What the Heck Do You Know? The Next Generation

One of the highly touted features of the World Wide Web is interactivity. Unlike books, with a Web page you can immediately write to the author and if you are provocative, clever or prove to be reasonably attractive in the nude photo you attach to the email, you may actually get a response. (Whether or not most authors believe this to be an advantage is an unanswered question.) Once you've submitted your comments, though, can you be sure anybody actually reads them?

At Les Pages aux Folles, we make the following pledge to our readers: we will, under no circumstances, read anything you send us. So, DON'T SEND US YOUR COMPLETED SURVEYS! Our email software has amazing filters. We're glad we could settle this question for you.

1) Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?: a) the same person who put the bomp in the bomp shoo bomp shoo bomp; b) Intel; c) Mullah Omar (that cat can boogie!); d) other
2) What is high definition television?: a) the reason we'll all have to get new dictionaries; b) an attempt by Sony to make all of our current television obsolete; c) not what I want to see Halloween 13: What Mikey Did on His Summer Vacation on; d) other
3) What is the next great problem physicists are gearing up to solve?: a) whether eleven-dimensional string theory can finally unite the four universal forces; b) whether eleven-dimensional string theory can finally reunite Billie Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie; c) how to get cats to stop playing with eleven-dimensional strings; d) the continuing popularity of Survivor; e) other
4) What's EBITDA?: a) Every Boob, Including Toadies, Dolts and Asses; b) Every Boy In Texarcana Donates Apparati; c) Evictions, Burglarizations, Injury, Terror, Death Also; d) a means corporations have of showing investors their revenues and expenditures that - wonder of wonders - doesn't include most of their expenditures; e) the end of the bull market; f) other
5) Although the Canadian military informed US ground commanders in Afghanistan of their plans to hold a training exercise, neither of the American pilots who dropped a bomb on it - killing four Canadian soldiers and injuring a dozen more - nor the AWACS controller who told them that the bombing was legitimate self-defense knew about it? Why?: a) oh, like you never get behind in your paperwork?; b) the American military's rules of engagement came out of the time-honoured Joint FBI/CIA Cooperation Handbook; c) man, when you've got 20 tons of screaming metal between your legs, who has time to read freaking memos?; d) briefings...briefings...aren't they what Playboy models wear so that they are naked in a seductive, rather than sleazy way?; e) other
6) Neither the Canadian nor American investigations into the incident mentioned the transcript of the AWACS controller telling the pilot who dropped the bomb that he was in the clear, that he had acted in self-defense, even though that would strongly suggest a command problem rather than simple pilot error. Why?: a) they've been taking lessons on chain of command responsibility from senior Enron and WorldCom executives; b) the desert heat; c) geez, who put the bug up your ass about this? War is foggy - get over it!; d) other
7) Hey, speaking of the poster twins for corporate responsibility, naīve officials at both Enron and WorldCom have denied knowledge that their books (unlike their gooses) were cooked. Are they brazen liars, or just too stupid to be trusted with the keys to the men's room, let alone billions of other people's dollars?: a) brazen liars; b) too stupid to be trusted with the keys to the men's room, let alone billions of other people's dollars; c) bug? Did I say bug? Geez, you got a whole apiary up your ass! Business is foggy - get over it!; d) all of the above; e) other; f) slide Tab A into Slot A and whistle. You do know how to whistle, don't you? You just put your lips together and blow. (Sorry: this answer was left over from the last survey, and I had to use it before my option on it expired.)
8) Who do you love?: a) my Toyota Miatta, I don't care how jealous the Big Three get!; b) my new shampoo, because it left my hair smelling minty fresh; c) every little bug got somebody to hug but me, but I'm okay with that, cause I love myself and that's a start!; d) Matty Molinari; e) I love grans and gramps and Pericles and Hero and all the boys and girls at Aristophanes Junior Kindergarten...
9)What are piranha doing in a lake in Ohio?: a) hitchhiking their way across the USA; b) boy, even carnivorous aquatic creatures that travel in packs and like to munch on the bones of much larger creatures need a change of scenery once in a while, and, let me tell you, after tens of thousands of years, the Amazon Basin was getting pretty old...; c) Lake Erie was too polluted; d) looking for an unsuspecting child it could super-size; e) the Hokey Pokey; f) ...and Punky Brewster and Beatrix Potter and her son Harry, and Helmut, my imaginary serial killer friend, and Alan Greenspan, my imaginary most powerful man in America friend...
