A Quiz for Your Protection.

On January 1, 2007, I resolved to stop "talking out of my butt." With greater frequency, I'd been hearing those closest to me saying things like,'"Dude, quit speaking out of your ass" or "Hey, butt clown, you don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Those daughters of mine—such pistols.

Yeah, anyway, back on New Years' Day of Ot Seven, I announced to a skeptical audience that I would only issue public proclamations that were backed by facts.

It had to happen. My kids were getting older and calling me out on stuff. No more could I insert a valuable lesson through a creative web of deceit. For instance, when one of my darlings asked me why asparagus made her pee smell weird, I could no longer make something up, like "It's because you don't eat enough vegetables. It's nature's way of showing your body how profoundly toxic it is. If I were you, I'd stop inhaling Goldfish and start gnawing on kale hunks before your little kidneys turn into petite baggies of gooey scar tissue...

"...there, there, stop crying, honey. Daddy's just the messenger."

Actually, asparagus contains a sulfur compound called mercaptan, which is also found in onions, garlic, rotten eggs and the secretions of skunks. The alluring bouquet occurs when mercaptan is broken down by enzymes in your digestive tract.

I learned that on the internet, another reason why it's so much harder to pull the wool over the eyes of innocents these days. And that's why I've decided to turn this thing around, to spin the world wide interwebbernet's power into a delicious digital smoothie that quenches our thirst for knowledge and dispels the half-cocked claims of the egomaniacal know-it-alls...like me.

I've assembled a multiple choice quiz. After racking my brain for questions whose answers I may be highly tempted to surgically extract from my bottom, I've accumulated a few that are designed to test your bullshit meter. Good luck to you, friend.

The stuff doesn't have grapes or nuts in them, so why the heck are they called "Grape Nuts?"

a) The man at Post who developed the recipe was a bachelor who'd been down on his "luck" for a while. Rather than the obvious moniker of "Blue Balls," he took a more subtle tack, dubbing them "Grape Nuts."

b) The recipe was actually Hungarian in origin. Since a literal translation would have been "Cardboard Eye Crust," the folks at Post chose to finesse the title.

c) The original formula for Grape-Nuts called for grape sugar, which is composed mostly of glucose, unlike most other sugar sources and food sweeteners which are principally sucrose.

d) The name arose during the 1960s as part of the United States Army's LSD cereal naming project.


Since this popular website features no advertising, how does Craigslist make money?

a) It doesn't. That guy Craig is just super rich and nice.

b) Read the fine print. Once a year, Craigslist charges a random user one billion dollars to post an entry.

c) Craigslist makes money by charging a $10 fee for brokered apartment listings in New York City, $75 for job listings in San Francisco and charges $25 for job postings in six of its largest U.S. markets. This website also charges $10 (in the US) for an ad that comes under the category "therapeutic services." Craigslist charges $5 for re-posting an ad that is live.

d) That's actually Craig himself selling you that couch he found soaked and moldy on the curb. One word—volume.


Why do humans have toenails?

a) So we can tell ourselves after she breaks up with us that sure, she was beautiful, smart and really cool, but her freaking toenails looked like curry-stained Tupperware lids.

b) In 1937, Great Grandmother Zelda Kardashian purchased human toenail rights, thereby assuring the family nail polish empire for centuries to come.

c) Toenails have no practical function; they're an evolutionary leftover.

d) They're a natural reminder to maintain our health. If we can't reach our toenails, we're too fat and will die soon. Look it up, it's what happened to the Romans.

Are you ready for the answers?

All are option "c"! Ha! Always pick "c," right? Do you understand, now, how easy it is to spin highly believable answers out of whole cloth? I'm thinking that probably out of those three questions, you were lucky to get one.

Don't be bamboozled by know-it-all charlatans. As Ronald Reagan once said, during the height of his dementia, "Trust, but verify."

You're welcome.