by Artemis » Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:25 am
A: There's various ways in which your query might be answered. One might set up a time-delay camera to film the sky during various periods of the year, and compare that to meteorological readings to see what kind of correlation there could be. One might examine current theories about the nature of light, and how it interacts with the various compounds present in our atmosphere, and how those compounds vary at different times due to temperature and so forth. One might even take a physiological approach, and investigate whether the climate has an effect, biological or psychological, on us, thus affecting our inclination to perceive the sky as intensely blue or faded blue.
In the end, we at Stupid Answers Inc thought that would all be too much hard work, so we just decided to ask God, on the assumption that He, or She (or It, in the event that It's non-gendered, or is one of those people who might be a woman, but might just be a really convincing drag queen, and it'd just be too damn embarassing to ask, so you end up twisting your brain in knots trying to figure it out without staring too obviously) really ought to know the answer to pretty much everything.
Obviously you can't just call the Almighty's 1-800 number - the per-minute rates on that thing are astronomical, and we're not made of money (you'd be surprised how many people think they can get through their lives without paying us for stupid answers). So a face-to-face meeting seemed the way to go - or at least, a face-to-whatever-our-limited-mortal-minds-interpret-the-true-visage-of-an-omnipotent-universal-being-to-be-in-terms-we-can-comprehend meeting.
We immediately set three teams to work, each seeking the elusive interview with His/Her/Its Holiness in one of the more widely-known ways to achieve same. Team A acquired (without telling us how, due to legal constraints) a large quantity of illegal substances, and smoked, drank, injected, inserted, or otherwise ingested all of them. Their responses as to why the sky is blue were, variously, "Bluuuuuuue...", "Don't know. Get me a twinkie. I'm hungry.", and "Sky? Up there? Ohmygod giant spiders! On my face! Getthemoffme!"
Team B set down to some serious, Grade-A debauchery, on the assumption that the Big Guy and/or Gal used to turn up in person to smite anyone who looked like they were having too much fun, and may do so again. This didn't produce any useful results; however, we do commend Team B for coming up with an unusually ingenious reason for why they should be able to use their corporate credit cards to buy porn DVDs and hire lapdancers.
Team C decided that the most reliable way to meet the Divine was to die. After the first attempt, it was realised that the experiment required the tester to report back with the answer, so ways of dying and coming back were investigated. Zombie Serum was tested, but tended to produce incoherent results (unless it turns out that the sky seems bluer because of "Braaaains..." - we're not ruling anything out). Brief flatlining was attempted, but this produced problems involving some kind of insane monk spectre, and the attempt was abandoned before anyone got sued for copyright infringement. In the end, surprisingly, a result was forthcoming from a lab assistant attached to Team C, who decided that 'dead' was close enough to 'dead drunk' that some sort of result should be achievable simply by downing a few bottles of vodka neat on top of twenty or so tequila slammers, switching on a dictaphone, and waiting for nature to take its course.
Against all expectations, the recorder produced the following:
Interviewer: "Um, excuse me?"
Big Booming Voice Assumed To Be God: "Yes? Are you here to fix the gate? There's succubi sneaking in behind St Peter's back you know, it's getting ridiculous. Do you know how difficult it is to get any virgins up here in the first place, without having them disqualified up here? Unicorns don't just corral themselves you know."
I: "Uh-huh... um, no, I'm here to ask about the sky?"
G: "Oh Me, don't tell me the bloody thing's broken again-"
I: "No, no, just... how come it looks bluer in summer?"
G: "What? What? What kind of question is that? I'm a busy deity you know, this universe doesn't run itself- oh, look, the tri-extrial galaxy just imploded. Nice work, anything else you'd like to distract me with while I'm trying to keep this place operating?"
I: "Uh, no... sorry." (sound of retreating feet)
G (shouting): "And fix the gate on your way out!" (muttering) "Bloody day trippers... Anyone know where that thing came from? What's that? Earth? No, can't be - I set that up for dinosaurs to be the dominant species, didn't I? Could have sworn... Maybe I'll drop by sometime and check, those carbon-based ecosystems are a bugger for going haywire..."
So, not much in the way of useful results there. Fortunately though, as we were contemplating having to return what we'd been paid to work this one out, someone noticed that we had the colour blue working in the mail room, and it told us that it likes to go south for the winter. So there you go.
Q: How, in the game of soccer which is all about kicking the ball, did heat-butts get involved?
