For many years the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and its various military forces, have utilized a system whereby they substitute a common word for a letter of the alphabet in radio-graphic communication. This is meant to ease communication. But, I find that their word choices are a bit random and I don’t at all approve. Therefore, I would like NATO to adopt a new NATO, or phonetic alphabet. After all, we can’t have NATO forces supporting the drinking of whiskey, a known intoxicant.
Dearest Montezuma,
I have too much change in my pockets a lot of the time. It falls out whenever I sit down and makes a big clanking sound when I walk down the street. All the bums know when I’m coming and run down the street after me calling me a liar when I tell them I don’t have any change. I really hate running. Is there some change storage solution for someone like me: a five foot tall Mbuti pygmy living a modern industrial lifestyle in the West?
Cephu
Boston, MA
Ruminating on your question took place over the course of an extremely busy and tiring week. A cup of tea was in order and my new assistant, Mary Margaret Nelson, quickly procured one for me. The tea gave me a wonderful idea. I have mailed you complete instructions for building a pneumatic coin storage harness made of polyvinylchloride piping, a vacuum pump, a mesh screen and black lacquered syringe box modified to store the coins. I have also included some decorative suggestions for the harness to deter the homeless including: lion, winter and a little monster I like to call the Scarebum. Clever name, isn’t it?
Dear Montezuma,
I am male, but my mother contributed fifty percent of my genetic material. However, I don’t look like her and don’t exhibit quite the same internal physiological characteristics. So I find it a bit unfair that she gets such a large share of my genetic makeup. People get mad at me when I ask what exactly it was she did that was so great. What is a moon roof?
Highly Expectant Radio Man
Edgewise, PD
You will have to challenge a clever fellow like myself quite a bit more, HERM, else you risk no answer at all. The credit for this answer must, I fear, also go to my new assistant Mary Margaret Nelson, who has again proven her worth. It seems the moon roof was a device Galileo Galilei erected in Pisa to block out the light of the city while he observed the skies, most especially the moons of Jupiter. An interesting bit of trivia: a small, whimsical painting of buttocks was created on the forward left corner underneath the roof. The great scientist would occasionally point this out to bored visitors.
Hey Montezuma,
So walking down the street the other day, I thought it would be really cool if golfers wore samurai armor. The armor would protect them from the Sun, they could keep their favorite golf club in a belt loop and they could identify themselves to spectators with a handy flag like the samurai wore. What do you think of my idea?
Bob Kerrey
President The New School University
New York, NY
P.S. Please don’t steal my idea.
I am amazed at how positively useless this idea is. It would take more energy to steal this idea than it is worth. My suggestion is not to send an application to the Patent Office, burn any record of it and continue on with your life, never mentioning it again to friends, family or strangers.
Dear Montezuma,
There’s this nice girl I met and while she’s totally the bee’s knees, she keeps insisting that various things have killed her father. First it was pigeons, then bricks, a cheese grater, eggs, the mafia, Vorlons, a spigot, seven ninjas, a donkey, a Charles Darwin impersonator named Kevin…oh lord, the list goes on and on. She’s claimed that up to 700 different things have killed her father at various times. How could her father die 700 times, I don’t get it. Is she lying to me? What’s up with her?
Hando Peppermill
Yasper Falls, ME
Hando, the spigot is probably the clue you should investigate further. Was he killed by the spigot first? You see, spigots have a medicinal property whereby someone whose life was ended by one can come back to life almost immediately. Should her father have made it through two deaths before, for instance, being mauled by a spigot, he would also revive, though memories from puberty will disappear due to some as yet undefined interaction between the spigot’s voracious DNA and the memory centers of the brain. You might ask her if her father can remember exactly when hair began growing around his pubic and underarm areas.
Dear Montezuma,
Why are there both flashlights and candles? If flashlights are so useful, why are there still candles? Shouldn’t candles have died out long ago along with butter churns, mule carts and the dumb waiter?
Lucy Tarquin
East Bestoria, MV
One might as well ask why there are both wishing wells and oil wells, Lucy. Yet, annoyingly, upon my exclamation of this fact, my new assistant Mary Margaret Nelson went out and found the reason for the existence of both wishing wells and oil wells. I am starting to find her constant presence and overeagerness to please grating and, might I say, cloying.
Dear Montezuma,
Recently a strange thing started to happened to me. Once a month or so, I get these terrible cramps, then I feel irritated and bloated. At the same time, blood flows from a bodily area I’d rather not mention. Plus, I’ve started growing hair in strange places and my nipples are tender. What’s going on? Is it cancer? Or possibly FOP? I need to know before school starts in the Fall. Everyone in 8th grade will think I’m a freak.
