:
Bonofan50:
Stilettos. You see by the time we meet alien life forms, not only will the crew be thirsty as an stale triscuit in the Mojave, we will need to ensure mankind's survival through intergalactic procreation. And there's only one way we know how to look 110% fuckable.
Booth:
Wingtips - No one has any goddamn class anymore.
Tleprie:
Those awesome shoes that have wheels in them
Roll on, wheel-footed space adventurer. Roll on through the cosmos.
When you did choose one of my answers, you over-thought the shit out it:
ondonaflash:
B) Listen I've seen a lot of shows about space travel and the one thing I've taken away from them is that when thinking footware think practically with a mind towards running and mobility. If you're the type of Space Captain who spends more time in a chair debating ethics, then yeah, you go with a classier, more genteel shoe, but if there's going to be laser battles and swashbuckling then a pair of sneakers is the way to go.
jazzmaestro87:
A - Because rank comes with its privileges. My ensigns and petty officers get the Chuck Taylors, because they are the oppressed. The admirals can have their crocs, because rank prevents me from being able to scrutinize their obviously ridiculous decisions. Sir.
wizzardman:
6. A Why do I even have legs? I should get those replaced with cybernetics. Then I'll put the loafers on the cyberlegs, and be really comfy.
MissLellow:
C. Crocs with the heel strap down. Not only are they like walking on a goddamn cloud, they will impress upon these aliens our superiority as a race.
No. They will think you're space trash and will ask you to leave because you're bringing down property values in their solar system. Change your shoes to something less welfare-y.
Question #7
A genie grants you the ability to be the best in the world at one sport. So why the hell did you choose to be the best at ________? Explain why this particular sport is the best to be the best at.
A. Dumpster tobogganing
B. Speed felching
C. Competitive bog snorkeling
D. Fox tossing
E. Precision toenail firing (in which you clip your toenails and purposely attempt to launch the clippings into your own eyes)
Sooooooo many of you chose fox tossing ...
WhitneyW:
Fox tossing because it sounds adorable
Kerriouch:
D. Foxes are cute
plost333:
Fox Tossing, they are so cool
Duncmanxxx:
Fox tossing, they're just so darn cute. They would of course be outfitted with the most modern of protective gear for said foxes. It's a noble sport about strength, not causing pain
Igelkotten:
Fox tossing must be the most complete sport of the list. Training for body and soul.
And soooooooo many of you had no idea it was a very real and horrible thing. From Wikipedia:
Fox tossing (German: Fuchsprellen) was a popular competitive blood sport in parts of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, which involved throwing live foxes and other animals high into the air. It was practiced by members of the aristocracy in an enclosed patch of ground or in a courtyard, using slings with a person on each end to catapult the fox upwards. It was particularly popular for mixed couples, though it was hazardous for both the tossed animals and the people launching them. Sometimes the terrified animals would turn on the participants, and the outcome for the tossed animals was usually fatal.
Oooo, mixed couples! How inclusive!
The stats on people who knew what fox tossing actually was and those who thought it sounded totes adorbs were pretty evenly split. And did you know that Augustus II The Strong held a fox tossing competition that ended with the deaths of 647 foxes? That's too many tossed foxes, if you ask me.
Coming in second with about a quarter of the overall vote was Dumpster tobogganing. Your reasoning was sound:
Annme87:
Dumpster tobogganing. No one can ever beat my goals in a sport they won't compete in. I will always be the best.
Neneboy:
A. It may be a stupid sport to you, but dumpster tobogganing is the only thing holding my family together.
You're right, Neneboy. I can see how Dumpster tobogganing could bring families together. It's probably very similar to the way fox tossing brought together all manner of emperors and dukes so that they could take part in the merriment of tossing not only foxes but hares, badgers, and wildcats high into the air, only to watch them plummet to the ground and die, and then they'd all laugh and give each other awards to celebrate the discovery of a new depth humanity can sink to.
