How Does Aspirin Find a Headache? (26 page)
Read How Does Aspirin Find a Headache? Online
Authors: David Feldman
Submitted by Melanie Dawn Parr of Baltimore, Maryland. Thanks also to Sandra Baker of Nicholasville, Kentucky
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Why
Are the Burgers Upside-Down When You Unfold the Wrapper of a McDonald’s Hamburger?
For the same reason you put a gift upside down before you wrap it. As Milroy puts it:
To provide a neat appearance, a hamburger is placed upside-down on its wrapper, then the ends of the wrapper are brought together on the bottom side of the hamburger. The hamburger is placed right side up in the transfer bin for sale.
If the burger was placed on the wrapper upright, the “loose ends” of the wrapping paper would land atop the finished product, giving it an unkempt appearance and threatening the unraveling of the paper. Using the preferred method, the loose ends of the wrapping paper end up on the bottom of the wrapped burger as it is put in the bin for sale, allowing gravity and the weight of the burger to hold the loose ends in place.
Submitted by Renate Dickey of Macon, Georgia
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What
, Exactly, Is the McDonald’s Character “The Grimace” Supposed to Be?
Milroy reported that Imponderables readers are not alone; this is among the most asked questions of the corporation. What does this say about our culture?
We’re not here to judge, however, so we are proud to announce the official position of McDonald’s on the exact description of The Grimace: “He is a big fuzzy purple fellow and Ronald’s special pal.” That’s it. Regardless of our prodding, our cajoling, our penetrating interrogation, our rare paroxysms of hostility, this was the most we could prod out of our golden-arched pals. But we are assured that this is as much as Ronald McDonald himself knows about his fuzzy purple friend.
Submitted by Michael Weinbeyer of Upper Saint Clair, Pennsylvania. Thanks also to Joe Pickell of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Samuel Paul Ontallomo of Upper Saint Clair, Pennsylvania; Nicole Cretelle of San Diego, California; Ruth Homrighaus of Gambier, Ohio; and Liam Palmer and Jonathan Franz of Corbett, Oregon
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What
Did Barney Rubble Do for a Living?
We have received this Imponderable often but never tried to answer it because we thought of it as a trivia question rather than an Imponderable. But as we tried to research the mystery of Barney’s profession, we found that even self-professed “Flintstones” fanatics couldn’t agree on the answer.
And we are not the only ones besieged. By accident, we called Hanna-Barbera before the animation house’s opening hours. Before we could ask the question, the security guard said, “I know why you’re calling. You want to know what Barney Rubble did for a living. He worked at the quarry. But why don’t you call back after opening hours?” The security guard remarked that he gets many calls from inebriated “Flintstones” fans in the middle of the night, pleading for Barney’s vocation before they nod off for the evening.
We did call back, and spoke to Carol Keis, of Hanna-Barbera public relations, who told us that this Imponderable is indeed the company’s most frequently asked question of all Flintstone trivia. She confirmed that the most commonly accepted answer is that Barney worked at Fred’s employer, Bedrock Quarry & Gravel:
However, out of 166 half-hours from 1960-1966, there were episodic changes from time to time. Barney has also been seen as a repossessor, he’s done top secret work, and he’s been a geological engineer.
As for the manner in which Barney’s occupation was revealed, it was never concretely established (no pun intended) [sure]. It revealed itself according to the occupation set up for each episode.
Most startling of all, Barney actually played Fred’s boss at the quarry in one episode. Sure, the lack of continuity is distressing. But then we suspend our disbelief enough to swallow that Wile E. Coyote can recover right after the Road Runner drops a safe on Coyote’s head from atop a mountain peak, too.
Hanna-Barbera does not have official archives, so Keis couldn’t assure us that she hadn’t neglected one of Barney Rubble’s jobs. Can anyone remember any more?
Submitted by Rob Burnett of New York, New York
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For any other readers who submitted this Imponderable, please write so that your name can be included for future editions
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Why
Do We Wave Polaroid Prints in the Air After They Come Out of the Camera?
Imponderables
often has to ask anthropologists, anatomists, physiologists, or geneticists questions about bodily quirks or anachronisms. Why do we have patches of hair between our knuckles? Why do we have an appendix? What good are earlobes? More often than not, experts shrug their shoulders and reply that at one time in our evolution these features might have served some purpose, but their function is now lost in obscurity. Humans have many such vestigial anatomical remnants.
Likewise, some human activities that now seem meaningless might have served some purpose in an earlier era. To wit: gratuitous hand flapping. We have all seen someone inadvertently consume something that was too hot to put in the mouth. What is the universal cure for a scorched throat? Invariably we see the victim waving a hand violently up and down in front of an opened mouth.
How can flapping your limbs possibly solve the problem of a 900-degree pizza hitting the roof of your mouth? It can’t, of course. We can only surmise that in the paleolithic period, perhaps a now-extinct flying insect was preternaturally attracted to burning mouth flesh, and that this waving of hands served as a deterrent.
Other examples of unproductive flapping are not confined to empty hands, however. As our astute field observer, Christine Schomer, points out, millions of amateur photographers can be seen flapping just-issued Polariod prints with the enthusiasm of Chubby Checker demonstrating The Fly, a dance whose moves might have been inspired by instant photographers waiting for their pictures to develop.