Sarah Bonnet
Woodside, NY
Dearest Sarah. There is nothing to worry about whatsoever. The changes you are experiencing are all completely natural. As the hive intelligence replicates itself in your body, the tiny individual cells which make up the whole spread throughout the body. They communicate through an intense release of protein polymer change in the bloodstream while they settle into strategic locations throughout your innards. During the hive’s takeover, it is routine to experience such physiological manifestations, but there is simply not a thing to worry about. Except the irritation you are experiencing. According to my diagnostic reference manuals, irritation is not a symptom of the hive. I would suggest asking the hive what’s going on in there, then maybe seek the advice of your guidance counselor.
Dear Montezuma,
Why is it that English is the only language that makes any sense? Every time I hear a language other than English all I hear is jabbering and nonsensical funny talk. How come of all the languages in the world, only English is useful for communication?
Charles Schumer
Albany, NY
Charlie, did you know that the word jabber comes from the Middle English javeren? I did not know this either. My new assistant Mary Margaret Nelson just brought it up whilst poring over your letter with me. That was the final straw I had to let her go.
Dear Montezuma,
Why aren’t limericks ever funny? What is up with them?
Pugsley Islington
New Kennewhack, EL
Unfortunately I was unable to find any information on what a Limerick is as I no longer have an assistant. Should I find a new assistant, I may be able to answer this next month. Please check back then.
The home is obviously a dangerous place. So, as part of our court-ordered public awareness series, we will now explore way that you can protect your family from fire. Be wise lest you burn yourself alive, die in agony and leave this world with the stench of your own burning flesh fresh on the ol’ nostrils.
Fire loves oxygen, so it’s best not to pump your home full of a 100% oxygen mixture. Try as hard as you can to set the atmosphere in your home to 74% nitrogen, 32% oxygen and 2% argon and other trace gasses. Some methane or sulfur may be included from time to time.
You may wish to impress friends with your ability to drink a flaming shot of liquor. After several of these, you may think it a good idea to pour liquor on the table and set it on fire because it looks neat. This is not wise.
Although fire can harm vampires, it’s best to use holy water and stakes when in the home. If you absolutely must burn the undead, make sure to keep a fire-retardant blanket handy.
While your late aunt’s box of collected magnifying glasses sure is neat, installing them as a picture window and burning alive from the concentrated power of the Sun is not.
Smoking in bed is one of the leading causes of death in people who die in bed while smoking. If you absolutely must smoke in bed, try using a water-filtered hookah with an enclosed brazier. Make sure your sheets aren’t too frilly.
Convert your home to electric lighting. It is expensive, but safer than lining your walls with lit torches.
Should you happen to catch on fire, via spontaneous human combustion, that’d be weird, wouldn’t it?
Continue reading
Featuring Permanent Guest Host Marcia Spatzelberg
by Special Guest Columnist Dave Titlebaum
In this month’s How to Do It, we’ll tell you an easy and simple way to steal the Kabbah Stone, the black meteorite in Mecca which is considered seriously holy to many Muslims. Now, how they consider a rock holy when they have tons of rules in Sharia against idolatry is beyond me, but it should be a fun thing to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
Dear Montezuma,
Don’t ask me how this came up, please. Which weighs more: a cubic foot of unsalted butter or a cubic foot of an adult blue whale?
Stefan Hawkwing
10th School District
Greater Derby, Derbytown
County Chippewa
U.S. Autonomous Mining Zone
Such questions, Mr. Hawkwing, which show exceeding perspicacity as relates to the Issues of the Age endow my blood with a tinge of Olympian ichor. Drinking the ambrosia of your thought has brought rarefied understanding of the times to my often ontologically challenged psyche. To offer the least-stultified view of a possible answer to your query: The pre-cooked weight of unsalted butter contains a large percentage of Impressionism, whereas adult blue whale has been found to contain, in part, large quantities of the Categorical Imperative. If you will refer to your copy of Brinson’s Scientific Measurement Tables of the Products of Movements in Thought and Art, you will find that a standard copy of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is almost equal in weight to Vasili Vasilyevich Vereshchagin’s “Pause in the War.” Thusly we can observe that slow evaporation would yield equal parts Impressionism and Categorical Imperative.
Dearest Montezuma Mine,
Did atheists first come from Athens?
