James Explains Toppling Penguins Amongst Other Things

Welcome back to another James Explains, the place where I answer the questions that no-one else can.

Mostly because they weren’t asked those questions.

I was.

So I will answer them.

Because it would be rude not to.

Tragically Uncool has noticed the fairly regular posting of stuff on this blog of late and asks the following:

I got bored and abandoned my blog months ago. Where do you get the energy and inspiration to keep this up?

The truthful answer to this is that I blog more often when I’ve got other stuff I should be doing. The more I post on here, the more real-life work I’m avoiding. On the occasions I disappear from the blogoshpere, it’s never because I’m too busy, but more that I haven’t got anything I’m desperately trying to avoid doing. In recent months I’ve been alarmingly busy at work, and so the blog has blossomed…

Giggling Fattie didn’t think she was asking a question when she wrote the following (but she totally was so I shall answer it):

Every time I see one of these post I always want to comment but I never have any questions to ask! Why don’t I ever have any questions?!

Essentially you don’t have any questions because you already know everything you need to know. The only thing you apparently don’t know is that you know everything. Which is ironic. But thanks to me, you now know that too.

Suze asks this brainteaser of a question:

The six year old next door, we shall call him Sam…of course we will as that is his name…anywho, Sam asks: “how comes you write silly stuff?” good luck with that.

Is Sam talking about your blog or mine Suze? Because I know why I write silly stuff, but I have no idea why you write silly stuff. Unless it’s for the same reason I write silly stuff. Which it might be. In which case, I write silly stuff because I think it’s better for my general sanity if this stuff is written down rather than in my head.

Pete, takes advantage of the discount I gave him last week (see last week’s post if that makes no sense) to ask this:

Here’s my first discounted question – hang on, that means you will ignore it doesn’t it?

No Pete, no question is ignored on James Explains and I will answer this one too. By writing this.

But fine though all those other questions were, it’s Glen who has given us the conundrum of the day by asking this:

Do penguins topple over when they look up in fascination at a plane going overhead?

Of course they do Glen. And if they’re standing in a line (as I understand that all penguins do) then there’s a spectacular domino effect. It’s one of nature’s true wonders.

And that’s it for another James Explains. If you have a question that only I can answer then why not post it in the comments below?

James Explains Some Stuff That No-one Asked Him To Explain

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Welcome back to another James Explains.

It’s been a while since I last donned my explaining socks (which are, essentially, just ordinary socks that I’ve chosen to call ‘explaining socks’), to answer the questions posed to me by other people. People like you. Assuming you are people. Which is the only assumption I can make, given my (probably limited) understanding of the way things work. Maybe you’re an alien, or a robot, or a dog that can read. Or all of those things. Or none of those things. How can I possibly know? What kind of crazy world do we live in now, where alien-robot-dogs are able to read my blog? And why would such a being even want to read my blog?

To be fair, the answer to that is probably that, in anticipation of a world in which we are taken over by alien-robot-dogs, all of my content has been specially crafted to appeal to such beings. It’s why, if you’re a human reading this, you might sometimes feel slightly alienated, almost as if this stuff was never really meant for your consumption.

But enough of this nonsense. Just so long as everyone understands that come the day our supreme overlords decide to take control, I will be in a position of significant influence and power.

But until such a time, lets pretend that this blog is meant to be read by people and that those people have questions that they need me to answer.

The only problem is that it’s been over a month since I last wrote a James Explains, so I don’t have any questions that need answering.

I don’t think I do anyway. I could go back and look at the comments section of previous James Explains to see if there are any questions I didn’t get around to answering, but that seems like quite a lot of effort to go to. Instead I could just use this post as an opportunity to announce that James Explains is back and if you do have any questions that you need answering, then post them in the comments section below and I might, one day, get around to answering them. Possibly even as soon as next week.

Then again, it wouldn’t be a proper James Explains, if I didn’t at least answer some questions. I have been known, in the past, to answer questions that I’ve posed to myself, but even that seems like more effort than I’m really prepared to put into this today.

