Answers from the Dead

Montezuma II has been offering advice
to the needy as part of his Ask-Mont, a
prominent NGO in Montsylvania.

Dearest Montezuma,
I attended a luncheon function recently without wearing a cummerbund. This upset my dinner partners to no great end. They all had cummerbunds, but I did not. They were jealous as cummerbunds are notoriously uncomfortable to wear and, doubly, are silly looking articles of clothing. Furthermore, they felt that I breached the rules of formal etiquette with my faux pas. Why is a salad fork smaller than a dinner fork?
Yours truly,
Mike Feeman
New York, NY

Dear Mr. Feeman,
Did you know that tempered steel melts at a temperature of approximately 2000 degrees Fahrenheit? I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t either until I looked it up in my handy pocketbook of scientific tables. I suggest that you carry one of these pocketbooks in your pocket. That’s what they were designed for, after all. Incidentally, were you wearing suspenders or a belt at your meal? This may affect which soup spoon you were supposed to use.

Montezuma,
I’m greatly afeared. I just learned that the Dutch may be false, completely made up. Is this true? Could the Dutch have never existed? What about that Dutchland over in Europe?
Sincerely,
Don’t Understand These Conspiracy Hunches

My friend DUTCH,
It was the great future philosopher Karalyn Evans who once said “Filthy Dutch.” And she was right. At least if she was discussing being covered in the finest chocolates in the world. The Netherlands are home to some of the best chocolatieers who bravely set out with sword and pistol to create milk chocolate, dark chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, unsweetened baking chocolate and other forms of chocolate. From Zeeland to Holland and over to Groningen, The Netherlands make some, colloquially, damn fine chocolate. Also, never call The Netherlands “Holland.” Holland is simply a province of the country wherein its capital is seated. Don’t quit reading. Finish the column before you book your flight.

Hi Montezuma,
Where do babies come from?
Randy
Telarc, WD

Randy’s letter may just push this old imperialist firmly into the Internet Age. “Where do babies come from?” is one of those questions I receive again and again. I may soon have to institute an Often Inquired About section (you “netizens” may know it as an OIA) where I can deposit such queries. Suffice it to say, I suggest you order one of my books or consult a back-issue of Axes & Alleys.

Dear Montezuma,
In the current issue of Axes & Alleys in the seventh and apparently last installment of “Scooter Memories,” Scooter uses a dictaphone while he’s in a room trying to discover how to solve Javier’s puzzle. I’m curious. What’s a dictaphone?
Yours,
By Jove! Old Romans Killed!

Dear BJORK,
It took some heavy research to suss out the meaning of Dictaphone, but I think I’ve deduced its meaning quite well. Dicta is the plural of dictum. A dictum is a pronouncement of a formal nature coming from the Latin dicere. Such dicta are commonly found in judicial precedents and codes of laws. Phone comes from the Greek phone which means to say and is commonly used in relation to sound. I have determined that a Dictaphone is the sound that laws make.

Answers from the Dead

Montezuma is a haunted puppet. His answers are always correct.

Dearest Montezuma,
I have a problem with rope. My friend’s [sic] tell me it doesn’t have eyes, but I can’t escape the feeling that rope is always looking at me and plotting. Rope, I’ve heard, is quite handy and if it is plotting against me I feel I could possibly be in danger. People don’t usually suspect rope at, what I believe to be, their own peril. I read in a recent biography of Samuel J. Jay (the shuffle board champion, not the soldering magnate) that he was once tied with rope. This made me more agitated and nervous. What is the best way to protect against ropes [sic] insidiousness?
Senator Dr. William Harrison Frist, M.D. (R-TN)
Senate Majority Leader Nashville, TN

Senator Doctor,
Rope has likely been around since before history was recorded (it perhaps existed even before memory). One of its first (ever notice how close that word is to your own last name?) uses was apparently ceremonial. Anthropologists believe, from recent excavations in Norway, that rope was laid down as straight as possible and then participants jumped from one side to the other in nighttime ceremonies. Vegetables may have been used. Nearby one of the latter-period excavations was found an inscription on a petrified tree indicating that by this point (8500 B.C.) the ropes were held at each end and swung around for participants to jump over. This may have been accompanied by song, but as the gramophone technology of the time was quite primitive, scientists have as yet been unable to resuscitate sound from any of the recording media so far found. It appears that eventually some bright little monster happened upon the idea of securing things with rope, though this never became a popular use of the material. Today, rope is used in telephony, mass transportation and bioëngineering.