Thomas Falconer
Bath, United Kingdom
While questions on the Creation of atheists have long been settled, their dissemination to the public at large has been, at best, desultory. The last person known to have asked this question was one Ramona A. Stone, part-time apiculturist and bar maid. The first person known to have asked this question after an answer was found (by the Honourable Sir William Kingston Kingsley Thornton), was poorly-read academic Nathan Adler. In short, the Honourable Sir William Kngston Kingsley Thornton found that atheists originated in Wichita, Kansas.
Hey Montezuma,
Way back in the 1970s there was some guy in Italy who was going to eat a whole car piece by piece. Any idea what happened to him?
Eddie “The Eagle” Belfour
Toronto, Canada
Yes.
Dear Montezuma,
When a deaf person is schizophrenic, do they hear people talking to them or do they just imagine people signing to them?
Gil-Scott Heron
Chicago, IL
Only one deaf schizophrenic exists within the continental United States. It is apparent from multiple drawings, audio recordings, etchings, paintings, performances, books, essays, web sites, letters to the editor, teletype communications, and encoded dispatches that he sees patterns in a cavalcade of imaginary lions which pervade his imagination. Furthermore, upon the onset of his dire affliction, he was instructed only to obey every third message these patterns of lions divulged to him. This causes some confusion as he obviously lost count in 1996.
Dear Montezuma,
I just started working in the maintenance and repair crew for the local power company. Love the job, but I’m having some problems with my co-workers. Like today, we just had this hole dug in the roadway the other day. I climbed down into the hole to start work on the electrical conduit that got broken. Then Gary comes over and says “Is this your first hole?” He laughed and I was humiliated. Then the other guys on the crew came over to find out what all the laughing was about and Gary told them it was my first hole. Then a kid walking down the street wanted to know what was going on and they told him it was my first hole and he joined in. Then an old lady came out of her house near where we were working and she asked what was going on and they told her it was my first hole and she let out this cackle like you wouldn’t believe. I almost started crying. How can I make my shoes
more comfortable?
Ethan Hawke
Austin, TX
You should change your name to Ian Hawke so that your initials would become IH. I find it more aesthetically pleasing. I am not positive a position with the local electric company is the best type of work for a pregnant woman and so I’m not surprised people would laugh about your first baby. People are often cruel about children. I would overrecommend bed rest for you and perhaps a nice, cooling pitcher of gin and tonics.
Dearest Montezuma,
Have you ever noticed that most people don’t look at trees? I’ve never seen anyone really take a good hard look at a tree and I wonder why. They’re very sexy, from their barky branches to their sensuous green leaves. Why don’t more people look at trees?
Onatop Flamingo
Amazing, EL
Trees really chose their evolutionary path. They stand in the sight of humanity, but are generally unnoticed for the dire consequences they sow upon humanity. From the dreaded allergens they spread constantly in any hot weather to their ability to create intense electrical fields around automobiles, trees are a danger to humanity and must be stopped at all costs.
Dear Montezuma,
Is it Kosher to eat fish with cheese? My favorite restaurant; the Shangai Garden Kosher Taco House Buffet X-Press serves excellent perch parmesan, and I hate to miss out on it because it violates the mitzvot against meat and dairy. Surely eating fish with dairy or chicken with dairy is okay because these animals have no mammary glands and I would under no circumstance consume a chicklet in its mother’s milk.
Rabbi Armen B. Sparrow
Duluth, MN
Oh Rabbi. Shouldn’t ye know the divergent vagaries of life. While the families of fish and fowl are not at all similar to the mammalian creatures we so love to consume, they do contain the potentiality in their genes to create mammary glands and produce milk thereof. While I am not of the same religious belief as you, even I don’t eat cheeseburgers made of fish.
Dear Montezuma,
Why is it that there are two types of screwdrivers and screws? I understand that flat heads allow more instruments to be used as drivers and that Phillips heads provide easier screwing, but why are there two types? Which is best?
Alexandria Bluejay
East Katharinetowne, WD
Alex, Alex, Alex…there are four types of screwdrivers and screws. Please do some research before writing me.
Dear Montezuma,
Why do the Euopeans use such weird paper? It’s all tall and thin and useless in American fax machines, three ring binders and such. Why can’t the Europeans use regular 8.5 x 11 paper? What is wrong with that continent?
Felix Gnu
New York, NY
The Europeans are much more advanced than us. Please see their six hour work week.
Dearest Montezuma,
I hate my clothes, several boys and a ton of girls. I’d have a happy life if I did the things I like. What should I do?
Elmo Finch
Nortown, AC
Elmo, it would be best if you cleared up your acne with some sort of astringent such as witch hazel. Then you could moisturize with a combination of cocoa butter and a light margarine-vinegar mix. Should clear that problem right up.
