Why do you waste everyone’s time with these dumb “Ask Conlan” things? Most of the time they don’t even make sense. When I get done reading it I usually say to myself something funny like, “There’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back” or something like that, like they’d say in a movie, you know? You’re weird.

Thanks for your question, Weird. Since it is actually two questions, I will answer one at a time. First, to answer your second question: yes, I know. It’s like a funny thing you’d hear in a movie. If you ever did hear it in a movie, then it would be like something you’d hear in a movie, ipso facto. Ipso facto is Latin for “sip taffy”. I don’t care much for taffy. It’s too sticky. It’s like, “Hey, dude, quit sticking to my teeth,” or something funny like that.

Now, onto the other part of the question that I made up. Did you know time can be recycled? (Astrophysics.) In other words, time is on our side. Yes, it is. Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. This most often happens when you write a note in disappearing ink, and then you can’t remember that you needed to buy some toilet paper and boy is your face red.

Does that answer your question? Of course it does.

Sincerely,
Conlan

Dear Conlan,

With Thanksgiving coming up, I’ve been wondering: what’s the best present to give a turkey for his (or her?) birthday?

Sincerely,
Summer Dumboski

First of all, thanks for your question. Secondly, I feel I should point out (for my readers in Eastern Europe) what “Thank-Sgiving” is all about.

In 1892, Columbus sold the ocean blue-chip stocks. Since the ocean has a lot of liquid income, the stock broker (whose full name was Larry Columbus) was able to retire on his commission, if that’s even how stock brokers make money (I have no idea). To celebrate his retirement, Larry bought all the turkeys in the tri-state area. He wanted to open a turkey zoo, just like he remembered from his boyhood in Istanbul.

He loaded all the turkeys onto a train bound for The Pilgrims (which was the name of an upscale suburb outside of Baltimore). Unfortunately, or fortunately, a hobo had left a half-eaten can of cranberry sauce on the tracks near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The train (officially christened “The Unsinkable Titanic”) hit the can—spraying sticky, purple gelatin everywhere—and then derailed, crashing into a Crisco factory.

Thousands of turkeys died in the ensuing blaze and it smelled delicious. Rather than let all the sweet, smoked turkey meat go to waste by letting homeless people eat it, Larry ordered a team of chefs to transform it into a meal fit for a Norse god. Larry and almost 12 of his friends gorged themselves on the turkey meal, then promptly died of Rip Van Winkle Syndrome.

When everyone else in the western hemisphere heard the story, they believed the crash-splosion and subsequent death meal had been a gift from the god of tryptophan, Sgiving.^[1] This made almost no sense. Nevertheless, the mayor proclaimed that henceforth every fourth Thursday of May^[2] would be known as “Thank-Sgiving”. People went nuts about it (in a good way).

And that’s where Thanksgiving^[3] comes from.

To answer your question, Summer: everybody loves mittens.

1. At the time, Norse gods were really popular.
2. This was before the Great Calendapression.
3. The name was shortened after The Final Punctuation Solution in the 1910s. It was a dark time, indeed.

tried to & did go to “ask Conlan” on ThisIsConlan.com but couldn’t get a space to type in my question so here goes: 1) if the adjective for Equador is Equadorian why is “Salvadorian” not the adjective for El Salvador? 2) why don’t you call your mother more often? Love, your mother.

Thanks for your two-part question, your mother. I’ll answer it in four parts (non-chronological).

1. The adjective for Equador isn’t Equadorian. This is a common misconception, but it is actually Equadorial. What many people don’t realize is, Equador is a very thin country^[1] that stretches all the way around the world. It gets very hot there (possible because the people are so fat???).

2. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the graham cracker in 1876, it was not an immediate success. The cracker only became a hit with the public the following year, when the inventor founded Taco Bell. The original taco shells were made of graham crackers until 1913 (when they were switched out in favor of a corn-based cracker product). Like all inventors, Alexander Graham Bell died penniless and alone.

