Dear Ask the Fish,
So I teach English at a high school in Japan and I gave my students a fill-in-the-manga on their last test. One of the girls had the two characters fighting and, in one panel, the girl says to the boy "fack you!". Do you think I should reprimand her for attempting to curse, or commend her for her creative use of the English language as she did not (to the best of my knowledge) technically use any untoward language?
-What the Fack
Dear What,
Are you sure they were attempting to curse? These are Japanese kids, who are waaaay different than American school children. That is to say, they try. If I had to guess I would say the girl and boy in the comic were actually arguing over different TCP implementations. (How's that for seriously geeky?).
On the other hand, maybe (again since they are Japanese student) they are arguing over which college is better. The girl insists "Fack U" is the better school, in which case you should reprimand her for mispelling "U."
But it's probably just another example of Engrish.
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
So the thing is yesterday I attempted to make chocolate chip cookies. The problem is I live in Japan, where they don't have baking soda or ovens. This brings me to my two (well, maybe three) questions:
1. Why is baking powder a wholly inadequate substitute for baking soda?
2. Who in their right mind would make a toaster oven with settings in watts, and how do 250w, 500w, 750w and 1000w translate into degrees Fahrenheit?
-Me Want Cookie!
Dear Me,
I LOVE this question. On one hand, neither question makes sense (I'll get to that in a minute). On the other hand, they lead to somwhat interesting nonsensical rambling fish answers.
1. You make an implicit assumption in your question that is not valid. In fact, baking powder is a perfectly adequate substitute for baking soda. In fact, baking powder (henceforth abbreviated bp) is made up of bs (this acronym is left as an excercize for the reader) plus an acid. Here's the idea: bs is a leavening agent that is activated in the presence of an acid. Bp has the acid included (plus a drying agent) such that it is automatically activated when you get it wet. Kind of like Gizmo.
Unfortunately for most husbands, bs does not subsititute for bp. Why? Because if you have a recipe with no acid in it then bs won't leaven!
2) The first part of the second question is okay, but the last half doesn't make sense. Fahrenheit is a unit of temperature, while watt is a unit of power. You can't convert. It's like asking how many meters in 10 mph.
If you ask me (which you did), making toasters set to Watts is GENIUS! Listen carefully: When you bake something, you put it in an oven at a certain temperature for a certain legnth of time. The units of power are joules per second, or energy per time. Which is exactly what you do when you cook! So why do you set 2 things (timer and temperature) when you could just do it all with Watts? You specify one thing and the toaster will take care of the time and temperature for you!
What's even more exciting is that you can have a toaster with settings in either foot-pounds (for the Brits) or Horsepower. How sweet would that be?!? "Prepower the oven to .07 HP"
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
at work on friday me and a fellow designer where writing a javascript for a page we're making, anyway it came to the end of the day and we had not finished the script, my colleague wanted to finish it at home but couldn't because his pc is busted so i told him to write it in his head then go to a shop with no intention of buying anything so he'd be a browser and could execute the script himself to see if it worked, anyway my question is, is this or is this not genius quick witted thinking?
-Marrvel
Dear Marrvel,
It's not genius thinking. You are applying a band-aid to an amputated leg. You are using duct tape to fix a 747. You should have sent him to a shop so he'd be a customer. Then you should send him to this blog.
(Jeremy, I don't want to hear it.)
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
Hey Fish guy!
Tell me the first things that come into your mind when you read this words:
Anaheim Angels
Colombia
Michael Jordan
George W. Bush
SPAMMER
Bill Gates
Steve Jobs
Britney Spears
Go. I dare ya.
-shin_zer
Dear shin_zer,
Anaheim Angels
Mighty Ducks
Colombia
Planned community
Michael Jordan
23 yup yup ibidy sibidy yup sam style 32 OH!
George W. Bush
dumbass
SPAMMER
evil
Bill Gates
rich
Steve Jobs
for president
Britney Spears
Help Me Name My...
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
don't you think this would make a good movie: There's this highschool kid and he loves to sit in his room and read books with long titles while all the other kids are outside playing kickball. The other kids like tease him and call him four eyes (I forgot to mention he wears thick glasses and has an acne problem). So like one day these corrupt politician gets elected Mayor of this town and like decides to get rid of all the fun stuff like ice cream and like what this does is makes the kids acne go away and this mayor decides that books are just another form of corruption of our youth so he burns them all which makes the kids real pissed off cus they have to burn their comic book collections. But what this does to the smart kid is incenses him like he's so freakin mad that he goes outside and kicks this red ball like really far and the other kids see and think he's awsome at kickball (the mayor dosen't ban kickball but the reason as to why not is left up to the viewer). Anyway the kid now without acne and he broke his glasses he was so freakin mad but realises he dosen't need them well he's good at kickball and looks like really cool now (his dad gave him a leather jacket for his birthday)so like the town slut wants to "please" him but like he always had his eye on this dork girl with an ugly turtleneck sweater but when she takes it off she has a killer body. So like dork girl becomes kind of cool but can't shake the dork mentality so the now cool guy dumps her and gets together with the slut and they kick the mayors ass and the parents are so sad because now the kids are running the town and there is soda from all water fountains and an ice cream pond (the kids acne dosen't come back) oh and cheese curls are like currency. I would market this movie to stoner kids and put like trippy stuff in the background. You think this would be a good movie?
-writer dude
Dear writer,
Yes I do, but I also liked Crossroads.
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
In the Daily Rant section, you describe the 'Rant as "the forum for the good men and women of alltooflat to easily and quickly post whatever they think might be interesting to onlookers," but is this really accurate? More often than not, it seems, what may or may not be "interesting to onlookers" is hardly a consideration.
