1) Where is the outrage?
a) it’s sleeping in the garage until it learns to behave itself
b) we sold it on eBay to an anonymous donor – we suspect it will be used to build condos, but that’s now the city planning agency’s problem
c) “The outrage isn’t in right now. At the sound of the tone, please scream into the receiver, and the outrage will get back to you as soon as it gives a damn.”
2) How are you planning to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the birth of the American Department of Homeland Security?
a) bake it a cake
b) take it bowling
c) I’m planning on making a joke about bombing an important government building so they can come and arrest me – I hope they appreciate that somebody wants to make them feel useful
3) How did the traditional of pinching somebody if they weren’t wearing green on Saint Patrick’s Day get started?
a) pinching people’s potatoes as a prank became much less tolerable during the great famine
b) pinching people for not wearing green at any time resulted in a lot of people too bruised to work, so Ireland decided to limit the activity to one day a year
c) it was originally supposed to be purple, but the person who started the holiday was colour blind
4) Which of the following offenses does NOT appear on a list compiled by British police chiefs of crimes warranting that the DNA of the suspect be retained for life in a national database?
a) throwing offensive weapon or matter at sovereign with intent to alarm
b) placing nonhuman embryo in a woman
c) disturbing a badger when it is occupying a badger lair
d) none of the above (which suggests either that British police chiefs have a heretofore unexhibited comic sophistication, or that the British Empire couldn’t end soon enough)
5) Match the quote to the speaker and the consequences.
a) “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
b) “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
c) “Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.”
d) “It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day… Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come…. it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people.”
i) Barack Obama
ii) John Hagee
iii) Jesus Christ
iv) Reverend Jeremiah Wright
I) he became John McCain’s good, good friend
II) he was rebuked by Barack Obama
III) he was crucified by the Romans
IV) he was crucified by the television pundits
6) According to the theory of “peak oil,” we have already used up a majority of the world’s oil, and it will become increasingly scarce in the future. According to the theory of “peak everything,” we have already used up a majority of the world’s resources, etc. etc. When you think about it, though, what resource are we unlikely to run out of in the near future?
a) greed
b) stupidity
c) plaid eyeliner
7) If you could ask President George W. Bush just one question, but he had to answer it truthfully, what would it be?
a) “So…the whole ‘weapons of mass destruction’ thing – were you surprised that your nose didn’t grow when you were selling that one?”
b) “I’m not saying the job has aged you or anything, but, are you going to become a Grecian Formula spokesman when your term ends?”
c) “You’re just going through the motions, now, just hoping no more disasters happen before your term ends, aren’t you?”
8) Allies of President Pervez Musharraf said they would withdraw their candidate for Pakistan’s Prime Minister as a “goodwill gesture” to followers of slain leader Benazir Bhutto. Yeah, right. What was the real reason they withdrew the candidate’s name?
a) he was dead, and that would really put a crimp in his ability to negotiate with Iraqi insurgents (to be fair, the negotiating crimp largely rests with the Iraqi insurgents themselves, but being dead really doesn’t help)
b) they realized that forcing somebody to become Prime Minister at gunpoint wouldn’t work: if, at any point in his four year term, they lost their focus for even a second, he could escape, and how would the country be able to function without a powerless figurehead under their command?
c) he was getting uncomfortably comfortable with the company of goats
9) What does Jim Morrison want to do to his mother in the song “The End?”
a) take her bowling
b) bake her a cake
c) something awfully disgusting, no doubt – he wasn’t arrested for indecency for nothing, you know (and, even if he was, he still deserved it – the bastard)
10) What is the “presbyphonic falsetto?”
a) how records used to sound before the invention of the iPod
b) what happens to your voice when your local Priest gets a little too friendly
c) I don’t know the answer, but you’re sure going to hell for asking the question
11) Why was a woman boarding a plane from Lubbock to Dallas asked to remove her nipple rings (which she eventually had to do with pliers)?
a) people working in the airport thought they were auditioning for a Security Guards Gone Wild video
b) people working in the airport were not Iron Maiden fans
c) people working in the airport had a pool to see who could come up with the freakiest use for a pair of pliers (and, believe it or not, this was just the runner-up)
12) How are you planning to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the birth of the Strategic Defense Initiative (that’s the Star Wars defense shield to you)?
a) sorry – my doctor said the drugs have taken such a toll in my immune system that catching an SDI would kill me! (I…I’m sorry, but I don’t expect to be able to tell that joke much longer, so I’ve got to repeat every time the subject comes up in polite conversation!)
b) I’m going to send a nuclear ICBM to Baltimore to prove that Ronald Reagan was right…just as soon as I get some plutonium…and a nuclear trigger…and an ICBM…and somebody tells me where Baltimore is…
c) are you kidding me? After 25 years, it only cost $100 billion – only $100 billion! That’s chump change to the Pentagon! I don’t get a cake and streamers for anything under a trillion!
13) What are the advantages of putting your children into for-profit daycare?
a) it will make them independent – individual attention just makes children grasping and needy
b) it will teach them a lot about corporate globalization (and may even teach them how to speak with an Australian accent)
c) knowing that you’re paying a lot of money for them to be there will help ease your conscience about not being there for them yourself
14) When the worst that can happen happens, what’s the worst that can happen?
a) oh, my god, doing so many What the Heck Do You Know?s has finally turned you into a babbling idiot
b) that’s classified – ask me again in 35 years
c) aww, you’ll lose a few teeth, and maybe the use of your lower intestine for a few hours, but you’ll gain immeasurably in character, so it will have been well worth it
d) you’ll find yourself in a George A. Romero picture
15) What is the difference between a “spread loss trigger” and a “spread loss matrix?”
a) Keanu Reeves didn’t star in the spread loss trigger
b) President George W. Bush doesn’t have his finger on the nuclear spread loss matrix
c) if you have to ask, you should probably be strangling your broker now
16) What is a “Gaussian copula?”
a) you have a dirty mind…and I like the way you think
b) a formula developed by mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss that is used to predict everything from the possibility that a worthy film will actually win Oscars this year to the likelihood that your wife is cheating on you
c) ooh, yes, I really like the way you think!
d) the director of the Godfather movies when he has ingested a little too much electricity
17) Who is John Hagee?
a) John McCain’s Louis Farrakhan
b) a Dan Brown wannabe, only his conspiracies involve international bankers, the Bavarian Illuminati, the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations and, inevitably, Jews
c) somebody who has bought extra-thick trunks for swimming in the sea of blood that is coming to the Middle East
18) Which of the following statements is not one of the suggestions the American Conscious Aging Movement suggests be contained in an “ethical will?”
a) “Look for the good in people. You have enough love in your heart for everybody. Do a good deed and don’t expect anything back.”
b) “Be kind… Ask questions… Make your bed before you leave the house in the morning… Express your gratitude…”
c) “Life is short and full of pain and misery. Grab as much ass you can before you go.”
19) What do we know?
a) the cube root of the angles of a Hollywood square is Paul Lynde
b) the universe if infinite, but bounded, so, somewhere out there, there must be a woman who would be willing to go out with you on Saturday night
c) things were better in the Victorian age
20) How do we know it?
a) our grandparents, who used to be fans of the show, won’t stop telling us
b) we watched too much Star Trek when we were kids, and we’re not sure what universe we live in
c) we have the corset catalogues to prove it