3. El Salvador? More like El Salvadon’t!

4. Phone calling is tricky business. I don’t talk on the phone very often. Sometimes I think I should call people more often, but then I wonder how they’ll know that I don’t care and I wish everyone would just leave me alone. I don’t want to send mixed messages. So, catch-22.

That’s all the time we have this week, dear readers. If you have a question you’d like to “Ask Conlan”, please consult a board-certified physician.

1. I mean this geographically; the people who live there are super fat.

Dear Conlan,

When I start my car, I get this kck-kck-kckkhhhh sound, but it goes away once the engine revs up. It’s done this for the last two years or so, but when I started my car on Sunday, after the kck-kckhhh sound it also went reeeee-preeee-preeep! I guess my question is, what do you think about those Kardashian sisters?

Flummoxed in Flummuxee, KY.

Let me tell you a story, Flem.

When I was a boy, not more than 4 years old, the neighborhood boys and I started a circus. It wasn’t much: we didn’t have a high-wire act or elephants or hobo clowns. But we did have regular clowns, a trapeze artist, lion tamers, and a contortionist (although later we learned that Jimmy wasn’t actually a contortionist; he was just Italian). All in all, it was a pretty good circus. We’d put on shows for our parents, and families from two or three streets over would walk to our street to watch the death-defying acts. But then one day it all ended. And do you know why? It was because we didn’t believe in ourselves. If we’d only had the audacity of hope to commit to our chosen lifestyle, who knows what we could have accomplished?

I’ll never forgive myself for quitting the circus. Even later, when I joined a new circus, it wasn’t the same. (For one thing, the contortionist was Vietnamese.) Do you see what I’m trying to say, Flem? I’m saying: if you put mind to it, you can accomplish up to 23 things. That’s a lot! Like, Michael Jordan a lot!

Never let anyone tell you you can’t be anything you want to eat. Ever heard of America? Case closed.

There this boy, (lets call him G) in my karate class. He’s younger than me, I think he’s 8 or 9, and he’s always sitting next to me, and trying to impress me and he looks at me a lot and listens in when I talk to my friends. I think he likes me. But I don’t like him! I like this other guy and he likes me. I want G to stop annoying me and bothering me! I know it’s probably his first crush, but I don’t like it at ALL. – Shea, 11, Florida

Thanks for your problem, Shea (dumb name, by the way).

If I’ve learned one thing from watching Karate Kid (and I haven’t, because I never saw it), it is this: When a boy named Gary in your karate class tries to look at you and listen to you, you need to give him swift karate chop to the throat. Not enough to kill him, but not enough to not kill him, if you know what I mean.

But wait! That’s just in the movies. Lots of stuff happens in movies—giant killer robots, ugly girls becoming pretty when they take off their glasses, true love—that could never happen in real life. So let’s look at this realistically.

Gary likes you, you like O.G., and O.G. likes you. But how does O.G. feel about Gary? Did you ever consider that maybe O.G. is just pretending to like you to get closer to Gary? This is karate class, after all: the “land of fruits and nuts”.

Or did you ever consider this: Gary is bothering you because there’s a MURDERER IN YOUR BACKSEAT and every time Gary flashes his high beams, it’s because THE MURDERER IS ABOUT TO STAB YOU but the bright headlights make him duck down again. DID YOU EVER CONSIDER THAT?

You see, there’s more to Gary than meets the eye. In fact, there’s a lot of Gary that meets the nose (rather pungently so). Now that I mention it, I can see how the smell could be pretty annoying. And I can understand why you wouldn’t want to be around him because of that. And he’s only 8 or 9. Imagine what it’ll be like once he hits puberty! Blech!

In conclusion, maybe the guy from Happy Days was right all along. Throat chop.

Dear Conlan,

Did you have a fun Cinco de Mayo?

Sincerely,
Gerard

Thanks for writing, Juan. Allow me to answer your question with a question of my own: What’s your favorite Lady Gaga song?