Dear Montezuma,
I believe that olfaction is based on vibration, not shape. “Scientists” keep telling me otherwise. Frankly, I’m a bit tired of “scientists.” They always go on and on about publishing papers, falsifying this, proving that, providing evidence. What’s the best way to get a “scientist” to go up to a smell molecule and hit it with a tuning fork?
Luca Turin
London, UK

Mr. Turin,
The tuning fork is such a crude instrument. Unlike trombones, saxophones, cellos, bansaphones, theremins, pianos and other such instruments, the tuning fork will only play one note. One might as well perform scientific experiments with a triangle or a tambourine. I might even offer the idea that one should perhaps use a scientific instrument, not a musical one, to explore the wonders of science.

Dear Montezuma,
I want to prove that lions like sandwiches. How can I go about this?
Elmer Holmes Bobst
Train Station, IA

My dear Elmer,
You will likely need a special harness for this job of yours. The appropriate kind is made of a fine, cured leather from any of the fine, cured leather-producing regions of the world. A wide strap with buckle goes around the subject’s undercarriage and is firmly secured. Place a slice of bread above and another below your test prey animal. Before you do so, add any appropriate condiments, lettuce, tomato and cheeses. Once the harness has been attached and the rest of the ingredients secured, release the test subject back into the wild. Then you may relax and observe the test subject amongst the control subject, non-sandwich gazelles. See which ones the lions go for.

Montezuma,
My family is relatively poor and our choice of food is getting pretty boring. We used to make a lot of chicken and stuff because it’s cheap. The store recently had a sale on pasta, 5 packages for a dollar. I bought it and now my family is sick of it (I’m still kind of neutral on it). Can you suggest something inexpensive besides pasta for us to eat?
Lucy Craft Laney
Thompson, GA

Dear LCL,
I suggest the proper length of time to cook some types of pasta as follows:spaghetti or Linguine: 11 minutestagliatelle: 6 minutesfarfalle: 7 minutespenne: 6 minutes. Other types of cooking may involve more or less time.

Yo Monty,
I really like gambling. A lot! I’ve been a poker player, a roulette bettor, I even used to take bets on professional sports games. But now I find myself at 14 needing just a little bit more. I wanna run one of these joints. I’d like to open up a casino and I was thinking maybe a good place to put it would be around New Orleans until that thing happened. Anyway, I wanted to run it by you first. Would it be a good idea to start a casino marketed toward Native Americans?
Pavel Vinogradov
International Space Station (Expedition 13)

Dear Pavel,
You’re likely thinking that the government, in its effort to do something about what happened, will be throwing subsidies left and right at anything to reinvigorate the region. I would like to point you to Title 26 of the Internal Revenue Code:“(b) no portion of the proceeds of such issue is to be used to provide (including the provision of land for) any private or commercial golf course, country club, massage parlor, hot tub facility, sun-tan facility, racetrack or other facility used for gambling, or any store the principal business of which is the sale of alcoholic beverages for consumption off premises.”I do not believe the Internal Revenue Code addresses bans the use of tax funds to support prostitution. Broccoli farming is also profitable.

Answers from the Dead

Montezuma is currently serving twenty to life in Shawshank Prison for his involvement in thousands of premeditated human sacrfices.

Dear Montezuma,Does the 707 eat its young?
Ernestine Kovax
Tempe, Arizona

Ms. Kovax,
The Boeing 707, 707-120, 707-220, 707-320, 707-420 and 707-020 (known respectively as the 707, Dash 120, Dash 220, Dash 320, Dash 420 and Gwendolyn internally in Boeing) all reproduce through a budding process similar to that of the cnidarian Hydra. A rough patch forms on the undercarriage of these 707 variants, eventually growing into a hardened cyst. Once this cyst is weighty enough, the bud separates from the parent 707. The 707-700 reproduces through a hazardous sexual process nearly identical to that of various species of mantid, whereby the female 707-700 detaches and digests the engine nacelles of the male 707-700.

