{"id":970,"date":"2004-05-24T01:38:00","date_gmt":"2004-05-24T01:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=970"},"modified":"2018-08-13T16:55:17","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T21:55:17","slug":"970","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2004\/05\/24\/970\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Little Book of Stupid Questions<\/i> by David Borgenicht"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever Heather and I travel, I like to pick up one of these silly little quiz books to help us pass the time. I picked up the Barnes and Noble edition of this book<\/a>, for a number of dollars no less, because I knew we would be on the road this year. Unfortunately, although this book bills itself as a way to “Get your friends to reveal their inner selves with The Little Book of Stupid Questions<\/i>“. Unfortunately, the book serves more to let you get to know David Borgenicht as much as to get to know each other.<\/p>\n

Face it, quiz books of this sort should proffer brain teasers to elicit chuckles, amusing stories, or wry revelations on the part of those answering the question<\/i>. Unfortunately, Borgenicht cannot help intruding with follow-up questions that presume the question will be answered a certain way, such as<\/p>\n

If, by some quirk of fate, you run into your favorite celebrity\/supermodel fantasy object, and, by some other quirk of fate, they [sic] come onto you, what would you do? What if you were in a committed relationship? Do you ask for an autograph afterwards?<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

When you’re in the shower and you see a little hair on the tile wall, do you fill your hands with water and try to splash it off, or [sic] try to pluck it off with your fingers? Why are we so predictable?<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some of the questions are seemingly rhetorical, as though Borgenicht couldn’t wait for Amateur Night at the comedy club.<\/p>\n

If you ate your own foot, would you lose weight?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

Do you think that the first time corn ever popped [sic] it scared the hell out of the Indians?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and furthermore<\/p>\n

Why do people who use "correct grammar" sound like such dorks?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even when he’s not cracking wise or writing with a smirk, he’s repeating himself. What would your name be as a rock singer\/super hero\/exotic dancer? Who would you least like to be haunted by\/stuck in an elevator with\/spend an eternity in hell with? I started skipping the similar questions, the rhetorical questions, and the repeated questions. Ultimately, it left about a third of the book qualified to do what it advertises.<\/p>\n

However, Borgenicht does lead to hours of amusing speculation with this question:<\/p>\n

If they can make a "black box" that is so indestructible that it survives a plane crash, why don’t they just make the airplane out of the same material?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow. Is Borgenicht plagiarizing from George Carlin’s Brain Droppings<\/i><\/a>, or is he plagiarizing from Mike Barnicle’s column in the Boston Globe<\/i> which itself plagiarized from Brain Droppings<\/i> and led to Barnicle’s dismissal?<\/p>\n

Wondering about that answer could eat up some drive time in the middle of Illinois, werd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever Heather and I travel, I like to pick up one of these silly little quiz books to help us pass the time. I picked up the Barnes and Noble edition of this book, for a number of dollars no less, because I knew we would be on the road this year. Unfortunately, although this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23290,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions\/23290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}