Monkey black holes, and what badgers think about rainbows.

Your many challenging questions this week reminded me that the quest for truth can sometimes be frightening. It's as if we are benighted travellers, and the universe is one vast black forest. Together let us find the gateau.

Why are there so many songs about rainbows?

As well as the three human songs about rainbows, pretty much every other species of mammal also has at least one song about a rainbow. Surprisingly this even includes the Ganges River Dolphin, which despite being functionally blind has a song which roughly translates as “What if there were another sense besides the four obvious ones, and what if there were a phenomenon whereby the thing that that sense could distinguish were to be broken down into its component parts by passing through thousands of tiny water drops? Wouldn’t that be lovely, and by the way does this river taste of dead people to you?” Although they only see in black and white, badgers sing a lot of songs about rainbows, including “The stripes of my beloved’s face are both the colours of the rainbow.”

Why is there beetroot?

People often have terrible misconceptions about beetroot, but actually you can cook it in seven or eight different ways before disposing of it. It can be boiled and then thrown away. Roast and then thrown away. Baked au gratin and thrown away. It can even be grated raw straight into the bin. Probably the main reason for beetroot is for dividing up the world into people who like beetroot and people who don’t.  No other vegetable serves this exact purpose.

Why is God so bad with money?

Ever since the world’s major currencies moved away from the gold standard money has relied on a shared belief in its value. God’s problem with money is that He doesn’t share this belief. He is massively into Book Tokens though.

What is the best use for an infinite number of monkeys?

If you have an infinite number of monkeys you don’t need to worry about what you should use them for as they can do an infinite number of tasks in an infinitely short time, or maybe even quicker if they are using predictive text. To put it another way, there’d be no problem you couldn’t solve by throwing monkeys at it.  You’d probably want to start though by addressing the problems of catering, accommodation and infrastructure that go along with owning an infinite number of monkeys. Chief among these is that if you didn’t spread them very carefully throughout the universe then their infinite mass would cause a monkey black hole and all that randomly-generated truth and beauty would be lost in an implosion of anguished simian whoops.

If I haven’t answered your question then please be reassured that it is the aim of this blog at some point between now and the last syllable of recorded time to provide an answer to every possible question in the universe, and I see no reason to assume that goal will not be achieved, monkey black holes permitting.