All Too Flat : Serious : Ask The Fish

In an attempt to increase the frequency of updates to the site, we are adding yet another freaking blog. I don't know why we think this will increase the frequency of updates to site - we have at least three of the things anyway, and they are updated just about as often as Boston wins the World Series. But we try. Ask The Fish will now be done blog style, with new entries getting posted as soon as they are answered. Expect the same quality of advice that you have come to expect (from what is either a 800 lb halibut with a highly defined sense of irony, or one of four uber-geeks with nothing better to do on a Saturday night).

Got a question? Need advice? Ask the Fish! Use the Ask the Fish Form to submit a question!

New: Search the Ask the Fish archives!

Dear Ask the Fish,
I can't eat pizza! What is the meaning of life? Why always cheese?
-Bob

Dear Bob,
You know, not infrequently, I get email from people berating me for not posting Ask The Fish updates more frequently than I do. It's all "What the hell else do you have to do: You live in a fish tank for god's sake!" and "I promise to stop wasting your bandwidth by reloading your page over and over if you'll just put something there." But really, when this is the sort of raw material I get from you people, what else am I supposed to do?

I did a regular expression search for the word "gay" in our question archives. There were 12 instances of "are you gay?" 7 of "am i gay?" (including one which asked "Why am I so gay?"), and a pair which asked "Is Robert Hall gay?" (from different IP addresses, no less. I google'd his name, and he looks pretty straight to me. But these days, who can tell?).

My point is: Throw me a freakin' bone here. And I'm not talking about "Why is the sky blue?" either. Give me something challenging, like "Describe string theory in 100 words or less" or funny like "Who do you think would win in a fight, Moby or a 12 year old girl with agoraphobia?" I realize that it's a poor workman who blames his tools, but why do you all have to be such a bunch of tools?
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
I'm going to eat you up...
-Fish Eater

Dear Fish,
That's not even a question! Have I made my point?
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
Okay, okay, I got your ATF Crossingman Bag and it's amazing. I only have one problem with the bag. It's a shoulder bag so it has a strap that goes across my chest. When I'm walking around I also like to listen to my MP3 player, which I put in my pocket. The problem is that if I put the headphone wire over the strap then when I take my bag off I have to take the earphones off, but I don't want to stop listening to my music.
If I take the bag off while holding the MP3 player and slip the MP3 player under the strap, then I risk dropping either one cuz I'm not so coordinated. Now if I put the headphone wire under the strap then it restricts the movement of my head so that I can't look at the fly girls on the subway. I guess I could pull enough wire up so that I can turn my head, but then I get this big loop of wire next to my face that's really annoying and looks stupid. Halibut, can you help me with this problem? What's the best way to wear my shoulder bag and listen to my MP3 player so that I don't have to stop listening to music when I take the bag off?

Thanks!
-Baffled in Burlingame

Dear Baffled,
First of all, good on you for getting one of the Crossingman bags! Aren't they snazzy! I dig the color - the bright yellow makes TCM (as painful as is his absence) really stand out. But on to your question.

It's a serious problem, and one that all three of the triumverate run into on a daily basis. Keeping the wire under the strap is definitely the way to go. The trick is to keep your mp3 player in an inside pocket of your jacket. This keeps the device close enough to your head so that you can draw enough wire up out from under the strap, providing as you say, enoough degrees of freedom for your head so as to aid the gawking at pretty women. Tuck the extra loop of wire inside your zipped up jacket so that the only exposed wire is that from your neck to your ears, giving a nice clean look.
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
Have you got an albatross? If so, what flavour is it?
-Enquirer of Albatrosses

Dear Enquirer,
One of my favorite parts of "Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl" is the way some guy in the crowd, who I think we can safely assume was enjoying the effects of his favorite recreational pharmaceutical, kept yelling out "what flavor is it? what flavor is it?" from the very second John Cleese took to the aisles hawking his albatross. I often wondered how Cleese felt about the way this guy was giving away the punchline to the sketch. Now, in a sense, I know.
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
What is the official scientific name for a phobia of butterflies?
-Jilliegeek

Dear Jilliegeek,
Lepidopteraphobia.