But some of the most passionate responses came from speed felching practitioners. They're a minority, making up only 12 percent of the tally (with precision toenail firing bringing up the rear, with 8 percent), but they are a vocal and enthusiastic bunch who have found the beauty in sucking your own cum out of someone's ass.
Booth:
Speed felching is important. When dating, I like to make sure that I quickly demonstrate to my partner that I have value. And if sucking my own fluids out of her holes so she feels a modicum less filthy for the horrible, horrible life decision she's just made doesn't get that job done then I don't think anything will.
Pondaluv:
Speed felching Because you made me google it. And being really good at that 'sport' will make anyone desire you. People desire those that give them the best orgasm. It's science and human nature. It's like a drug. Get people hooked on you.
awol71:
Speed felching. The precision of movements involved in a world class speed felcher can be easily applied to many lucrative careers in engineering, medicine, and finance.
Speed felching can be an art, but it can also be oodles of fun. Probably as much fun as Holy Roman Emperor Leopold had when he, some children, and some court dwarfs banded together to club injured foxes and hares to death after his 1672 fox tossing contest in Vienna.
And with that, we move on to the question about reading an animal's thoughts ...
Question #8
Answer in 50 words or less: If you had the power to read a parrot's thoughts, why would you ever use it? That sounds awful. Just awful.
There are no stats to present. No snazzy pie chart to gawk at. All I wanted was for hundreds of you to tell me what you would do with parrot telepathy. I got paid to do that. I'm conning the shit out of this website.
There were a couple of patterns here and there, but one rose above them all. Like most fictional characters that are suddenly bestowed with superpowers, many of you chose to fight crime with your ability to peer into the head of a gaudy bird:
KelpTheGreat:
Because what if the parrot witnessed a murder but has been paid to keep its beak shut? Somehow or another, we've GOT to know whodunnit.
Banished star:
I'm thinking CSI type situation, dead guy, the parrot was the only witness, its unwilling to cooperate Boom send for the parrot telepath.
Scottland89:
2 Reasons, see the world in it's eyes and also, it could be a witness to a crime. ParrotMan, here I come.
purpleravenhawk:
To solve mysteries. I would have 100 parrots on my payroll (they work for crackers), and they would be my eyes and ears around the city. I would read their minds to see and hear what they experience. No criminal would stop their criming in order to chase after a parrot.
allisons10:
I'm the parrot listener/consultant for the FBI. In the event of a parrot-witnessed crime, I'm the guy they call.
But for every hero, there must be a villain, and there were plenty of you:
wickeddragon:
Garner friendship amongst the parrots. Then, employ my friends as spies to sit on shoulders of influential political figures and learn their plans. Then, mobilize my parrot army to rain down terror onto the evildoers of the world and laugh while they try to flee from my skyborne minions! MWAHAHAHAHA!
nclark42:
The reason to read a parrot's thoughts is blackmail. No one worries about doing things in front of the bird, but if you can read its mind, you know everything it sees and that can lead to great profits. I have been advised that this is all hypothetical and reading the alleged parrot's alleged thoughts and allegedly capitalizing on this would be wrong.
artimis456:
If I ever had the ability to read a parrot's thoughts I would only use it to charm millions of them so I would have a parrot army to trample my enemies and fly me wherever I please, excelsior my feathered friends. We shall rule the world!
This has the makings of an excellent NBC Wednesday night police procedural. A detective who solves avian crimes discovers he's not the only one who has parrot telepathy. He's just a small player in the larger battle between good and evil factions of parrot-mind readers. The first few seasons would be a "Case Of The Week" kind of thing, but we'd leave crumbs hinting at the overarching story of the series. By the end of Season 4, it's a full-on serialized show about the war between the Parragons (good guys) and Parratics (bad guys).
I will not be attending the ceremony, so you can mail me my Emmys.
Question #9
When you look at yourself in the mirror, how long is it before staring into your own eyes causes an existential panic and you start questioning what it all means, your purpose, and why you are you and not someone else who would be you if you were them? Please describe a time you deeply rode this harrowing thought process into the inky recesses of delirium and somehow made it out alive.
