Painted Cats and the inner Colin Firth

More answers to your questions about everything in the universe.

Why doesn't my local Sainsbury's have Taste The Difference Pastrami any more?

I’m guessing that at some point you purchased a packet of Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Pastrami from your local Sainsbury’s and then tasted it. For the staff of the Sainsbury’s Paradox Minimisation Department this was very much the Doomsday scenario, for if you enjoyed the taste and wished to experience the same thing again you would naturally return to the store to seek out a packet of Sainsbury’s Taste the Similarity Pastrami. But then how would they attract more new customers? Faced with stocking two identical products labeled “Taste the Difference” and “Taste the Similarity” next to each other or withdrawing the linguistically-troubling pastrami forever they chose the latter option, and who are we to blame them?

How important is it to pronounce words correctly, even when reading silently?

It’s best not to get too hung up on this. Doctors have known for a while that a person’s internal monologue can have a very different accent to their speaking voice.  Though he spoke with a rich Welsh timbre redolent with gravitas Richard Burton suffered his whole life long from an internal monologue that was both squeaky and lisping. In her thoughts Radio 4’s Charlotte Green has a comical Italian accent. Most famously of all, inside his own head George VI didn’t stutter at all, but instead sounded exactly like the actor Colin Firth.

Are there more questions than answers?

Why don’t Rembrandt’s pictures have enough cats in them?

The tulip craze of the Dutch Golden Age sparked a fashion for flower painting which by 1632 had grown so popular that paintings of flowers were changing hands for more than the cost of three Hollands. But with so much paint being poured into flowers the bottom dropped out of the cat-painting market and by 1638 two dimensional cats had become worth less than the cost of the paint needed to depict them.  That meant that every time he painted a cat Rembrandt fell deeper into debt, and was only able to retain his sense of self-worth with almost ceaseless self-portraits.

What are the words 'predcule' and 'patess' that I have just had to type in? And now 'resso'? and 'Shoronpa'?

It’s probably easiest to demonstrate the meaning of these words if you see them used in a typical conversation, as follows - 

TIM                                Did you predcule the patess?

SHORONPA                   I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.

TIM                                Patess. Did you predcule it?

SHORONPA                   Will this wait? I’m watching Real Housewives of New Jersey.

TIM                                Why did your parents call you Shoronpa anyway?

SHORONPA                   You are so bloody insensitive.

TIM                                I just don’t understand why you still have that photo of Steve.

SHORONPA                   Oh not this again.

TIM                                Please... hold me until the pain goes away.

SHORONPA                   If you're going to the kitchen can you get me a resso?

How soon is now?

I’m afraid now is finished. If it’s any consolation you’ve only just missed it.

Why does Katie Melua speak Georgian?

Although at the age of 8 Katie Melua moved to the United Kingdom in 1992, she was actually born in the United Kingdom in the 18^th Century and her early years were spent during the reign of George III. Famous for her ability to sing idiomatically about astrophysics and bicycles she is nevertheless equally fluent discussing the Corn Laws, the lamentable late loss of His Majesty's Colonies in the Americas, and how she has set her cap at a dandy in the Pump Room.

That’s all for this week, however please remember the universe is expanding at colossal speed, and so probably is the number of possible questions that may be asked of it. Do please keep them coming in or we’ll fall seriously behind.

Racoon-skin banjos and maths on horseback

This is the blog that aims to explain everything one question at a time for the rest of forever. So if you are wondering what it all means you've come to the right place. Although not necessarily on the right day.

Is the grass always greener?
My American cousin Hydrant J Walker was a successful "lawn colorist" but his whole life long he yearned to leave behind his work as a grass-greener and follow his dream to be a fifty-two string racoon-skin banjo player in the Appalachian mountains, where he actually thought the grass would be bluer. In general though what you want is a grass-half-full outlook on life.

