Questions

Someone sent me one of those infernal emails full of strange questions. You know, those oldies but goodies based on peculiarities of language and the way we think about things.

I decided to write some answers. Some of my answers are serious, but some are as peculiar as the questions. Think about them and enjoy.

(The colors are as they appeared in the email I received.)

Question	Answer (?)
If you have sex with a prostitute against her will, is it considered rape or shoplifting?	If you take a rental car without renting it, you are stealing the car not the rental. When two crimes apply, the worst one is the one that is commited. So, yes, rape, not theft of service.
How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?	They don't have to be important at all: There just has to be someone else who thinks they are important.
Why do you have to 'put your two cents in'... But it's only a 'penny for your thoughts'? Where's that extra penny going to?	You, as the seller, consider your thoughts twice as valuable as the buyer thinks they are.
Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?	Gee, I hope not. What if I was wearing a Speedo? Or my birthday suit? Actually, the Bible says the multitude will get white robes. –Revelation 7:9
Why does a round pizza come in a square box?	Pizza boxes come to the store as a flat piece of cardboard, which is really hard to fold into a round box.
What disease did cured ham actually have?	The pig was cured of an illness called 'life'.
How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?	Because when we put a man on the moon in 1967, you didn't have to walk a distance equivalent to that from here to the moon, to get onto a plane.
Why is it that people say they 'slept like a baby' when babies wake up like every two hours?	People say that because they need an alibi for what they were really doing. Besides, as you get older, you sleep in two-hour intervals.
If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?	Of course: It's the judge that does the hearing.
Why are you IN a movie, but you're ON TV?	Because the next-to-last letter of movie is "i" and the next to last letter of television is "o". (A completely inane question deserves a completely inane answer.)
Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?	Because from that vantage there are so many things on the ground that can be seen at once. It's much more economical to see them from the high vantage than to walk around to see the same things on the ground. Besides, things often look better from a distance.
Why do doctors leave the room while you change? They're going to see you naked anyway..	The doctor doesn't want to pay the strip club cover charge.
Why is 'bra' singular and 'panties' plural?	The word 'panties' is singular. So are the words 'tweezers', 'binoculars', and 'species'. The ending "es" usually indicates plural, but not always.
Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?	At the other end of the scale, it makes lukewarm bread. To be truly free, you have to have range that no sane person would ever use. Just like cars: Their speed ranges from insanely slow, to faster than any sane person would want to go. Most of the time you don't use the whole range, but if it isn't there, you don't feel free; you feel cheated.
If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a stupid song about him?	Because they cared about Jimmy: They just didn't care about him cracking corn.
If the professor on Gilligan's Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can't he fix a hole in a boat?	The radio doesn't have to be underwater, and won't leave them all swimming if it doesn't work. Besides, if he'd fixed the boat, it would have been a short television series, wouldn't it?
Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They're both dogs!	Because he's "goofy"! Get it?
If Wile E. Coyote had enough money to buy all that ACME crap, why didn't he just buy dinner?	Did you ever see any restaurants where he lives? (I guess it's outside his ken; after all, he could probably have ordered food from Acme.) (Thought from two weeks later.) ...and, you know, maybe he just likes fresh food
If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from?	No, no, the real question is: Why isn't corn oil just for use on corn and vegetable oil just for use on vegetables? Sometimes we name oil for what it is made from, sometimes what it is for. Sometimes both: "Motor oil" can also be called "mineral oil".
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?	For an inkling, just look at any of leaders of the moral majority. (Yes, yes, that may have more to do with them being leader types than moral types.)
Do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?	They start out at the same place, but one of them gets lost before the end.
Why did you just try singing the two songs above?	Trying to figure out if they were the same; or if one of them got lost before the end.
Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere, but call it a hemorrhoid when it's in your butt?	What made you think the suffix is -oid instead of -hoid/-roid, which are different as can be? Okay, silliness aside, "-oid" means "like". So aster-oid is "like an aster (star)" and hemorrh-oid is "like flowing blood". (Seriously: Think "flowing blood" = "hemorrhage", which uses the same root.)
Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him for a car ride, he sticks his head out the window?	The air outside the window isn't as bad as your breath. Blow in my face with that bad breath and I'd be mad, too.

And yet more inane questions:

Why? Why? Why?	Answer (?)
Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection?	Because if they don't, you might get an iatrogenic infection; which might be considered malpractice. (The death is intended.)
Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?	According to the book, he shaved it off because he had a knife and wanted to look like the pictures of other men he saw in books left behind by his father. Or did you mean in the movie?
Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a revolver at him?	He's practiced hard to reign in his reflexes when stopping bullets. But he totally didn't practice for thrown revolvers, and his darn reflexes keep taking over. More seriously: In the movie, the bullets were fake. The revolver was real, and the actor definitely didn't want to be hit by it.
Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?	They don't want to take a chance of banging their heads before impact, because banging their head hurts. As for the impact: If they feel anything, it goes away; quickly.
Whose idea was it to put an 'S' in the word 'lisp'?	A sadist who thought it was lots of fun to watch people with a lisp try to say it.
If people evolved from apes, Why are there still apes?	Some of the apes were neo-conservative.
Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white?	Bubbles reflect all colors of light which, combined, make white.
Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?	No, they sell them every day of the week. Oh, wait, you mean 'on discount'?
Why is it that no plastic bag will open from the end on your first try?	On your first try, the bag is in a quantum superposition state. You have to try to open an end to collapse the state vector; until then, no end opens.
How do those dead bugs get into those enclosed light fixtures?	They were raptured there.
In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?	Because we are contrary. When it's naturally cold, we want heat; when naturally hot, we want cold.
How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?	Because father-in-laws hit back.
And my FAVORITE...... The statistics on sanity is that one out of every four persons are suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.	Is there a question here? Anyway, that isn't the situation at all: I just don't know which of them is insane yet.