Welcome again, come sit with me...I have been journeying long and far, and my travels have brought
me to our meeting late...Great mysteries have I seen, knowledge hidden beyond the perceived world...
knowledge that...what?...no I told you...yes I know I was late...yes, long and far...why didn't I call?
What kind of question is that? Well, it's not like there are any phones beyond the perceived world...
Oh for crying out loud, there's barely any reality out there and you're telling me to look for a phone...
Well, once again we come together seeking illumination, I have tarried long searching for knowledge
but I have indeed found answers...what is it? No. We can talk about it later... Sorry about that.
Well, I have received a number of very good questions, most of which I already know the answers to.
That's all fine and good, but I'm in a bit of a pinch trying to do a research question each week. So
why don't all of you get off your butts and think of some hard questions and send them in.
I'm not even working up a sweat with the ones I'm getting!...oh, um...sorry, I've been sleeping poorly lately...maybe
I should take some St. John's Wort...
Anyhoo, we do have questions to get to, so here's the first :
Dr. Death (that's a might cheerful name, isn't it?) asks,
Who was the 2nd in command in the German army during WWII?
Well, that one's a bit elusive, but I know the answer. It can be hard to pin anything down when it
comes to the Nazis. In all realms (military and governmental) the Nazi command structure changed
quite frequently during WWII, and several different people held any given position at different times,
so my statements are going to be qualified.
I'm going to consider Adolf Hitler to have
been supreme commander during the war. He did not assume strategic command until after the war had
started, but he called the shots for most of the war, so I'm going to treat it that way (it's a good thing
he called the shots, he was terribly inept and was personally responsible for several major blunders). So,
if Hitler was first in command, the second in command would be Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff
of the OKW (German High Command) from 1938 until the end of the war. Keitel was a despicable creature,
disliked by most of the officer's corps who called him "Lakeitel" (lackey-keitel) for his toadying to Hitler.
Keitel sat on the "court of honour" (that's a misnomer if I've ever seen one) that judged the participants in the "July Bomb Plot" and he was himself
judged at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. At Nuremberg in 1946 he was found guilty and sentenced to
death by hanging.
As I said above, I've haven't gotten very many "research questions" so far, so I'm going to change
things up a bit this week. Well, to be honest, I did receive one about how much water is in the reservoir at West Point,
and I was going to do that until I thought about the current anxiety in the country and how calling up
West Point and asking how many gallons of water were in their reservoir might be misinterpreted...not
wanting FBI agents busting down my front door, I decided against it...
So, in lieu of the "research question" (speaking of, I need to use the lieu...I'll be right back... ... ...*flush*)
where was I? Oh yes, in lieu of the "research question" I'm going to answer a couple of, what I'm going
to call, "smart ass questions". These are some of the questions that have been sent in that are either
subjective, ridiculous, or just plain weird.
Okay, the first one comes from Phasmatis! (who, by the way, is sporting a spiffy new avatar over in the
forums, you should check them out). He asked:
Out of all the pigs in the world how many have flown? Oh and I would like the answer in a
percentage please.
Oh, you're a clever one, but you underestimated my capacity for outright lying...rather, my capacity for
diligent research (yeah that's the ticket)...the answer is...uh...um...2.4601%...tremble
at my BS...*mysterious eyebrow raise*
The next one of these gems comes from Chris Black (man the wacky aliases some people come up with!
whew!). He asked:
hmmmmmmmmmm here's a question for you. What happened to Atlantis???
Hmmmmmmmmmm...that's a toughy...hmmmmmmmmm...let me think about that...hmmmmmmmmmm...I
think I might know the answer...hmmmmmmmmmm...yes I think I do...hmmmmmmmmmm...yes, that's it...
hmmmmmmmmmm...You see, Atlantis disappeared when it was discovered that IT NEVER EXISTED...
it was one of those time-travel paradoxa that you always see in Star Trek episodes...not that I watch Star Trek...
The last of one these special questions, asked by special people, comes from PDXs very own
NathanKeogh (at least I assume he's still ours...he went for milk a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't seen
him since...I should probably talk to Despot about that...). He asked me:
Can you name the eight people who tried to take over the world? *grins*
*Stares*
You're trying to make my hair fall out, aren't you?...
This is normally where I would raise my cup in a salute to the "sender-inner" of the question I had to
research, but that ain't gonna happen today...It's taking all of my self control to keep from raising my
hand to do something else to these goons...
On to a slightly less stressful subject, this week's quote winner. This week's winner is obviously using some
sort of cheating method. Stagcraft was the only person to get Voltaire as the person who said last
week's quote...in fact Stagcraft has sent in correct answers to all three quotes so far...I don't know
about you, but that seems a little suspicious to me...so congratulations Stagcraft, the first
Naked Ghand we sent you probably hasn't arrived yet, so were not going to send you another unless
the first one gets damaged in shipping or eats all your swiss cheese and chokes on the cameras...
That done, we move on to an increasing source of stress in my life, the new name for the quote contest.
After the question he sent in, I convinced NathanKeogh that he owed me...big...So I told him that it was
his job to come up with a new name for the quote contest. In hindsight, that may not have been the
wisest choice, but I can't un-ring a bell, so here we go...
**INSERT CONTEST NAME HERE**
Yep...I thought so...
Evidently, NathanKeogh's going to open it up to the mailbag readers to submit ideas to him, and then
he's going to choose the winner from the submissions...fat chance at that...I'll let Ghand's tech monkeys
pick a name before I open it up to the filthy, dirty, nasty, unwashed masses, all seething and dist...what?...
oh right, they read this...or at least they did up until now...uh, I uh, wasn't talking about you guys...I was
talking about a different filthy, dirty, nasty, unwashed mass...you probably don't even know each other...
*quickly changes subject*...So, how about them Bears? *nervous laughter*
This week's quote is: We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we
don't like?
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