(Yo, how psyched was I that I got that right on the first try, without using Google? So huge!)
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
Dear sage Fish,
I like this boy. But it's a bit of a complicated situation. Another girl likes him too. Also, his parents don't allow dating (they believe in courtship), AND he's going to join the Army through ROTC once he's out of high school. So... it's just a bit complicated. I think he likes me, but I think he likes the other girl too.

Whatever should I do?
-Dramatized in San Diego

Dear Dramatized,
What's the different between dating and courtship? They have to go to the movies with you two? You have to put a stick between you when you sit next to each other on the couch? Hey - if you really like the guy, you'll put in the time and the effort. Also, doing things that you KNOW are going to be really wierd is a great time. Also also - his going into the Army via ROTC shouldn't really complicate things. Unless you have a thing against guys with shaved heads, in which case, go to hell.
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
What the fuck?
-Seriously Pissed in San Diego

Dear Seriously,
Oh, yeah. Sorry about the go to hell thing.
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
If gravity holds stuff to the earth, yeah. Then what holds gravity to the earth?
-Gaz (aka. i havent got a clue)

Dear Gaz,
A far more compelling question than I think you may realize. Here's how I've understood it (understood being used in the least precise manner possible).

The fact that we live in a universe with at least four dimensions is generally accepted to be true. The fourth of these dimensions is often considered to be time. This is close to, but not precisely true - the fourth dimension is a interestingly twisted form of time, twisted in mathematical ways I have neither the space nor ability to talk about in this venue. We call the four-dimensional system in which we live Space-Time, as they are inextricably tied up with one another.

I don't think anyone has a problem with the fact that traveling through space requires one to travel through time (it may be a tough thing to formalize, but if you can't accept this hypothesis at least for sake of argument, you're a pain in the fin and I don't want to talk to you). Well, recall that Space-Time is a single system, and as such movement in any one of the dimensions is going to have an analogue in any of the other dimensions. The analogue to our forward' travel through time as a function of our movement in space is a movement (or acceleration) in space as a function of our movement in time. The direction of this accelleration is towards other masses in Space-Time (the reason for this regards the fact that masses cause distortions in Space-Time, and something about a rubber sheet). Acceleration towards other objects in Space-Time = Gravity!

huge, no? Now, this certainly begs a whole bunch of questions. Like: OK, movement in time demands accelleration in space, but what demands movement in time? If I were to be really still, would gravity cease to have any hold on me? Follow that line of thinking along for a little while, and you'll start to get a headache. But a really fun one.
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! I just love apple juice! Don't you?
-Funky Jerome

Dear Funky,
Really, you have no idea.
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
hey, im kinda horny and im 12. um i need sex. whats the most effective way of getting it with an older woman (preferably 17-25 years old)?
-ME HORNY :)

Dear ME,
Son, if I knew what had to be done to have sex with a 17 year-old girl, do you think I'd be sitting home tonight pretending to be an advice answering fish?
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
Dear Fish,
Before I commence with my question I would just like to infrom you that I am not in the habit of consulting the small and slimy about my problems (thus my never aquiring psychiatric advice) so would thus have you feel incomparably honoured at my decision to present my querie to your underwater post box. If anybody uses this letter to prove me guilty of indecent puns I would like to aforewarn you that I am competent enough to plead contempary insanity:

Now for my question:

What is my question?

I wait in eager anticipation of your learned and undoubtably fishy answer.
-Blessed are the Gouda makers

Dear Blessed,
The answer to your question "What is my question?" is "What is my question?" Now the interesting thing, seeing as your question and its answer are by themselves not very interesting, is that "What is my question?" is the "identity" question. In other words, it is the question for which you ask "A" and receive "A" as the answer.

The other thing is that your question is guaranteed to be answered rudely, seeing as the answer is a question. That, or you'll just get a <blank stare>.
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Dear Ask the Fish,
Will she sleep with me?
-Bob

Dear Bob,
Do I look like a magic 8-ball?

(Actually, since it's Kennyb answering this question, the answer to that is "yeah, kind of." But that's sort of beside the point).
-ATF

24 Mar 2004

Got a question? Need advice? Ask the Fish!