Instead I’m going to answer some Frequently Asked Questions that appear on some websites that I looked at. They’re all from different websites, because it turns out that people frequently ask different things of different businesses. In most cases the businesses have already answered these questions themselves, so all I’m offering here is a helpful second opinion.

Question 1, which may have something to do with air travel, is:

Can I bring infant equipment?

As opposed to fully grown equipment? If you think it’s up to the job then please do. I always say if it’s up to the task, it’s old enough, but you will be responsible for any equipment in your care, infant or otherwise.

Question 2, which might have something to do with TV licencing is:

How do I tell you about an unoccupied address or empty property?,

However you want to tell me. There’s no right or wrong way of doing this. It’s not especially bad news, so you don’t need to prepare the ground, particularly. If you’d like to compose a sonnet or a witty limerick to convey the information then that’s always appreciated, but a simple mundane email should suffice.

Question 3, which might have something to do with paying credit card bills, is:

What sort code and account number should I use for my payments?

It’s generally good form to use your own sort code and account number. I believe anything else might be construed as fraudulent. But I’ll leave it to your own discretion.

Question 4, which might be related to staying in a hotel, is:

Can I chat to someone in Customer Services?

I’d prefer you didn’t. They’re all busy people and they really don’t have time to chat. I’m not paying them to sit around chatting. Admittedly I’m not paying them at all. But I imagine the hotel chain feels the same as I do about this. Although you wouldn’t know that from their own answer, which provides a phone number and everything. That’s no way to run a business is it?

There we go, some FAQs answered, and answered well, if I do say so myself. If you have any LFAQs (or Less Frequently Asked Questions) for me, then do ask them in the comments below.

James Explains Onomatopoeia Amongst Other Things

James Explains

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Hello truth seekers, and welcome back to the bit of my blog where I answer the difficult questions that other blogs choose to ignore.

Mostly because they weren’t asked them.

But I was asked them.

So I will answer them.

Because that seems like the polite thing to do.

To kick us off, Pete asks:

WHY NOT?

This is something of a callback to a question that Pete posed a couple of weeks ago, and like then I will refer you to the answer my parents gave me to this question back in my youth, which in this case was… BECAUSE I SAID SO!

Pete also asks:

My cat, sitting on a mat, has just had a urinary accident………Is this onomatopoeia?

Alas Pete, it isn’t. Onomatopoeia is when a word sounds like itself. Which is, to be fair, all words. They all sound like themselves. I may have misunderstood what onomatopoeia means. There must be more to it than that. But I know it doesn’t refer to cats urinating on mats. The word you’re thinking of is catonomatopoeia.

Bryntin asks:

James, why haven’t I got any questions this week?

I had so many last week.

I tried but I simply couldn’t conjure one up, even when I looked in my wardrobe.

I must admit, I was perplexed to discover that you didn’t have any questions Bryntin, but I think I understand why. It’s because questions aren’t kept in wardrobes. Fictional lands with witches and lions and never-ending winters are kept in wardrobes.

Stolzy’s five year old son is back with this scatalogical question:

Why is it that my poop is brown when I ate nothing brown?

I was going to come up with a silly answer to this, but then I realised that I was answering the question for a five year old boy and so I feel that I would be doing him a disservice by not taking the question seriously.

So Stolzy, please read the following answer out to your son, in order to further his education.

Poop is brown because of a tetrapyrrolic bile pigment called sterconilin.

Or it could just be because the poo fairy likes brown.

Take your pick.

Suze asks:

“WHY do men collect crap?” Model parts, dried out glue bottles, modeling paints that are dried up with the cap on crooked…none of which can be thrown out as it “might be needed later”.

Now I can see why you’ve asked me this question Suze, because, as a man I’m fully qualified to answer. Although I don’t actually collect any of that stuff, because I’m the kind of maverick who hurls caution to the wind and throws stuff away. That said, I’ve often been left to rue my cavalier attitude when I’ve desperately needed some dried out modelling paints and haven’t had any to hand. What a fool I was.

And that’s it for this week’s James Explains. As ever, if you’d like me to explain the seemingly unexplainable then pop a question in the comments below.