Shallow Answers to Deep Questions

"Rosemary, my ears are tired."  My mother reminds me from time to time that she used to say this to me when I was a little girl yammering on and on about whatever had me all bent out of shape at the given moment.  (Like I need reminding.  Words hurt, Ma.  They hurt.)  This was before blogs, or Rose-mini  would have been all over that mess.  Posts would have been titled "Why did my parents let me believe my birthmark was an actual coffee stain?" "Bananas are gross"  "2nd Grade - The Great Depression of Grammar School,"  and "Brothers:  The case for a return policy on siblings."

Actually, that's not too different from what I currently post.  Though when I think back to myself as a little girl, like 8-10, I feel like I was a way more ballsy and bolder little thing compared to myself now.  My mom says I've grown more circumspect; I think I've lost my nerve.

Instead of waxing poetic and barfing up too much verbiage in response to a rather simple question like I've been doing, I thought I'd craft a brief (ha!) ode to circumspection and/or lost nerve.  Philosophical questions.  Literary Research Paper Prompts. BIG QUESTIONS.

Short answers.

Some of the following question were headlines on blogs I frequent, or gleaned from suggestions for book club discussions.  And some I just came up with for the hell of it.  (Also: This exercise is really starting to make me miss classic Mad Magazine's "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.")

From Lifehacker:
BIG QUESTION: Is everything I do actually killing me?

Short answer:

Yes.

From http://philwiki.wetpaint.com/page/Ship+Of+Theseus+and+Locke's+Socks

BIG QUESTION:

"John Locke proposed a scenario regarding a favorite sock that develops a hole. He questioned whether the sock would still be the same after a patch was applied to the hole. If yes, then, would it still be the same sock after a second patch was applied? Indeed, would it still be the same sock many years later, even after all of the material of the original sock has been replaced with patches?"

Short answer:

Change your socks more, Locke.

From the fungally named website SelfGrowth.com:

BIG QUESTION

"What is good and what is bad or evil? What is moral? What is ethical? Who decides good and bad, right and wrong; and by what standard? Is there an absolute standard of good and bad beyond one’s the personal opinions? Should good and bad be determined by custom, by rational law, or by the situation? What if the decisions of others (society, authorities, laws, etc) determining good and bad are contrary to one’s personal beliefs or freedoms? ¯should you obey others or follow your own conscience? Moreover, if we do not have free will but are ruled by outside factors, what difference does good and bad make? ¯we have no choice. If so, we have no responsibility for doing bad."

Short Answer, Also phrased in the form of a question:

How about you not act like a dick, huh?

From http://philosophy.tamu.edu/~sdaniel/quesphil.html:

BIG QUESTION:

According to Socrates, an unexamined life is not worth living; and it certainly could not be a virtuous life.  Why not? 

Short answer:

He'd be out of a job.

Most bodacious philosophizer

BIG QUESTION:
Which came first: the chicken or the egg?

Short Answer:

Dinosaurs!

From "Hamlet Study Questions"

BIG QUESTION: Why does Hamlet wait so long to kill Claudius?  What are the reasons for his hesitation?  How valid are they?  How many times does he have the opportunity to attack Claudius?  What are his reasons for not doing so? 

Short answer:

Hamlet SUCKS.

But do I?
I need three acts to figure that out...

From "Romeo and Juliet Study Questions"

BIG QUESTION: Did the tragic outcome of this play result from accident, from fate, or from character? Or from some combination of the three?

Short answer:

From teenagers.

Palm-to-Palm is holy crap they were so stupid...

I always told my students - in preparation for the a state test - that when crafting a written response for Biology or Earth Science, it was important to get to the point and answer the question, and if they wrote a whole pile of crap that needed sifting and prospecting that it would be detrimental to their grade.  For my own tests, I told them that if they had no idea what the answer was, the least they could do was try to make me laugh.   So sometimes a nice pithy little response or cocky rejoinder was a welcome relief from extensive sentences of bs that got the same score anyway.  Charlie V. sent this to me, and I think it needs no explanation.