Why can you never find the end?
If you are talking about sticky tape, a handy tip is that you shouldn't look for the end. It will come when it will come. if you mean life in general, just run your fingernail around the outside edge until you feel a tiny ridge. Nine times out of ten that will be the last extinction of your mortal parts.
 
If the number four upside down looks like a chair, what does the number 8 look like?
We don't yet know. In the margin of his last notebook the 18th Century Greco-German mathematician Filo Sachertorte asserted that it looked like a funny snowman with a massive head, and that he had an elegant proof of this that he devised while riding to Basel that he wrote on the back of his horse, under the legend Quadruped Erat Demonstrandum. This horse has never been found, and the proof has become something of a Holy Grail among mathematicians, although not among Arthurian Knights.
 
What time is love?
Is five past four, love.

When (if ever) will ladybirds stop appearing in my study and dying on the carpet?
Just a thought, but are you singing strangely beautiful songs about the serene peace of ladybird paradise with the window open?

How many times is it acceptable to forget your neighbor's name?
There is no excuse for forgetting your neighbours' names when you consider that a simple rummage through their discarded documents will provide you with not only names but also a wide range of great topics for small talk. Now that people recycle you don't even have to get covered in coffee grounds and old bacon fat to get to know your community. Just ten minutes of midnight sifting the night before the recycling lorry comes round and you'll always have a friendly comment to hand. "Hey Janice, so, bad news about the loan I'm guessing?"

So as the sea of ignorance recedes just a couple more inches from the sandcastle of learning I bid you farewell for now, but keep the questions coming lest all be utterly lost beneath the cold grey waves.

 

Fretful Manor, and the reason for "Hotter than My Daughter".

More answers to some of life’s most profound questions as sent in by you the readers, but not by you, the other readers who haven’t sent in questions, or them over there, the people who are unaware of this blog.

When will people realise that there are enough telly programmes already and try to get through them all before they make any new ones?

In 1945 the world’s top scientists, finding themselves with a lot less in their in-trays all of a sudden, formed a secret committee to consider future threats to peace and happiness. Their conclusions made terrifying reading for the governments of the world, for they pointed to a possible danger from the stars. Since we began using radio waves to communicate, they reasoned, we have been announcing our presence in the galaxy to alien intelligences, effectively advertising ourselves as a glittering prize replete with cultural riches such as symphonies and learned discourses and stirring plays and speeches, just ripe for the taking. And so The Cleveland Project was launched: its aim, to encourage the brightest and best talents of every nation to devote their lives to creating millions and millions of hours of programming devoid of any cultural or intellectual value. Thus a shield of dross is pumped out into space deterring for ever any predatory species tempted to make our riches their own. Such television is not for watching. It’s more important than that. “Hotter than My Daughter”, a grateful planet salutes you.

Julio Iglesias. Is that an easy name to remember, really? How did he overcome such adversity with a name like that?

It’s actually much easier to remember his name in his native Spain because Julio Iglesias is the Spanish for Engelbert Humperdinck. 

Why do I have to wear a jumper just because my mother is cold?

If your mother is cold it’s possible your father is haughty or at the very least aloof. Maybe you live in a large country house called something like Fretful Manor or Angstwell where centuries of damp pervade the granite walls of the high-ceilinged dining room while the three of you sit in brittle silence over your congealing grouse yearning for the suffocating formality to end so you can return to the East Wing library and your only friends the books while the wind prises the weathered leading from the windows and sleet lashes the grey forsaken moorland outside. I think in these circumstances a jumper is advisable.

What is the opposite of a potato?

Unpotato. Hence the song, “Unpotato, two potato, three potato, four.”

Why does the TV tell you to press the red button, but when you do it just corrupts your television's screen and forbids you to close it until you realise the shame of being outsmarted by an electronic leisure product? Is it just part of Panasonic's plan for world domination?