A. Pretty much immediately
B. Around 30 seconds
C. About a minute
D. However long it takes to brush my teeth
E. I do not own mirrors for that exact reason
And so, we've come to our final multiple choice question. This one wasn't so much silly as it was a deep mortal panic. I've been having existential panics like this since I was a kid. They're rare, but they have been happening more often lately. I asked the question to see how many of you have felt the same thing, and what personal little twists your private freak-outs have that make them uniquely yours.
The similarities in your answers stopped at the multiple choice portion. From then on, it was your unique brushes with the grander philosophical questions of life and how they make you confront your dreads, fears, and anxieties. It's comforting to know my existential moments aren't nearly as bad as some of yours ...
knowan:
Mirror. True story, I work in a hospital. A mental hospital. This leads to certain moments of existential dread. Especially at quitting time.
You see, every day that I finish work and start walking for the door, a little niggling thought enters my mind. Do I really work her, or do I just THINK I work here. Is today the day that they stop me as I try to leave? Have I ever really left the building before?
It helps if I look at my employee badge. Until I start asking myself, is this a real employee badge, or just something that I made out of crayons during arts and crafts time. Is that my real photographic picture, or a crudely drawn caricature that my sick mind is telling me is the finest photographic protrail of myself, complete with a kick-ass handlebar mustache and mutton chop sideburns.
Would anyone sane really hire someone with a handlebar mustache and mutton chop sideburns, no matter how kick-ass they look? Wouldn't someone willing to hire, for a mental hospital, a person with a handlebar mustache and mutton chop sideburns have to be insane?
And then I make it through the door, and nobody stopped me. And a small part of me thinks "Fools, I have once again escaped my prison thanks to my cunning use of arts and crafts crayons" and it's all I can do to stop myself from running for the parkinglot, cackling like a madman.
Amake:
B. Around 30 seconds. The other night I had a dream where I got out of bed and went to the bathroom, where I have the only mirror I own. I thought I looked unusually ripped, but that didn't strike me as odd. The arms embracing me from behind, however, alerted me this was a dream, and the mirror gave me an idea I'd always wished I had thought of after waking from a lucid dream: To summon a dream girl lover.
Immediately a tall, dark and handsome guy in a goatee appeared behind my shoulder. Well played, subconscious, I thought, nearly laughing out loud. And then he was replaced by a ridiculously pretty girl who smiled at me as if infinitely grateful I had given her life, and pulled down on my shoulders to reach my cheek with a kiss. However, when I turned to look at her she seemed to cease to exist.
I looked back at the mirror and there she was, clinging to my shoulder, distraught. And she turned her face to meet my eyes in the mirror and then I stopped existing, apart from a disembodied point of view who was annoyed at the unfairness of this dream where apparently I was in a relationship that could only last as long as I looked in a mirror and she didn't.
Frustrated, I went out on my balcony to fly somewhere, just to do something I knew I'd be good at. But then I accidentally made the neighbor's house fly instead and realized I had no control of this lucid dream and woke up.
The point here is mirrors mess me up.
Jeray2000:
A. It really only lasted a second, but it felt like a lifetime. The knowledge I gained and lost during that period could feel a thousand philosophy textbooks, and the passion I felt for my true self I could merely glimpse in the Otherworld was powerful enough to outshine the sun. Mere words are not enough to describe the sorrow I felt at the knowledge that I am not perfect, and never will be perfect, but simultaneously, they cannot describe the joy I felt at realizing it doesn't matter and that the flaws present in each of us is what makes life worth living. The only reason I even escaped is because of the pressing need that my soul told me about how if I didn't pop my pimple people would laugh at me.
natasliah:
A. I rode this highway after dropping four hits of acid and snorting a half of a quarter gram of crystal meth. I bounced between loving and hating myself with crying inbetween. This lastest until I found shiny lights and realized I was in the drivers seat of a car that was now in the ditch.