We contacted the folks at Polaroid to ask if there is any method to the seeming madness of flappers. Bob Alter, in the Public Affairs and Community Relations department at Polaroid, told us that flapping undeveloped prints doesn’t serve any useful function whatsoever. In fact, if the prints are waved too vigorously, the picture will bend.
But unlike earlobes or finger hair, at least the Polaroid flapping can be explained. Many years ago, Polaroid prints used to come out of the camera in a two-part sandwich, with the positive print sticking to the negative. The two parts were peeled apart. Often, a little polymer, the agent used to transfer the negative to the positive print, stuck to the positive print.
Photographers often waved the print in order to dry off the tacky polymer, in the mistaken belief that the photograph would develop sooner. Now Polaroid uses “integral film,” so that the print comes out of the rollers in a self-contained unit. The transfer from negative to positive occurs inside the unit, so that the exposed print isn’t moist. Flapping the print around does nothing except kill time until the photo is developed.
So Polaroid flapping is a perfect example of vestigial behavior, an activity that once had some justification and now has none. When will this characteristic be bred out of us? Is Polaroid flapping motivated by genetic or environmental causes? Nature or nurture? Stay tuned.
Submitted by Christine Schomer of New York, New York
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Impressed with our perspicacity in the Imponderables section? Whenever we get full of ourselves, gloating about how we stumbled upon the solution to a knotty Imponderable, our darker side whispers, “Frustables. Frustables. Frustables.
”
Ah, Frustables (short for “Frustrating Imponderables”), the ten Imponderables we most wanted to answer for this book but could not. In most cases, we contacted experts who came to no useful consensus, or we suspect our sources are not delving into the Imponderable with the depth it deserves.
So we leave it to you. Can you help? We offer a complimentary autographed copy of our next volume of
Imponderables
to the reader who supplies the best answer to each, or the first reader who leads us to the proof that supplies the answer. And of course, your contribution will be printed and acknowledged in the book. Remember, only you can prevent Frustability.
FRUSTABLE 1:
Why do we close our eyes when we kiss?
Interested in any and all theories, as well as any amusing anecdotes about this subject.
FRUSTABLE 2:
Why do women “of a certain age” usually start wearing their hair shorter?
The hairdressers and beauty consultants we spoke to, for the most part, felt there was no good reason for women to wear their hair shorter as they got older. Why has ever-shortened hair become a traditional fashion statement of mature women? Or is this custom merely a way to avoid the inconvenience of dealing with long hair?
FRUSTABLE 3:
Why do the clasps of necklaces and bracelets tend to migrate from the back toward the front?
Can this phenomenon be explained by some weird, unwritten rule of physics? Does the slight extra weight of the clasp affect its ability to stay put on the wrist or neck? We have received this complaint from several women and so far have heard no good explanation.
FRUSTABLE 4:
Why is it customary to include the full address of the recipient of a business letter before the salutation?
Presumably, the recipient of a letter knows his or her address. When a letter is prepared for a window envelope, this practice saves the sender the time and aggravation of addressing an envelope. But isn’t it a waste of time and space otherwise?
FRUSTABLE 5:
Why do most women like shopping more than men?
Yes, we
know
this is a gross generalization. But it is fair to say that far more women were “born to shop” than men. We thought men were supposed to be the hunter-gatherers. Why do women seem to derive far more psychic benefits from shopping than men?
FRUSTABLE 6:
How and why did the association between wearing eyeglasses and nerdiness and/or greater intelligence begin?
Was the original assumption that people needed glasses because they wore out their eyes reading books? Were glasses considered to be signs of physical weakness? This is one stereotype that never made much sense to us.
FRUSTABLE 7:
Why and where did the tradition of tearing down football goalposts begin?
We’re confident that the practice started during the days of early American college football, but our usually reliable college football experts can’t pinpoint either where it started or whether it began as a demonstration of joy at a victory or a riot after a defeat.
FRUSTABLE 8:
Why do artists, models, and bohemians wear black clothing?
In almost any metropolitan area in the Western world, black seems to be a uniform of hipness. Sure, we know that “black makes you look thinner,” “everybody looks good in black,” “black goes with everything,” etc. But why would folks who wouldn’t think twice about dyeing their hair purple or inserting earrings through any possible bodily protuberance find black eternally chic?
FRUSTABLE 9:
Why is the best restaurant coffee better than home-brewed coffee?
We expect to hear complaints about the premise of this question. Yes, there is plenty of pitiful coffee served in restaurants and cafés, but several readers have asked why they can’t make coffee at home that competes with the best restaurant coffee, especially when they are often using more expensive coffee beans than the restaurant.
FRUSTABLE 10:
Why don’t women spit more?
Yes, we know we are culturally conditioned to consider spitting to be the domain of uncouth males. We realize that males of yore smoked cigars and chewed tobacco that stimulated saliva production. But most of the tobacco-abstaining, ultracouth males we’ve spoken to commonly feel the urge to spit. Yet many women deny they ever have such a need. Can there be a physiological explanation? Are women suppressing a desire to spit?
Can you help us? We have great expectorations about this Frustable!