Every day, thousands of children are subjected to the infamous “birds and the bees” talk. But do we ever stop to ask ourselves if we really want to compare human sexuality to birds and bees? Consider the following:

• If humans had sex like birds, a male would accumulate sperm within their distended testes during the mating season, find an obliging or unguarded female, and then ejaculate from his phallus into the her cloaca.
• If humans had sex like bees, the sole purpose of a male’s life would be to have sex a single time with his female queen, upon which, after leaving his endophallus in the female’s body (similar to leaving behind your wallet at her place after a one-night stand), the male would die.

Sounds just like good ole’ fashioned human reproduction, doesn’t it?

If you could take a pill that would let you get the equivalent of 8 hours of sleep a night even though you actually sleep only 4 hours, but each pill would reduce the overall length of your life by 4 hours, would you take the pill on occasion?

The pros: You’re alive now–why not enjoy more of every day now? Sure, you might live to a ripe old age, but you could also get hit by a Mini Cooper tomorrow and die early. Plus, you’re young. You can do things now that you won’t be able to do when you’re 70. So why not enjoy extended youthful days? Surely your old self won’t begrudge you. And it’s not like you have to take the pill every day. You can take it whenever you want.

The cons: You like sleep–why would you try to reduce it? Plus, who knows what the pill is doing to your body? After all, it’s literally cutting chunks off your life. It’s not like cigarettes, which just increase the probability of early death. By taking the pill, you are guaranteeing that you will die early. I certainly think it’s an interesting concept, one that probably isn’t beyond science.

Sleep fascinates me. We spend nearly a third of our lives just laying in bed not doing anything–think about that! Think about how much time that is–if you live until you’re 90, you’ll spend nearly 30 years of your life asleep. Seems like an awful waste of time. And yet without sleep, we can’t operate properly. We need it. But that’s not to say that we couldn’t truncate it with a sleep pill. Would you take it?

Take Our Poll

QOD: One of the most common literary and cinematic devices is the “fish out of water,” the guy who leaves the only place he knows well and ventures into a land or a situation where he’s in over his head. The device I understand. The expression, not so much. If you take a fish out of the water, doesn’t it just die?

Answer: It’s true, the “fish out of water” is one of the most tired and clichéd of literary devices.  It’s also true that a literal fish out of water will die.  What you’re missing though, Jamey, is the slow and painful way that it dies.  What’s more entertaining than taking a living creature, snatching it from its natural environment into one it cannot possibly survive in, then watching as it flops around wildly, slowly and painfully suffocating to death?  It’s hilarious!  Would other similes such as “pigeon out of sky” or “puma out of jungle” hold the same heft, the same literal gravitas, as “fish out of water”?  I surely think not.

Personally, I prefer to stick with the “pigeon out of sky” device in which the main character just sort of struts around a bit and poops on stuff.  Hello bestseller. 

Answer: Milk and honey are both closely associated with a prosperous life.  I myself have been living the high life since becoming the recent benefactor of a very lucrative 3% cost of living raise.  You know what I had for dinner the first night to celebrate?  A glass of chocolate milk and a spoonful of honey.  Decadent and delicious.

So why are milk and honey connected to prosperity?  Well for one, both milk and honey are things that people like, aside from the lactose intolerant and anti-bee-ites we keep hearing about on the news.  Milk is especially good.  It helps build strong bodies.  Except for soy milk.  That stuff is simply pure concentrated evil.

*Fact: Soy milk is/was the drink of choice of Adolf Hitler, Darth Vader, The Joker, and Kevin Spacey’s character in Se7en.  Prove me wrong, Wikipedia.

The second reason for the association calls back to our humble origins as a species.  Back when Fred Flintstone roamed the earth, only the very successful, very smart, and very lucky were fortunate enough to dine on milk and honey every night.  Everyone else jealously sat in their caves and nursed bee stings and various cow hoof injuries, both hating and secretly wanting to be one of the milk and honey people. 

*Fact:- The quest for honey was actually the second leading cause of death in early man.  The quest for milk was a pathetic eleventh.

So there you go, Stegmaier.  Next week’s question—who actually lives in this mythical and wonderful land of milk and honey?  My short answer: cows, goats, new mothers, and bees.  Lots of bees. 

A: While it’s not exactly a tit for tat (pardon the pun) arrangement to have the bride retrieving her bouquet from the trousers of her new husband, even if it were, I completely understand why it’s not common practice. Reaching under the dress for the garter is 100% typical dude. It’s manly and awesome. That singular action exemplifies the best principal of marriage–that you now own that bitch and can therefore do anything you want to her, even with her parents watching! Stick your head right up her dress! So what? Hell, her parents will probably even cheer you on. Grandma might even get into the act (of cheering, not de-gartering).