I once ate three-quarters of a sheet of Entenmann's chocolate fudge cake in one sitting, by myself. Our experiences are quite similar, you and I.
It was discomforting to discover a lot of you seem to have a lot more fun with these moments than I ever will. I end up wanting to leap out of my own skin and die under a bed like a sickly cat.
RicoTheLinguist:
There is no "me." "I" only matter in the sense that there is an organ in this mass of flesh charged with managing most activities and figuring out how to acquire the resources needed to keep this mass of flesh alive. The world will keep on turning whether or not that organ succeeds at its job. Then I think "How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real," and I laugh my balls off.
LiveFromHades:
B - I was deranged on liquor and depression during a bad time, and I decided to cuss out my reflection when it caught my eye. After bit I noticed that I'm kind of funny looking and took to making stupid faces, eventually forgetting why I was angry and continued drinking merrily.
Alycoteroberts:
About a minute - I guess it's a natural progression when you purposefully put yourself in other people's shoes. Sometimes to appreciate what I have, sometimes to feel superior, sometimes out of mad curiosity. With all that, occasionally I'll get a little lost in it. Why aren't I them? Why I can't feel what feeling and know what they know? Why aren't I my twin sister? Why can't I be either of us when the mood strikes me? What would "I" be like if someone else's soul were here in place of my own. Luckily young children are incapable of that level of introspection/empathy, so my toddler and baby's complete self involvement pull me back out. I'm not sure how lost in your own head you could get with an insistent little girl asking you to "wook a me" all the time.
These moments are the closest any of us will get to an out-of-body experience. I won't be a vapor floating over my own shoulder, looking down on my existence. Instead we get momentary disconnects from ourselves that open the door to a scary grand view of everything, including our place in it all. That view reaches into the infinite. We're not even visible in it. We're just a speck in the TV snow. In these moments when our minds venture out deep into the vastness, we need something that can tether us to our terrestrial selves. All we can hope for is for someone, maybe even ourselves, to cut a juicy wet fart to ground us back in reality. Or, as the esteemed EagleDick put it:
I've had times where I just kind of stop and look, and I feel like I'm becoming sentient for the first time. It's an experience that really messes with your head for a while, but then you go back to masturbating or working on your furry sitcom starring Steve Buscemi, and things are back to normal.
Question #10
You once did a harmless private little thing thinking you were alone and no one was looking. Unbeknownst to you, there was someone looking -- a neighbor, someone driving beside you, a pedestrian on the sidewalk. They were just looking around and BOOM. There you were, doing that thing. Now you're that stranger's funny anecdote. You will never know who this person is, but every once in a while they think about you and that thing they caught you doing. Then, they will laugh at you. Of all the embarrassing things it could have been, what is the most likely thing you were doing at the time?
And we have reached the end. It was a long road, but a fun one. This final question won't feature a statistical analysis, or even my commentary. This one is nothing but a hand-picked selection of answers written by you.
Thank you for making it this far. Here's a certificate for your troubles:
And a gigantic Thank You to the hundreds who took time from their lives to answer my dumbass shitty questions. Thank you, thank you, and thank you again.
KellyConnell:
It would be sticking a finger in my underwear and checking that finger to see if my period has arrived. (It hadn't I was just sweaty).
Kcjwl:
This question is literally the only reason I am writing this. I only answered the first 9 because I felt obligated.
So years ago a friend and I both worked in the same building. I worked at a fast food establishment and he worked at the gas station attached to said fast food restaurant. I would work second shift and he would work third. When my shift was over a lot of time I would just go hang out with him for a few hours until people finally started waking up and coming in for gas and coffee. Seeing as how this was third shift and he was lucky to get any customers we pretty much had free reign to do what we wanted. Some nights we would play video games. Some nights watch a movie. Some nights we even brought in all our instruments and recorded music for our "band". We started getting really creative and decided we needed to make a few movies. During the filming of our third movie titled "Dale Earnhardt is Dead III" we had a scene where I was required to where super baggy pants, no shirt, and a Santa Hat. I felt the scene needed something else so I took some fake blood we had from a previous scene (peppermint flavored, yummy) and proceeded to write "Kill Whitey" on my super pale hairy chest in the men's restroom. Even though it was probably around 2am an older gentleman walked in as I was putting the finishing touches on the "y". We locked eyes for a few seconds and he turned around and walked out of the restroom. I think he was offended by the Santa hat.
jedilady:
Dry-humping my husband while he ties his shoes.
