When the going gets tough, do the tough really get going?

Well, Japan, this is an interesting question and there are two schools of thought on the subject.

The antediluvians contend that the going is only ever really tough when everyone drowns. And, because of magic rainbows or something, nobody drowns anymore, so there’s no reason for anyone to get going, tough or not. On the other hand, the protoreptilians argue that rocks are “tough” but they’re also warm sometimes (relatively speaking), so their answer is yes (assuming that “going” refers to “going to the bathroom”).

If you want my personal opinion, I prefer the long O pronunciation of “ough”. So you would say something like “I stubbed my tough,” and nobody would mind because they’ve got better things to do.

I hope that answers your question.

Do you ever get lonely?

Good question, Someone. I think I’ll answer it in the form of a song…

Webster’s Dictionary defines lonely as, “sad because one is very ugly” or “without a helper monkey”. Most people believe that no one can ever truly be lonely because there are other people on Earth[1]. But most people are very stupid. The truth is, everyone is lonely (in the sense that their existence is—by definition—separate from other people and helper monkeys and also they are ugly). The sooner you come to terms with this existential isolation, the sooner you can get on with the serious business of boozin’ and bonin’ (metaphorically).

So the obvious follow-up question is: how do you come to terms with it?

Good question, Obvious. I recommend just scrolling to the bottom and clicking “OK”. No one really reads those things. Just accept the fact that, in 10 years[2], Facebook is going to be implanted in your cerebral cortex and there’s nothing you can do about it because you already gave your consent in 2010. As they say in Belgium, “Ik weet niet wat ik zeg!” (which roughly translates to, “Polish sausage? In this economy?!”)

But there is another school of thought on the subject. Namely, the Sisyphusian school, which holds that loneliness is just an emotional manifestation of humankind’s longing for unification with the chi. (And this is where the helper monkeys are important because they need to water it or you’ll never grow anything—you’ll just be stuck with a weird clay head or whatever.) Therefore, we can come to terms with this by not suffocating kittens or killing and/or eating people. It’s like the old saying goes: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame zombie.” Although the exact wording has changed as it’s been passed down through generations, most scholars now agree that publicly humiliating undead cannibals is an effective way to prevent people from fooling you.

And why is that? Simple: because a lonely life isn’t worth living. We all need to be around other people, either by having conversations with them or by eating their brains. Zombies know this. Dick Clark knew it. Zombie Dick Clark knows it. Abe Lincoln didn’t know it. Helper monkeys know it. It’s why they want to help.

In conclusion, Webster’s Dictionary defines conclusion as “the end of something good and the beginning of something great (because, seriously, anything has to be better than this”.

1. Until October 17.
2. Figuratively speaking, because of October 17.

Dear Conlan,

How do I figure out what to do with my life? I need to find a new job and I just don’t know where to start.

Sincerely,
Meandering in Minnesota

Thanks for your question, Madarin. It’s not uncommon for people of a certain age to wonder what it all really means and where they’re all really going and why it’s all WTF, dude. In fact, this question reminds me of a story…

Not too long ago there was a dog named Stanley. He was exactly six feet long (from nose to tail). That’s why they called him “The Human Tape Measure”. One day Stanley wanted to eat some bagels or some other kind of boiled bread. So he went to New York City, birthplace of the Bronx Boilers. Then Stanley was run over by a subway train and died (this was before 9/11).

The moral of the story is: don’t go chasing bagelfalls. Please stick to being a dog that’s a human tape measure.

The other part of your question (i.e., needing to find a new job and just don’t knowing where to start) is trickier. The obvious answer is, start at the beginning. But the right answer isn’t usually the obvious answer, because that’s not how TV mystery shows work. The right answer is: the old lady from the beginning of the episode who lived across the hall from the dead guy. She killed him because he was mean to her cat! What a twist!

In conclusion, I hope my insight has helped put Me-and-Da-Ring (rap name) on the path to a happy and healthy 2009.

If you hate your life and have a question you’d like to Ask Conlan, please find me and ask it.

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.