I think I proved my point.

Conlan: 1. Gerard: 0.

Днем Рождения, Конлан. Вы знаете, почему все мои письма ищем, как это? Да, очень хорошо. чем ты думаешь?

Боб, из России

Thanks for your question, Bob. The truth is, most languages in the world are based on what experts call “drawings in caves”. In the early 20th Century, the explorer Henry Walton Jones “Jr.” discovered some drawings in a cave in France that we now know are actually the modern letters of an ancient alphabet. (If you look at it upside down it spells “BOOBS”.) So, to put it in layered man’s terms, it was a “spicy meatball” of archeology. Also, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”

This may be what you are referring to when you say “очень хорошо”. But, like most situations, there are no easy answers. Unless the situation is, like, two plus two. That’s four. That’s a pretty easy answer. A lot of math is pretty easy, come to think of it. But not always. Sometimes math can be painful. Not unlike heartburn.

If you’re experiencing acid reflux (and I don’t know if you are, because I have never walked a mile in your письмаs, nor would I want to, if you know what I mean), then seek help from a medical professional. That would be my advice (if the Federal Trade Commission allowed me to give advice, which they don’t). Happy birthday to you too.

Thanks for writing, Bob. If anyone else has a question for Ask Conlan, please leave it in the comments and I will answer it just as soon as I clear up this FTC misunderstanding.

Hey, dude. You don’t blog for 3 months and then you come back talking about beer and you act like nothing happened? What’s the deal?

Thanks for your question, someone. The long answer is, nothing. The short answer is, buy one get one half off.

Someone else writes:

That was a pretty crappy answer you gave to someone.

That’s not really a question, someone else. But I’ll give it a shot: No, I won’t play into your game. This interview is over.

That’s all the time we have this week. If you have a question for Conlan, please $5 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: my pocket. As always, happy Hanukkah.

This picture was a gift to me, purchased by my friend Danielle.

Dear Conlan,

I’ve been having issues with my… you know, my area. I tried to tell my mom about it, but I was too embarrassed. What should I do?

Sincerely,

Burning in Burlingame

You might be surprised, Burning, but I actually get this question fairly often. For some reason, people feel like they can talk to me about their geometry problems. And they certainly can; I never judge.

But before I answer your question, I should explain it to readers who may not have dealt with these issues.

What Burning is talking about can happen to anybody if they’re not careful. Everyone likes equations, but sometimes people like them so much that they forget that math isn’t a toy. It’s a tool. And, as with any tool, a calculator is considered cheating. So, what inevitably happens is, some kids who don’t know any better get together and start talking about logarithms and functions of x, and before you know it you’re dealing with a raging case of calculus. And of course no one wants to admit to doing calculus, but sometimes that’s the only way to figure things out if you’re not dealing with geometric shapes, you know?

In conclusion, the current state of education, alien abductions, etc.

Thanks for writing, Burning. And remember, everyone: the only “stupid” question is one that isn’t asked by a smart person.

Why am I never allowed to own a cat?

Thank you for your question, Doug. This is a very interesting situation requiring the requisite non sequiturs (and therefore non sequitees, for argument’s sake), but what—inasmuch as there is such thing—does this actually preclude? The answer to that is simple: Don’t buy a bucket of butter when the squids aren’t squeaking, am I right? What this means, in context, is that there’s no one specific instance by which all others must be prejudged. The “jury” is, when it comes around to it, out.

And yet, the feline aspects of the equation remain in play (as it were). For example, don’t expect much help from the U.S. Supreme Court on this one.^[1] It’s a matter of onion. I wonder if that’s where the onion came from. Onions are like assholes: everybody’s got one and they all make you cry when you chop them up.

But I divergess. The answer to this question, Dob, lies in the idiosyncrasy of it, itself. What we are dealing with here, then, is, of course, not a viable option. It is an enviable option. Gosh, I wish I had that option. (Do you see my point?)

All living things hate you.

1. Not true.