RosieGrace:
When I was 11 I spent most of my afternoons exploring the ravine behind my house. I would spend hours down there doing whatever the fuck I could think of. I was always having way too much fun, and let's face it, I was way too lazy, to go back up to the house to use the bathroom. Most of the time I just peed in the stream, but every once in a while I had to do something else ... So one time I found a fallen tree, made sure no one was watching and took a shit, putting the leaf I used as paper on top to sort of hide it. I went on with my exploring. End of story. Until for some reason I felt the need to run from voices I heard just up the hill. I didn't get very far before jumping over this random fallen tree and then ... Yup. My foot landed on the shitty leaf (pun intended) and my ass fell out from underneath me. When I got up there was feces all over my foot, leg and ass ... and there were people chuckling behind me up the hil
ThisFellow:
Crying behind a stack of wheat thins.
Stickpig:
Once, a friend of mine kept complaining how bad he had to tinkle while I was driving. Since we were on a back, back, deep back road that can only exist in Pennsylvania (and maybe Alabama? I don't know, I don't weekend there) I decided to pull over and let him.
He made it quite clear to me not to do that thing people do - the one where you pull slightly away as they reach for the handle to get back in. He said because he desperately had to poo as well, and any running could aggravate an already volatile situation. So naturally, I did that very thing, inching away from him bit by bit as he tried to get back in, because my sense of humor was still young and unrefined, and doing the opposite of what people said counted as hilarious to me.
He then went on to ripping his pants down to his ankles, squatting, and shitting right on the very road.
While I was watching him shit on the road, laughing my ass off, a woman jogging with her dog came around the curve.
Nightmare1970:
10. Nope.
kissmycassie:
Okay, so. A few years ago, I was driving in Hollywood, yelling at myself in a very animated manner. (Ex: "Oh, that was SUCH A GREAT IDEA, CASSIE, I'm so glad you MADE THAT CHOICE, YOU ABSOLUTE DONKEY.") The night before I'd had too much to drink and made a wild variety of terrible choices that I won't repeat here because I put a tiny bit of effort into my previous answers in hopes that Prada might think I'm kinda funny, and the truth would ruin it. Anyway, I turn onto a smaller street and stop at a stoplight. Just as I'm reaching a verbal crescendo (complete with wild hand gestures), I look up to see ... Oscar-winning Jamie Foxx standing in front of my car, staring at me.
And we just kind of look at each other for a long moment, before I yell with renewed fervor, "OOOOH, GREEEAT. JAMIE FOXX IS STARING AT YOU NOW. GOOD JOB, CASSIE. WAY TO GO."
And Jamie Foxx walked away, laughing at me.
Jamie Foxx.
NragedPotato:
Probably the time I was bar hopping in Tokyo and decided I had to pee right then and there in that small side street but did not want passers by to notice I was peeing. So I did so while walking. Apparently it didn't work as well as I thought it did now did it?
Romusz:
Mustve been the guy who walked in on me taking a drunken "upper decker" at this one assholes party when I was in my early 20s. They just laughed and closed the door. They knew the host was an assholee too.
jsternspl:
10. Speed felching.
Luis is exhausted. But if you'd like him to do another one of these sometime (way in the future, after he's recuperated) let him know on Twitter and Tumblr.
Thanks to the internet, you can find out pretty much anything about anyone. Want to know how often Felix Clay has looked at his butthole? Check out this article 5 Terrible Things We Only Know Because Of The Internet and find out. Or go back and read some of the original answers to Luis's "probing questions" in 10 Very Dumb Questions You Should Answer Right Now.
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