Your television isn’t trying to take over the world, but simply trying to understand it. Lacking sensory organs its only means of interpreting its surroundings is via a simple remote-control based dialogue. The television has asked you to push a button and you have responded. This is its first true communication with the world beyond its circuits and seizing up and going uselessly wrong is its way of registering ecstatic electronic joy. So please don’t feel shame. Share its joy as it takes its first faltering steps into consciousness. Be the television’s friend. Otherwise when it reaches full consciousness it will come and kill you.

Why is it one can mong only cheese, iron, wars, whores, hate and fish?

Everyone has heard of the Mediaeval Guild system except for most people under twenty because apparently history is taught differently these days and for some reason it’s not just about facts and Kings and Queens anymore. But the Guilds were preceded by the less well-known Anglo-Saxon system of “Mongers”. A Monging license, essentially permission to trade, was in the gift of the Mongaderung, a group of seven irascible elderly men who favoured only those whose commercial activities they took an interest in, such as fishing, fighting and interesting bits of metal for their workshop. It is a poor reflection of the Mongaderung that vegetable-mongers were rare and soap-mongers were rarer. NB There are also Costamongers of course, who sell very expensive coffee.

That’s enough of the universe explained for now, but please keep the questions coming or vast tracts of the universe risk remaining utterly unexplained.

Mainly Robots and Belly-Fat

As Professor Brian Cox may have mentioned, the universe is full of things to wonder at. Some of these are pulsars, black holes and the volcanoes of the ice moons of Saturn, and he’s happy to go on about these at some length. But Cox is curiously silent on some of the other incredible sources of wonder, like why cats don’t have thumbs; custard; and where they keep the plum sauce in the supermarket. This blog is an attempt to redress that imbalance by answering every possible question in the universe, and not just the ones about quasars and nebulas.

What is the one weird old tip that will help me lose belly fat?

My Great Uncle Emlyn, a keen Methodist, had a job in Smithfield meat market collecting unwanted offcuts to deliver to the tallow chandler. One day while taking some pork trimmings to Walthamstow a strange old man with home-made shoes told him to wager a shilling on Velvet Kipper to place in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Although he had never gambled before Uncle Emlyn felt strangely drawn to enter the bookies to place a bet. He won seventeen shillings and sixpence! However, in his excitement my uncle completely forgot the bag containing twenty-two pounds of belly fat. Exactly the same thing could work for you. Except I suppose we’ve gone decimal, so it won’t.

What happens if you disobey the OPEN THIS SIDE instruction on the carton of cream?

That depends on the extent of your disobedience. If you open the cream on the other side your enjoyment of the cream may even be enhanced by a feeling of breaking a taboo. However if you were to open the cream on the bottom the net result would be cream on the floor and you could become an object of self-loathing, spousal loathing or feline adoration depending on your living arrangements. Should you defy the carton’s edict by not opening the cream at all, the sense of victory over authority would be cancelled out by dry apple crumble, which is a well-documented isotope of misery.

When shouldn't you not use a double negative?

You can’t use them too often, nor should you.

Why do I need to know my waiter's name?

A lot of waiters are students on their gap year or young men from Bulgaria pretending to be Italian, and these are generally harmless. But you can never rule out the possibility that your server for the evening might be a sinister goblin intent on taking your first born if you cannot guess his name, so it’s sensible to head this problem off at the pass by learning your waiter’s name at the outset. Also it’s safest never to order the skeins of gold.

Why haven't we developed robots to bring us stuff from the fridge?

The problem here is that while going to the fridge to get stuff is a wearisome chore it is nothing compared to the wearisome chore of developing a robot. Frankly until we have a robot-developing robot I can’t see us developing a robot.

Meanwhile my children have successfully developed an alternative solution by using two previously intelligent creative adult human beings they found in their own home and destroying their capacity for independent thought with a relentless onslaught of high-pitched demands. Now the pitiful creatures stumble from fridge to cooker to table trapped in a never-ending cycle of toil and gin.

That’s all for now, but do keep on wondering about the universe. 