Dear Montezuma,
Recently I watched a TV documentary which stated that rocker Liz Phair had been replaced by a robot. Can this be true? Surely a performer of her renown and stature could not be taken away and replaced by machinery without raising the collective eyebrows of the citizenry.
Yours Truly,
Isaac Amizov
Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Dear Mrs. Amizov,
Robots are dear, close friends of mine and I do not appreciate your levying of such accusations upon them. You create a vast onus of guilt and conspiracy about your person for even spreading such a rumour. I sent a request for comment from Ms. Phair’s manager, Scott McGee. Mr. McGee, a fine M-GR387 robot of long good-standing was incensed by such comparison. “Robots,” he said, “are a vital part of any society and as, in part, progenitors of the Shintoist philosophy, deserve better treatment.” While Ms. Phair is a fine musician, impugning the reputations of countless automata through comparison with this organic vixen of the stage is wholly inappropriate and at most close to genocide of reputation. You, madam, are never to appear in this column again. As you may already know, I have had you let go from your employer and have had you blacklisted in your community. Good day!

Dear Montezuma,
Why is it that my door hinges always taste like limes?
Avian Radger
East Katharinetowne, West Dakota

M. Radger,
Have you been playing the ivory and ebony, the great dark mistress of the phonorecord, the piano? It was discovered by Dr. Thurston Pore of Oxford in 1957 that piano performance often led to the taste of limes being conferred upon various objects which were tasted by the test subjects. While his research was good, Dr. Pore came to some rather…unorthodox conclusions including: magic, space men, psychic porpoise communication and piano/lime evolution from a common ancestor.

Dear Montezuma,
When I vacuum the carpets it always seems to scare my cats; Tabbins and Luke, who hear the vacuum and immediately scurry for cover under the nearest bed. My cats; Tabbins and Luke, also seem to be afraid of small children. The arrival of our two nephews, Gregory and Simon, always seems to evoke the same reaction. How can I get these cats to calm the heck down?
Mark Morone
The Bronx, New York

Mr. Mark Morone,
Gregory and Simon must, at all costs, study anthropology when they attend university. They must also be trained in DOS programming of computers. Finally, they should know how to properly dice an onion. Onions give a greater understanding of DOS programming because DOS is a system of many layers, much like an onion. DOS is related to anthropology because man invented DOS and anthropology is the study of men. Furthermore, Gregory and Simon are fine Biblical names.

Dear Montezuma,
What is the deal with the Globosphere? Is there any truth to the rumors? Just curious.
Mike Harrington
Ballroom Station, Florida.

Mike Harrington,
Are you THE Mike Harrington? I cannot believe you have written me! The only man to receive 17 medals of valour from over 12 countries is writing to me for advice. I’m flabbergasted, without words, cat’s got my tongue, &c. Your actions in Equatorial Guiana alone are worthy of mention. Accolades should be heaped upon you for the steely demeanour you showed in Laos. And thatescapade in the kitchen of a New York City seafood restaurant is without compare. You, of all people, write to me for advice? I have neverbeen so honoured. Truly you are a man without compare. As the Germanic peoples would say, mein Gott! The William Howard Taft of Haiti deigns to put pen to paper and contact this humble slave of advice. Hope that helps. – M.

Dear Montezuma,
There is a patient in my hospital who has a fever of 99 degrees, and also a rash on his left elbow. He seems otherwise healthy, but does feel some numbness in his fingers after we administer 20ccs of NSAIDs. His home is near a railroad and his mother collects exotic plants. Do you think he has flu? Prader Willi Syndrome? Hemophagocytic virus? Or is it just a sprained ankle. Please help soon, he has only twenty hours before the seizures and internal bleeding kill him.
Dr. Gregory Domicile.
Monmouth, New Jersey

Dr. Domicile,
What you will need are 30cc of blood from former dictator Idi Amin, 40 barrels of okra, one chicken wing, 40 pence and one cat in heat. Mix ingredients in an ice cube tray and heat to 130 degrees Kelvin. Take to Flanders. Entomb mixture in peat moss for 26 days. Use a calendar to keep track of the days involved in this test. Apply one marine and two meerkats. Stir, then shake. Go back to patient to see if he still lives. If so, he is not dead.