-Rantin' in Scranton
Dear Rantin',
Please note the addendum under the link to the rant Archives:
"To a certain extent I hope you enjoy it, but to be perfectly honest it's not the foremost thing on my mind."
So I suppose you are correct, but like I say, it's not the foremost thing on my mind.
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
what are the good and bad things about macbeth.
-monica holden
Dear monica,
Good:
"out out damn spot"
The symbolic uses of red and black
It doesn't have that annoying line "There's something rotten in the state of Denmark" anywhere in it
It gave rise to the first real Ask the Fish question ever!
Bad:
It was really written by that bastard Francis Bacon and Shakespeare gets all the credit.
It's really hard to understand old English
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
I recently watched a movie that was of the basic concept that there were Megladons swimming in todays oceans. I was wondering what a fish would consider to be the environmental impact of such a discovery.
-Puffer
Dear Puffer,
Let me tell you - it's a total disaster. And to hell with the environmental impact - you ever sit next to a fat person on a plane? Know what a nightmare that can be? Well to a fish, being around a Megladon is like sitting next to the fattest dude ever to get on a plane. Except imagine that the fat dude is a cannibal, he's ALWAYS HUNGRY, and you look like a packet of peanuts. Except not peanuts because cannibals don't eat peanuts. Mmm... peanuts.
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
Who sang the rock/rap song with the lyrics "You want it all but you can't have it?"
-Lost in the 80's
Dear Lost,
Faith No More. It's the song "Epic" off of their album The Real Thing.
They actually rock really hard, and it's a disaster that more people don't listen to them - The Real Thing is a great album, and not only does their EP Songs To Make Love To (which I have grammatical issues with, but I do understand Songs To Which To Make Love is a little wordy) not only has a fantastic rendition of Lionel Richie's Easy, but also has a picture of rhinos doing it on the cover.
(*Editor's Note: One member of ATF wrote this answer, and when a second member read it over immediately before publication, he noticed the glaring grammatical error in the phrase "which I have grammatical issues with." Which leads me to quote my all time favorite movie (second to that kickball movie I due out in '04): I knew it, I'm surrounded by assholes)
(**Sorry about the whole bug-eyes thing)
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
i lost my fingers up my ass... what should i do to fimg them? Please... its really uncomfortable.
-ass smelling fingers
Dear ass,
This reminds me of a few anecdotes my brother has told me about working as a surgeon in an Emergency Room. Evidentally most ERs keep a box of the things that they've had to retrieve from (ahem) sensitive portions of peoples anatomy. Evidentally they hear "I sat down on the couch without realzing this (soda bottle, remote control, oddly shaped fruit) was on it" a fair amount.
On a somewhat related topic, I'd like to provide a Public Service Announcement against "Just minding your own business." Turns out that the vast majority of explanations for stabbings and gunshot wounds begin with the phrase "I was sitting there, just minding my own business." As such, we suggest that if you find yourself in a bad neighborhood, make sure to get all up in everyone's faces asking questions and providing unasked-for advice; empirical data shows that this is vastly safer than minding your own business.
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
I have one important question...Does Size Matter?
-Not so big
Dear Not,
god i hope not.
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
I live in Canada (not sure if the law is different) but I was wondering if you can be charged with theft if an alarm gate goes off and you have not yet left the store with the merchandise. The gates are inside the store, but you are caught with concealed merchandise. Is it a crime without leaving the store?
-William Finch
Dear William,
An interesting question, and since I was thinking of starting a life in crime, it is one I thought was well worth researching.
As it turns out (and the details of this are going to change from state to state), a shoplifting charge can actually fall under two different statutes. One is a larceny charge (which is pretty much walking out of a store with stuff that isn't yours, concealed or otherwise). But the kicker is that you can also be charged with "Concealment of merchandise in mercantile establishments." The very act of putting something in your pocket is criminal one, even if you intend to purchase the item.
Which leads me to believe that hiding something and walking out of a store could actually get one charged with two offenses - one for larceny (theft) and another for concealment. But I'm not sure about that. I'll let you know after I take the LSAT next month.
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
I have a problem. I wear red clothes alot, and can never find the right color eyeshadow to wear with them. If i wear red eyeshadow, i look like i was somoking weed, and if i wear black, i look like a whore. Please tell me what color to wear with red!
-Red in the face
Dear Red,
Hmmm... That's actually a pretty tough question. I suppose it depends on what you want the guy you meet that night to mean when he says "Yeah, I scored."
-ATF
Dear Ask the Fish,
So, suppose Ethel has a cell phone and lives on the east coast and Wesley has a cell phone and lives on the west coast. If Ethel calls Wesley at 9pm ET, she will be calling on night-time minutes, but Wesley will be receiving the call on day-time minutes (it will be 6pm PT for him). So the only way for Ethel to call Wesley and have both of them using night-time minutes is to call Wesley after midnight ET. That sucks! I guess it's not much of a question, but I would appreciate the fish's opinion on this matter.
-West Coast Guy
Dear West,
No, seriously, it's total bullshit. Our recommendation to avert this disaster is to keep from forming relationsips with people who reside on the east coast; to be completely safe, prevent getting close to anyone who you think might have a predilection for moving out of your time zone.
If this is an untenable solution, we suggest that you demand your aquaintances in an earlier time zone get a land line which you can call during evening hours. NB: This, as far as we can tell, is the only compelling reason to get a land-line phone. Well, that and to open a Citibank account.
-ATF
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