Literal Answers

I have a literal mind. This is a actually an advantage in my line of work, but often a limitation elsewhere. I am generally able to get past this, but I sometimes have trouble with rhetorical questions. Fortunately, I don’t think I have ever responded with any of the answers that Paul Brians suggested might be heard from a character in Hard Times, by Charles Dickens. A few examples:


What’s up, Doc?

Presuming that the doctor addressed is a physician, one must assume that the question refers to the identity of the topmost parts of the human body, in which case the short answer is the frontal lobe of the brain, the skull, the scalp, and–if any–the hair.


How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris?

Administered commodity prices resulting in an average profit per farmer of no more than $50,000 per annum should be adequate to discourage profligate trips to France.


What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

D. Kolb and E.K.E. Gunderson’s study, “Alcoholism in the United States Navy” reports that attempts to prevent, diagnose and rehabilitate sailors suffering from alcohol-related problems are to a measurable degree superior to the older approach of simple hospitalization (published in Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 183-194).


…via one of my Carleton classmates.

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