10) Are you gonna finish eating that?: a) gimme a chance, will ya?; b) you know, eating slowly is healthy for you. I practice Tantric Noshing. Take a bite. Chew 1,000 times. Swallow. Breathe deeply. Have an orgasm. Repeat until satisfied. And, you know what? I've lost 50 pounds!; c) it's the gristly bits. You want to eat the fatty, gristly bits? Gross!; d) ...and Captain Highliner, and the man who comes to fix the vacuum cleaner every week and goes into the bedroom with mommy while I have to watch Rugrats on the TV downstairs, and Andy Rooney and Philip Glass...
11) How high is up?: a) you know, when marijuana is finally decriminalized, Cheech and Chong will be permanently out of business and these kinds of references will no longer be funny (as if they ever were); b) as high as an elephant's eye (which, if you think about it, isn't that high at all); c) if space is so curved that if you travel in a straight line, you'll eventually end up back where you started from, then up is as high as down; d) a million billion billion light years, give or take; e) ...and everybody who lives in Marrakesh and David Crosby who sang about Marrakesh and Bing Crosby who sang about a White Christmas and John Crosby who gave people tainted tuna and Norm Crosby who hosted a really bad game show and Bill Cosby, who doesn't exactly fit the pattern but is always in our thoughts anyway...
12) What was your household income last year?: a) classified; b) less than I'm worth; c) more than I'm worth (but, don't tell anybody); d) oh, gee, that's a really personal question. I...I don't think I'm comfortable answering it. Couldn't you talk about something else - like, my sex life?; e) ...and Faye Wray and King Kong and Presley Beeswater and - did I already mention Presley Beeswater? Make that L'il Orphan Annie, instead - and Albert Schweitzer and Al Gore, inspirations to us all...
13) Who is your favourite censor?: a) Izzy Asper; b) the Canadian government, thanks to Bill C-36; c) Robert Mugabe; d) ...and the man who invented nitrous oxide bubble gum and Izzy Asper and the Canadian government - but not mean old Robert Mugabe, who'll do just about anything he can think of to stay in power! - and Burton Cummings when he's not trying to sound like Jim Morrison...
14) Kumquat is to garden hose as...: a) orangutan is to lily-livered; b) Range Rover is to Grape Nihi; c) Jewel is to jewel; d) George Bush Sr. is to Herbert Hoover; e) George Bush Jr. is to a dildo; f) glutton is to brick; g) all of the above; h) ...and all the Canadians who died in the War of the Roses and Uncle Teasdale, who should be made aware of the existence of breath mints, and all the Americans who died thinking Roots was just a designer fashion label and all the anorexic supermodels who diet for our sins...
15) Find the error(s) in the following sentence: "Aunt Midge; after she had returned from exile on the island of Elbow;;;'';;refused to osculate the verbatim/much/to/the consternation of old uncle PottingshededomanagerOnTheThamesLovecraftmango III.": a) the colophon appears after the interobang, whereas, in common usage, it is recommended to appear before the satrap; b) the two apostrophes should appear either before or after the five semi-colons, not in the middle of them; c) Aunt Midge wasn't exiled; she was on a long, long vacation; d) old uncle PottingshededomanagerOnTheThamesLovecraftmango III was orphaned before birth; e) ...and George of the Jungle, because he makes me laugh, and Jay Leno, because he tries hard, and Atom Egoyan, even though his movies are creepy, and Wonder Woman and Wonder Warthog and Emily Post...
16) Where did the "others" go?: a) over the hills and far away; b) nowhere, man - the Others always walk among us...; c) you got me - why don't you ask Alejandro Achmenabar?; d) Cleveland; e) here: other
17) What are the letters of the alphabet?: a) A; b) B; c) C; d) aren't you repeating yourself? (Oh, don't get me started...!); e) other
18) How would you best describe the dot com collapse?: a) irrational e-xuberance; b) insane, stupid, crazy, nonsensical, utterly mad e-xuberance; c) e-merge-ncy; d) a prank by a bunch of kooky kids gone horribly, horribly wrong; e) Marx' last laugh; f) other
19) Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?: a) refusing to ratify the treaty to ban the use of land mines; b) pulling out of the Kyoto Agreement to reduce greenhouse gases; c) refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court, which was set up primarily to try war crimes; d) trying to derail a 1989 United Nations treaty against torture; e) other
20) Uhh, wait. That's not right. What should question 19 really have been?: a) Why is Rosie O'Donnell suing Rosie, the magazine named after her?; b) How long does "Instant Karma" take to perk?; c) Why do people throughout the world adore and revere the United States?; d) Goopie enough for you?; e) other