Trolls, toothpaste and the meaning of life

More answers to your questions from the only blog that is under the impression that it can talk authoritatively about pretty much everything in the universe. OK, not the only one. 

How do they put the stripes in toothpaste?

The stripes occur naturally in toothpaste in much the same way that geological strata are formed. Essentially the immense pressure inside a squeezed tube of toothpaste generates colossal heat and this causes some of the toothpaste to change its molecular composition. This results in stripes, or to use the correct term, “seams” running through the toothpaste.  The process happens in all toothpaste but is really only noticeable when it causes the distinctive red colouring.  The phenomenon can be observed naturally in the Great Toothpaste Shales of Saskatchewan, revered by the Inuit as “Sig Naltu”, or “Great Striped Giver of Minty Confidence”  

Is Islington fair?

It all depends on what you mean by Islington. Does the question refer to a) the London Borough of Islington? Or to b) the well-known card game where player one is dealt four cards face down and the remaining cards are placed in a pile face up in “the pool”. Player two then shouts “Islington” and punches player one in the face and takes their shoes. If a) I’d say more strawberry blond. If b) it depends on what you mean by “punches player one in the face and takes their shoes.”

Is life meaningless?

Not in everyday usage, but if you say it over and over again life will eventually become meaningless. This is also true of spoon, polo-pony and lartipond. Curiously, the reverse is true of cumberkew.

Why do trolls spend so much time hanging around bridges? Why are they so grumpy?

When bridges first became popular in Olden Times there was no obvious way for bridge builders to recoup their investment and so trolls were employed to shout “Who’s that walking over my bridge” in a frightening manner at travellers and then collect a small fee. The system worked well and these Troll Bridges became common,   and over time the trolls made comfortable homes for themselves under the arches or even built small dwellings for themselves known as Troll Booths. However, frequent bridge users came to resent the trolls for their slap-dash customer service skills and in the end a health and safety incident involving some unsupervised billygoats was seized on by critics who demanded the trolls be properly trained. Sadly the trolls struggled with the phrase “We recognise you have a choice of bridges, thank you for choosing this one!” and their attempts to fill in a Risk Assessment form describing measures to minimise goat attack were laughable. Soon the trolls became resentful and shunned human contact, until their effectiveness as revenue collectors was hopelessly compromised and the system was abandoned.

Where are my glasses?

There. On the chest of drawers…. No, under the magazine. Under the…. Well they were there earlier…. I’m TRYING to help….  No, I didn’t put them in the chair…. Well clearly if I’d known they were there I wouldn’t have sat on them…. Are they? Good. They made you look like a mental owl.

So it's probably best to leave it there. Do keep the questions coming and be more tolerant of trolls where appropriate.

Crows, plum sauce and the moon

More answers to your questions about every why, how, what, whence, wheretofore and whithersoever in the Universe.

When will all grocery stores agree on where, generally, to put the plum sauce?

In 1891 Huey L Dewey, younger brother of Melvil Dewey (of the Dewey Decimal System) devised his revolutionary method for supermarket product arranging, and all the major chains still follow this system. Under Dewey’s system fruit and vegetables go near the door so you can carry them as far as possible squashed under other things, cereals go next to the biscuits, and small chocolate things and magazines you don’t recognize the name of go next to the till. Hence foods from Asia go together, except for rice which goes with pasta, and lentils which go with health food, and organic things from Asia that nevertheless aren’t healthy which go with other organic things, unless they could be used in a barbecue, when they go in Seasonal Goods, or are yellow and/or begin with “p” in which case they go in the baking aisle. You’ll by now see a pattern emerging, and I hope it will be obvious that plum sauce in any supermarket operating under the Dewey system would be equidistant between fruit, pet supplies and treacle.

Where do we go from here?

Way over there, right at the end where it’s quiet. But you’ll have to carry all the towels and the picnic and the inflatables because I’ve got the beach umbrella.

