I’m not feeling particularly creative on this end, so how about a lazy hmmmm list inspired by one of my favorite comedians?

Steven Wright is (from Wikipedia) “an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and film producer known for his distinctly lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical and sometimes nonsensical jokes, paraprosdokians, non sequiturs, anti-humor, and one-liners with contrived situations.” To a self-professed logophile (that’s someone who loves words, not logos, though I suppose the latter would work, too) such as myself, I think he’s a genius.

I can’t take credit for the questions below (some are actually Wright’s), but I’ve been assembling the list for a number of years and it’s pretty light reading, so if you don’t run out of steam going through a long list, have fun with it. If you have some hmmmm questions of your own, please add them to the Comment section. In no particular order, here’s one person’s Top 100 vexing questions …

• Are x percent of statistics are made up on the spot?
• Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?
• Can you be a closet claustrophobic?
• Can you take a bath without getting wet if you melt dry ice?
• Do geese get goosebumps?
• Do prison buses have emergency exits?
• Do the French say “Pardon my English” once they swear?
• Do you think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly?
• Doesn’t it seem strange that slow down and slow up mean the same thing?
• Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?
• How come there aren’t B batteries?
• How come you never see the headline “Psychic Wins Lottery”?
• How do “Do not walk on the grass” signs get put in place?
• How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign?
• How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
• How do you throw away a garbage can?
• How does a thermos know if the drink should be hot or cold?
• How far up do bald folks go when they wash their face?
• How is it possible to have a civil war?
• How is it that a building burns up as it burns down?
• If a cow laughed really hard, would milk come out its nose?
• If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?
• If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?
• If a train station is where the train stops, what is a workstation?
• If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?
• If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?
• If God sneezed, what would you say?
• If honesty is the best policy is, by process of elimination, dishonesty the second-best policy?
• If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, can electricians be delighted and musicians denoted?
• If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do all the rest have to drown, too?
• If someone offers you a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then who has that other penny?
• If sponges didn’t grow in the ocean, how much deeper would the ocean be?
• If the #2 pencil is so popular, why is it still #2?
• If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?  Along the same lines, if you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?
• If the professor on Gilligan’s Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can’t he fix a hole in a boat?
• If tomatoes are a fruit, is ketchup considered a smoothie?
• If vegetables are a must on a diet, can you choose carrot cake, zucchini bread, spinach artichoke dip, and pumpkin pie to meet your minimum daily requirements?
• If you expect the unexpected, doesn’t that make the unexpected expected?
• In the word “scent,” which letter is silent? S or C?
• Is a hippopotamus just a really cool opotamus?
• Is there really a present? Isn’t there only the immediate future and the recent past?
• Isn’t the word “queue” just the letter Q followed by four silent letters?
• Should vegetarians eat animal crackers?
• Shouldn’t there be a shorter word for monosyllabic?
• The guy who discovered milk. What was he doing?
• What are Preparation A through Preparation G?
• What disease did cured ham originally have?
• What does it mean to pre-board a plane? Do you get on before you get on?
• What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
• What happens when an immovable object meets an unstoppable force?
• What if the Hokey Pokey is what it’s all about?
• What should you do if you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
• What was the best thing before sliced bread?
• What’s another word for thesaurus? Ditto for synonym?
• When does it stop being partly sunny and start to become partly cloudy?
• When dog food is new and improved tasting, who tests it? In the same vein, why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?
• When you conclude that something is inconclusive, isn’t a conclusion already drawn?
• When your pet bird sees you reading the newspaper, does he wonder why you’re just sitting there staring at carpeting?
• Which armrest is yours in the movie theater?
• Who opened that first oyster and said “My, my, my. Now doesn’t this look yummy!”?
• Why are mattresses always on sale?
• Why are they called stands when they’re made for sitting?
• Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
• Why did we decide to give February only 28 days when many other months have 31 days? Couldn’t we have just taken some of the 31st days from other months and added them to February?
• Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitoes?
• Why do banks charge you a non-sufficient funds fee on money they already know you don’t have?
• Why do fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?
• Why do hot dogs come 10 to a package and hot dog buns only eight?
• Why do noses run but feet smell?
• Why do people say they “slept like a baby” if they slept through the night when babies are known for not sleeping?
• Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
• Why do they call it “getting your dog fixed” if it doesn’t work anymore after the procedure?
• Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?
• Why do tugboats push their barges?
• Why do we cook bacon and bake cookies?
• Why do we park in driveways and drive on parkways?
• Why do we scrub down and wash up?
• Why do we sing Take Me Out To The Ballgame when we’re already there?
• Why does Hawaii have interstate highways?
• Why does mineral water, having “trickled through mountains for centuries,” go out of date next year?
• Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?
• Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
• Why doesn’t onomatopoeia sound like what it is?
• Why is abbreviated such a long word?
• Why is Goofy considered a person and Pluto considered a pet?
• Why is it called a foul pole when it’s in fair territory?
• Why is it called tourist season if we can’t shoot at them?
• Why is it so hard to remember how to spell mnemonic?
• Why is it that bullets ricochet off Superman’s chest, but he ducks when the gun is thrown at him?  Also, if Superman is so smart why does he wear his underpants over his trousers?
• Why is it that night falls but day breaks?  And when day breaks, who fixes it?
• Why is it that when you transport something by car, it’s called a shipment, but when you transport something by ship, it’s called cargo?
• Why is it that when you’re driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on the radio?
• Why is it that you must wait until night to call it a day?
• Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? Further, Why do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?
• Why is the objective of golf to play the least amount of golf?
• Why is the work done by doctors called “practice”?
• Why is there a fridge light but no freezer light?
• Why isn’t palindrome spelled the same way backward?
• Why isn’t phonetic spelled the way it sounds?
• And finally … If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?

I added that last one just to gauge how many readers got to the end of the list.