Well, here we are once more, on that most blessed day of the week, Friday.  And, as all ye who tuned in this same time last week, Friday is now Q & A Day, when I, Ben, Answer questions from y’all my way awesome readers.  Indeed, in the past week, I have been nigh deluged with questions, assuming of course that two questions constitute a deluge.  Therefore, after furnishing with answers those brave souls who braved the capricious fancies of email to seek my wisdom, I shall return once more to the abundance of wisdom provided by All Them Dudes from The JMU History Department.  So, without further ado, let’s do this thang.

            Q: Long time reader, first time writer. I was wondering, what are yawns contagious? ~ Matt, Krypton

            A: Well, Matt of Krypton, the answer to your question, like the answers to most questions which plague the dreams of mankind, requires going back to cavemen (or as they are called nowadays, Cave Person Americans, or, Neanderhonkies).  To answer your particular question, we’re going to go all the way back to the Pleistocene Epoch, when New Jersey was still a verdant jungle uncorrupted by orcs and stuff.  Now cavemen, as everybody knows, are generally not famed for their great linguistic accomplishments, and as a result, it ought not come as a surprise that their pop music was less than awesome.  And it just so happened that the most famousest of cavemen pop stars, Brittany Spears, was also a narcoleptic.  This being the case, in the middle of a concert, it was not at all uncommon for her to just yawn, up and fall asleep right there on stage.  All the cavekids thought that this was way cool, and the fact that it annoyed their parents just made it better.  Unfortunately, this was back in the day, when if enough cavemen did something, it became written on the DNA of the human race, forever binding their descendents to do whatever it was all the cavemen thought was so cool.  So yeah, when one person yawns today, and then everyone else does too, it’s kind of like your ancient caveman DNA is trying to make you do the wave.

            Q: If a yak was to travel 250,000 miles (the distance from Earth to Moon) – how long would it take?  And what kind of propulsion system would it use? ~ Jim Cooke, Chancellor of Desolation

            A: Well, Jim Cooke, Chancellor of Desolation, I’m going to answer your question backwards.  Not literally backwards though, because then it would be all garbledy, and you’d have to hold your computer up to a mirror to read it; rather, I’m going to do the second part first and vice versa.  A yak, it happens to be the case, can easily be fitted with a primitive solar sail, and thus, by harnessing the tides of photons streaming from the Sun, be propelled away from the center of the solar system, and way out yonder.  The problem is, the Moon oft is wont to be closer to the Sun than is the Earth, which would leave our hypothetical yak drifting eternally in the inky vastness of space.  Therefore, all you’d have to do is turn the sail around, soak the yak in phosphorus, and set it ablaze.  The yak, new acting like it’s own miniature Sun, would essentially propel itself to the Moon, a voyage which would, if I’m a’reckoning correctly, take approximately 72,000 years (by way of comparison, if you took all the weasels in the world and set them end to end, starting in San Francisco and going towards Zimbabwe, you’d never make it, because they’d keep running around unless you took a staple gun to them, and then your yak still wouldn’t have made it to the Moon).

Now, back to history:

            Q: How do you relate this reading with Emperor Qianlong’s letter to King George III of England?  ~ Her Majesty, Chester A. Arthur

            A: Well, Your Highness, it all goes back to when the two of them were both in You’re Gonna Rule A Country Someday Day Care, and young King George (being as he was, the one hundred and eleventh king by that name, England having gotten into something of a rut in terms of creativity) was assigned to have Emperor Qianlong as a pen pal.  The thing is, and let me be blunt here, they were both like, five years old at the time, and everything they wrote was pretty much retarded.  Like King George III asked Emperor Qianlong if he ever tried feeding a goldfish Jello, and Emperor Qianlong wrote back asking if King George III had eye lasers.

            Of course, eventually, they both grew up and while Emperor Qianlong just grew out his fingernails really long and fought Flash Gordon, King George III in time became an enormous tool who oppressed the heck out of the colonies until George Washington had to fax him a bucket of whoop-ass by suggesting that his frilly clothes, goofy-looking wig, and inordinate fondness for handbags were not, perhaps indicative of some measure of fruitiness on his part.  Sources close to the King report that upon receiving this bit of news, King George III burst into tears, ran up to his room, and ate nothing but marshmallow peeps and strawberry daiquiris for the next fortnight.  Upon emerging, he changed his name to Biff Thumpchest, bought a Hummer, and started listening to country music, fooling absolutely nobody.

            Well, that’s it for this week, be sure to send me your questions again this week; my email is at ben@teacupmammoths.com, the comments box is just down at the bottom of the page, and if you live in Richmond you can just drive by my house and shout random queries at me.