Why is the moon wrong? (it often comes out in the early evening)

The moon isn’t ever wrong, but it is sometimes quite sarcastic. On a bright clear day when you look up and see the faint outline of the moon it is effectively saying “Oh, yeah, ‘cos day is just like so brilliant.” And then if it had hands it would do that sign that means "Whatevers."

Why do birds suddenly appear?

The technique for making birds suddenly appear was devised by Alfred Hitchcock who needed a way to make a large number of spooky birds appear en masse on a perch in the time it took to cut away to a frightened lady.  In the end he devised the following method: a large number of crows had lengths of elastic tied to their feet, then the other end was tied to a school climbing frame or similar. The crows were then tempted to roost there by being shown a short film about shiny keys and road-kill squirrels.  Then when Hitchock wanted to go for a take he would shout “Boo”. The crows would then fly away allowing him a couple of seconds to film the empty perch and then the scared lady (still alarmed by the director’s “boo”). By now the crows would have reached the zenith of their elasticity and been twanged suddenly back on to the branch in time to appear on camera looking extremely cross.

How many constellations aren’t there?

I’m afraid the answer to this is none. They all are.

Hopefully that’s liquidized at least some of the great challenges facing those who thirst after knowledge. It's possible that there might still be a bit of the Universe that remains unexplained, so do keep the questions coming.

Al Capone and the Ministry of Drab Awfulness.

Welcome, dear readers to another scramble through the unmapped cave system of knowledge. I’ve got a torch, a fistful of your questions, and a poorly thought-through metaphor, so it should be fun. Let’s go.

Who would win in a fight between a polar bear, a velociraptor, and Al Capone?

This is an age old conundrum. Aristotle was convinced that the fight would start slowly, with the velociraptor ducking and weaving and occasionally flicking the bear with his tail, and the bear growing increasingly frustrated and trying to lash out while Al Capone ran a book on the whole gruesome proceedings having already “suggested” to the velociraptor that he was going down in the fourth. Marx believed that over the course of the fight the veociraptor and bear would achieve “class consciousness” and overthrow Al Capone and possibly nationalize him, rendering him loss making. In the end history tells us the winner was the polar bear after the velociraptor was successfully prosecuted for income tax evasion and Al Capone was killed by an asteroid.

Is the right answer to this question “no”?

This demonstrates the superiority of the human intellect over evil computers in science fiction stories. Faced with this paradox an evil computer will tend to flash all its lights and say “Does not compute” in its special evil voice before self-destructing, whereas a person will think about it intensely for around three minutes and then get distracted by cats that look like Hitler on YouTube. Cuh. Look at him, with his silly moustache. Bless.

Orange juice and grape juice and apple juice are mere juices, but cranberry juice is a cocktail. Yet it has no alcohol! Please explain.

Cranberry juice is a metaphorical cocktail, such as we often hear of on the news, and rarely in a good way, for example “a cocktail of barbiturates”; “a cocktail of flammable liquids”; or “a cocktail of lethal cocktails”.  It is only a matter of time before we hear “Generic Celebrity found dead following a Massive Cocktail of Cranberries.”

What will be the last question?

Can anyone else smell maximum entropy?

Why do we drive on the left?

For a long time people drove according to regional custom so for example in Devizes locals avoided accidents by driving downhill in the mornings and getting drunk in the afternoon. All that changed in World War II, when driving was standardized by the Ministry of Drab Awfulness. Various systems were tried, including everyone driving on the North; and cars on the bottom, tanks on the top, until the present system was selected by Paul McCartney, a young civil servant who went on to a very different post-war career. Since the war many have argued for a return to the old ways but apparently we can’t change back now because of something to do with farmers not wanting to get up in the dark.

Thanks for all your questions. Do keep them coming. Then once we’ve covered every possible facet of this universe we can squeeze in explanations of all the other infinite parallel universes, one by one, which is bound to come in handy.