Advice for Someone

Montezuma is former Emperor of the Aztecs. He holds the World’s Record in AutoCAD Design.

Dear Montezuma,
My whole family is giving me hell because I don’t want to go to my sister’s wedding. They continually accuse me of being selfish. They don’t realize that I think weddings, marriage, and the very ideas thereof are stupid. They don’t realize that to me weddings are actually something I find disgraceful and defeatist. How can I make them understand that I think weddings are horrid without alienating them?
Scott
Queens, NY

Dear Scott,
You must, at once, realize that a marriage is not about you. Specifically, you are not what the marriage is about. Furthermore, your being is irrelevant to the connubial joining of a related person and an unrelated person. Additionally, the center of this public ceremony does not reside within coördinates approximating your location in spacetime. (Montezuma’s note: remind word processing manufacturers to include spacetime in their spellcheck tools. They are geeks, after all. (Montezuma’s further note: spellcheck is a common neologistic endocentric compound noun which should also be included in such word processing dictionaries automatically.)) Marriages are entirely about caloric intake at the afterfollowing secular receptionary service. As an evolutionary adaptation, the lifetime bonding of male and female organisms created an opportunity for the community of individuals to come together and share nutritional intake in an effort to increase the wellbeing of the whole. More food meant stronger individuals better able to protect progeny and possessions which in turn lead to greater gain for everyone. With the recent demise of evolution, such pressures are irrelevant. The aftereffects of such conditioning still exist and can be taken advantage of easily. This is the literal free lunch. Also, it is likely that your personal procreative pressures are still present. The same pressures exist in the other males and females present at the receptional activities. One may increase one’s happiness through conjugal variation following the consumption of calories and alcohol-based beverages. Being in situ during such activities gives one the standing to later speak out authoritatively and reasonably on the results of such bonding. As, traditionally, such bonding takes place not only between the individuals being joined, but the community, you will have entered into the contract fully yourself and will have lost no standing in the eyes of the community to speak on any developments which may arise. While one may certainly not care about the opinion of others, leaving them no room to complain makes it selfishly easier to complain one’s self in the long run.

Montezuma,
You Must Help Me! Recently, I put a pitcher of tea in the fridge for a few hours. When I tasted it again, I swear it tasted of apricots. Literally, it tasted of apricots. That makes no sense. Why would old tea taste like dried apricots? Please help me.
Lucy Sawyer
Utica Flats, Ponderada

Finally, a correspondent in Ponderada again! Lucy, you are the fifteenth person to communicate such an occurrence to me in as many months. It took quite a lot of fact checking and the staff here (recently lowered in number by the current outbreak of vegetarian flu) have worked very hard collating all the relevant materials. We took a scientific approach and so went out immediately to destroy a common freezing unit. No one smelled any apricots and so we decided to try another common freezing unit. After over a dozen tries, the local authorities became concerned and we were forced to leave the SvenCo home appliance department. Alfredo Ramon, head researcher, stumbled over the brilliant idea of a side-by-side comparison blindfold test. We set up the test in a nearby strip mall. 45 pitchers made from various materials were paired with 45 dried apricots. A canopy was placed over the whole assemblage to disguise the constituent parts of the test. Each pitcher and each apricot were provided with a tube connected to a funnel with a strap to be attached to the test subjects’ faces. A second table/canopy combination was set up nearby with nothing on the table as a control group. Subjects were then tested. 98% of the subjects detected a difference between the smell of empty pitchers and the smell of dried apricots. Only 75% of respondents at the empty table detected a difference between nothing and nothing. The test was repeated with full pitchers of tea. 99% of the subjects detected a difference in smell, while 75% of the control group detected such differences. Finally we requested purchase receipts for the last year from each letter writer claiming this dried apricot smell. It was discovered that you, along with everyone else who detected this smell had purchased a Celestial Seasonings’ brand of apricot flavoured tea. We have, however, discovered something of the smell of empty space.