The bride on the other hand must hold onto at least some respect. She’s a lady after all, and can’t be reaching all nimbly bimbly into someone’s pants, even if he is her new husband. That type of behavior is reserved only for the strict privacy of a honeymoon suite with the lights off and the door locked. Those are the rules.

Answer: If you eat your cake, it is no longer there. It’s gone, dissolved in the digestive juices of your stomach. While it is still with you for a few hours, it soon becomes the toilet’s cake.

Question: Why is the guy who’s in charge of the court room called the “judge?” Doesn’t the jury do the judging? The judge ain’t judgin’ anybody; he just sits up there in his black dress, smacking his hammer.

Answer: (Apparently neither of us could answer this question.)

Question: The ghetto expression, “Yo Yo, Mo Fo,” is an abbreviation for “Yonder Yonder, Mother Fuc*er,” but shouldn’t it be either, “Yo Yo, Mo Fu” or “Yonder Yonder, Mother Focker?”

Answer: (The answer was too inappropriate to print, but the use of the words “yonder, yonder” was too funny not to print here.)

Question: If I, a male human, break both my thumbs, does that mean I am reduced to the status of a monkey or primate because I no longer have opposable thumbs? Also on that note, if you cut off a fly’s wings, should you call it a walk?

Answer: I’m pretty sure that opposable thumbs aren’t the only thing that separates us from the primates. Even if you did somehow lose your thumbs (maybe in a freak cotton gin accident or something), you could always graft your big toes onto your hand.

Question: In books and movies, male characters are sometimes awakened by their girlfriend when she throws a rock at his bedroom window. Do house windows not have screens in books and movies? If someone threw a rock hard enough to get through the screen AND hit the window, then I’d be really pissed. I’d make sure to get their attention by throwing the rock back at THEIR window–their car window.

Answer: The reason that we see the situation in so many movies is because it is theultimate male fantasy. Who wouldn’t want some chick waking you up in the middle of the night, climbing up a tree into your room, and whispering sweet nothings in your ear?

Tomorrow:

Lumbar and Life Support

Question: Why did the political parties choose such smelly, dirty animals to represent their parties? An elephant and a donkey? What’s up with that?

Answer: I guess these smelly, dirty animals are the ones that the parties identify with most. Have you ever seen Al Gore in the shower? Me neither.

Question: Why do department stores like Kohl’s always have a sale going on? Every time I go in there they say its the biggest sale of a lifetime. How long are these people lives? The price tag on a pair of jeans says $80, sale price $30. I have never seen these clothes at regular prices. Do they think they’re fooling people?

Answer: If you buy a pair of jelly shoes for $5 when they were originally $15, you are gaining $5. So that means if you walk into K-Mart with $23 and buy those shoes, you’re going to spend $5 (net $18), and in doing so gain the $10 you would have spent had you bought those shoes at their original price, meaning you walk out of the store with a net $28. You just put $5 in your wallet, and you have a fine pair of jelly shoes to show for it.

Question: Where is the electoral college? How much is tuition? Are there lots of hot girls there?

Answer: It’s a 4-year institution located in Springfield, the tuition is paid for by the U.S. government, and yes, there are a few hot girls there.

Question: Where does the phrase “happy as a clam” come from? I’ve seen many, many clams in my time but I could never tell that any of them were especially happy. They’re really just boogers in a shell. What’s there to be so happy about? I’d be super pissed off if I had to spend my whole life stuck in the mud at the bottom of a dirty river only to have some jerk catch me, tear me open, and eat my booger-like body.

Answer: Clams are perceived as happy because they don’t have to pay taxes.

Question: I’ve never understood the phrase “head over heels in love.” Why not just say, “I’m standing up, and I’m in love?”

Answer: The original phrase came from ancient Hindi and can be found in the Kama Sutra. Originally, the saying was “heels over head in love,” referring to a very uncomfortable sexual position.

Question: Why is it called a “rest room?” I have never walked in there and said, “Hey! It smells very bad in here and someone peed on the floor. I think I’ll take a nap.”

Answer: (Too long to post here—it’s an extensive answer that involves an explanation about “wresting one’s bowels free.”)

Question: If a human is can survive without one of his/her kidneys, why do humans have two kidneys?

Answer: God gave us two kidneys so that we could sell one on the black market.

Tomorrow:

Cookies and TiVo