by H. W. Moss

The world is full of questions without answers and my goal is to put some of those in front of you to see what kind of response you come up with.

This is a quote from an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: “The legislature returns . . . to solicit as many campaign contributions as possible from trade groups and businesses with issues pending before lawmakers.”

See, our elected officials seek money from Political Action Committees. Here’s the question: Why don’t they call what the PAC’s do influence peddling and influence buying since that’s what it is?

Ponder this if you will: Women wear their clothing until they tire of it, usually within the first 30 days after purchase or until the style goes out of fashion, whichever comes first.

Men wear their clothes until they wear ’em out. Why izzat?

My youngest sister, Laura, called asking for money to have her wisdom teeth pulled. I had mine yanked when I was about her age. It’s best to have them excised when you’re young.

Question: Since everyone needs them removed, why don’t doctors perform the surgery at the same time they tie the umbilical cord? Medical schools ought to include this operation as de rigueur in their curriculum.

Actually, there are two very good answers to this question. First, because medical doctors are not dentists. So obvious. Second, they’re called “wisdom” teeth because you have to wait for those puppies to appear. They show up about the time you graduate from high school and they go bad about the time you graduate from college. My idea is to remove their seeds at birth.

Hey, why don’t ants die when you put ’em in the microwave and nuke ’em on high?

This is not as absurd a question as you may think. I popped the door open the other day, spotted a few roaming around in there and tried this technique. Five minutes on high. Didn’t work. The light was on so you could see them hopping around from foot-to-foot, but nope, still alive and kicking at the end.

Maybe the waves don’t hit their bodies because ants are smaller than microwave beams. Or, perhaps it’s because the beams bounce off an ant’s exoskeleton which is a fancy word for their shell. Or maybe they don’t have enough moisture inside the shell to turn them into steam. Bet that’s the real answer.

One might ask how ants got inside my microwave in the first place. No, I didn’t put them there and the door was closed.

While standing with my head in the egg rack at the grocery store, I looked up to see myself in infinite reflection. What I want to know is: if you hold two mirrors up to each other, what’s in them and do they go on forever?

While we’re at the supermarket, why don’t they call coupon books two-tiered pricing which, of course, is illegal. Coupons should invite and invoke investigations from a variety of government agencies including the Federal Trade Commission. And there’s the Constitutional issue: discrimination. By their very nature coupon books discriminate against stupid people.

I know, I know. Stupid People are not a protected class, but they ought to be. Coupons cause them to buy the expensive brand name products which they would not ordinarily consider purchasing, but because the coupon says here’s a discount, they do. And coupons discriminate against folks like me who just plain don’t use ’em.

Why don’t we iron our clothes when they are wet rather than dry them first?

And while we’re still at the grocery store, let me ask this: Is it true that mustard, toothpaste and Tabasco sauce each have an unlimited shelf life?

That would be scary. Squeeze out a line of yellow on your hot dog and read the label which says it was made in 1957. Still tastes great: both the old hot dog and the mustard.

(2004)