Quora is a goldmine of questions begging to be answered. Here I respond to some of the more pressing ones.
Every few days I get an email from Quora with a tantalising subject line such as “Are British people actually polite?” or “If aliens landed on earth, how likely would it be that they take over the planet afte…?”
Darn limits on subject length!
I have 150 such unread emails sitting in my “Quora” folder in Gmail. It seems the world has a lot of important unanswered questions, so today I’m going to answer some of them.
Yes, these questions are taken off Quora, bad grammar and all. I couldn’t make these things up.
Quora: What should you say to a colleague if you see her wear the same shirt two work days in a row (Friday and Monday)?
Panics. Counts the different tops she wore all last week. Two.
But they were clean, I promise.
Okay, here’s my answer.
“Morning! How was your weekend?”
Quora: Who speaks better English, the Americans or the English?
You’d think it would be the English, the clue being their name.
But you’re failing to realise that Kiwis speak better English than either.
We brought English to New Zealand on ships in the nineteenth century, and it has been trapped in our isolated corner of the globe, uncontaminated by outside influences, for over 150 years.
Kiwi English is the purest and the best. It’s a pity the rest of the world struggles to understand it.
Quora: The Oxford English Dictionary has 171,476 words in it. Seeing as normal people won’t use 95% of these words, why don’t we just get rid of them?
Although 95% of the words in the English dictionary are not used often, they serve a vital purpose: they allow us to identify and avoid pretentious prats. Anyone heard using these words is trying way too hard, thinks a great deal of himself and very little of everyone else, and should be avoided at all costs.
A secondary purpose of these words is to support the dictionary-publishing industry. If you removed 95% of words the dictionary would become a slender and cheap book, and millions of people in the dictionary industry would lose their jobs and become destitute. We couldn’t do that to them.
Finally, occasionally we need these words to convey meaning.
Quora: I want to start a blog. What topics are people most interested in?
The easiest way to get ridiculously rich.
The easiest way to get ridiculously famous.
How to lose weight while eating junk and without exercising.
How to live forever.
How to convince pretty girls to… (oops, I forgot this blog is PG rated)
How to use makeup to look ten years younger.
How to make people do what I want and be happy about it.
What [insert famous person] is doing/wearing/eating.
How to stop my cat sitting on the keyboard when I’m trying to type.
Quora: What are some unwritten social rules everyone should know?
Don’t take off all your clothes and wander around the supermarket (unless you’re in a nudist colony).
Don’t stand on the table and sing opera in a crowded restaurant (unless they’re paying you to do it).
That’s all I’ve got. Everything else is up for interpretation.
Quora: What is something that needs to be said?
Duck!
Quora: Should kids at preschool be allowed to colour an apple purple?
Interpretation 1: Should preschool children be allowed to draw a picture of an apple and colour it in purple?
Answer 1: No. I need the purple crayon to colour in my giraffes.
Interpretation 2: Should preschool children be allowed to use a purple marker to colour an actual apple?
Answer 2: Only if the marker is non-toxic.
Quora: Is it possible to kill someone with a sandwich?
Yes. A sandwich does not make the person eating it invincible. Any of the usual methods will kill him.
Quora: How can I find out who’s stealing my lunch from the office fridge?
Kidnap your coworkers at a rate of one per day until your lunch stops disappearing. The last person you kidnapped before your lunch remained untouched is the culprit. (Probably.)
Disclaimer: Kidnapping is illegal. Don’t do this.
Quora: How do I read my spouses text msg?
Seat your spouses in a quiet room where you will not be disturbed. Offer them water so they are not distracted by thirst.
Turn on your phone, open a text message, and read it aloud.
And a final question that I couldn’t possibly answer, but feel obliged to ask: If you get deported from New Zealand, what is the baggage allowance?
I hope this post has helped with some of the unanswered questions in your life.
Quora allows multiple people to answer each question. Would you like to offer alternative answers to any of these?
Get more stuff from me. Some of it might be more helpful than this post.
You make these silly questions worth reading, Alecia. Love the sense of humor. 🙂
Aw, thank you. 🙂
Kiwis speak the purest English? Might be hard-pressed to rally support to back that! 😉 The correct answer, of course, is Texans
I have four million people supporting me on that one… including Kim!
I only discovered quora last week, and it’s already asked me why I hate France (I don’t, I live here), and why everyone else hates France (they do?). I think it may have issues with France.
And *obviously* we speak the best English. It’s not our fault no one knows what gumboots are.
Poor France! Always being picked on when all it did was eat a lot of bread and cheese and build a funny-looking tower.
Exactly. It is their gumboot ignorance.
😂 people always ask me why people in Paris are so rude!!!
Maybe because they’re sick of being asked why they’re so rude. 😉
That is a beautiful sandwich. I bet it would make me invincible. Why don’t you just hand it over? The world needs super heroes.
If I do hand it over, do I then get to hit you with a salmon to check you really are invincible?
Absolutely. One of my new super powers will probably be Salmon-kinesis, and I want to test throwing salmon through nuclear missiles with my mind.
Salmon-kinesis would be one of my first picks for a super power too.
Quora is one of those things I’ve seen and never really looked at, like Reddit. I know a non-kidnappy way to find out who’s stealing the lunch. They should bring in something that doesn’t need refrigeration. Something healthy like shelf-stable ravioli – it comes in a nice can like cat food. Hide ravioli in desk. See who asks them for lunch. ^_^
I’ve found some really interesting answers (and questions) on Quora, as well as a lot of rubbish. I particularly like the questions that ask people to share their personal experiences on something – there’s a lot of good writing inspiration.
I’m sitting on a tin of ravioli right now, waiting…
Hilarious post, thanks for the laughs! 😀 I had no idea Quora could be so funny (I already knew that you’re funny!). I’ve only come across the serious answers to serious questions on Quora so far, and somehow that led me to believe that Quora itself is serious. I’ve been missing out.
Should kids at preschool be allowed to color an apple purple? I’m completely mystified by this question. I remember at preschool we were not allowed to color anything black, for whatever reason. Is purple the new black?
I’m glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
I didn’t understand that question either. Maybe they think a purple apple looks like it has been punched and are worried about encouraging violence towards apples.
I like the sound of this Quora, at first I thought it might be a cooking ingredient. But, it’s more a source of questions, (ingredients) so I was sort of right!
Haha, you’re right, it does sound like a cooking ingredient. Probably something savoury that needs to boil for hours before it’s edible. It’s a great source of both questions and answers, but I tend to find the questions more entertaining than the answers.
It might not strike you this way, but my ultimate compliment on this post is that I made my husband listen while I read it to him aloud. And he laughed. A lot.
I’m honoured! That is indeed a fine compliment. Hold on, he laughed at my post? But I was serious.