The guiding principle of Six Ridiculous Questions is that life is filled with ridiculousness. And questions. That only by giving in to these truths may we hope to slip the surly bonds of reality and attain the higher consciousness we all crave. (Eh, not really, but it sounded good there for a minute.) It’s just. Who knows? The ridiculousness and question bits, I guess. Why six? Assonance, baby, assonance.
Say you’re a zebra. Well, OK, say you’re an anthropomorphized zebra with the power of speech living in a world populated primarily by anthropomorphized zebras. Not all anthropomorphized zebras are created equal; nor, it seems, are they all the herd-focused equines we might imagine. Take you for example.
Owing to your lack of focus on the herd as a whole, semi-nefarious nature, and perhaps most of all your employment on zebra Wall Street, you committed various financial crimes for which you were charged, tried, and convicted. Yes, apparently, the zebra justice system functions a bit more reliably than ours does. Having bid a tearful goodbye to your ten(!) calves, you show up at the doors of zebra prison ready to pay your debt to zebra society. What happens next?
Are you hoof-printed? Forced to wear stripes? Forced to wear solids? What are the gangs like in zebra prison, anyway? Sure, this is zebra white-collar prison but there must still be gangs, right? How about the guards? What are they like? I mean, you know they’re not “nice,” they’re prison guards, but what species are they? Or are they, too, zebras?
Go wild on this. You know you’ve been cooped up as an anthropomorphized zebra WAY TOO LONG. Actually, you’re going to be cooped up a lot longer, but you get the idea. Bonus credit for a description of visitors’ day. I mean…ten calves? Do they visit in shifts?
Once inside zebra prison, I am given my standard issued uniform. It’s horizontal stripes and the fashion faux-hoof of it all is too much to take. Not to be a neigh-sayer, but the prison food is as bad as expected. My first lunch does not go down easily, and I spend most of my time following my herd-instincts and nervously looking out for the large cat guards. The system honestly feels a little precarious.
On visitation day, only two calves (my youngest visit). They’re the only ones not embarrassed to be seen with me. It’s a real wake-up call to only see 8 hooves out there instead of the 40 I expected.
I spend most of the time in the li-bray-ry, learning about assorted hoofed animals throughout history. The book selection is not great, but it does give me hope that I can atone for my financial crimes and once again be a model zebrazen.
Why are the colors of house paint given such extravagant names like, y’know, Butternut Biscuit Beige and Pearl-Lustered Tangerine? Is it simply to sell more paint by appealing to the whimsy of the apparently quite whimsical paint-buying public? Are the name-givers frustrated artists or, still worse, frustrated marketing MBAs? Or is there something even deeper and darker than art and MBAs at play here? What’s your theory?
I once spent an inordinate amount of time trying to name a new cupcake recipe, so I may be more attuned to this question than others. However, I believe there’s a sort of hopeless beauty in these extravagant names. Someone out there looks at a shade of way-too-green and thinks this is going to be called Galactic Kiwi and knows that someone somewhere is going to pick that up and think of course the kid’s room needs to be Galactic Kiwi. That’s the right shade of fun and joy and doesn’t the name just sparkle with that? And, honestly, I love that.
Please solve the following unrelated set of simultaneous equations using only sentences:
(Entropy – Mount Everest) / (Blue + Potato) = (Milan Kundera x Land Shark)2
Vanity + (Hunger / Love) = Turing Test – (Napoleon / Big Mac)
You go up the mountain and come down, up and down, up and down. It feels like you’ve always been going up the mountain, going down the mountain. Sometimes you remember the shade of blue of the tiny flowers outside your childhood home or the sound of your grandmother mashing potatoes. When you are going down and going up, going up and going down, there’s an unbearable light to all. Or is that weight? Sometimes you think the ground will swallow you. If it does, you’ll still be going up, going down.
There’s a mirror on the nightstand and you can watch yourself going up, going down in it. Why only ever that one moment? You suppose it’s what you remember most at the end. That and a piece of pie at the diner and did you love that moment or did you love the chance of it? That you might finish the slice and walk out the door and get on with your life? Maybe life is just a facsimile: a combination of moments like history lessons, fast food meals, the mountain and the not-mountain.
What are you thinking?
I’m thinking about soup! I’m going to start on a pot of creamy broccoli after I finish these questions and I’m considering ways to make the recipe new.
You’re sad because yesterday you lost your job as a first-year barista. However, owing to the kind ministrations of techno-capitalism, you’re already been contacted by an executive recruitment firm tasked with finding a new Thanos for the Marvel universe. No, I don’t mean a new thespian to play Thanos. Josh Brolin, all his body paint, prosthetics, CGI and whatever are safe. I’m talking about the real Thanos.
Negatives: If you get this role, you’ll be forced to become a two-dimensional being in more ways than one.
Positives: The compensation and benefits package is simply incredible, otherworldly if you will.
Verdict: You want this job. Nay, you NEED this job.
At the end of a battery of interviews, personality and intelligence testing, and other borderline Orwellian processes you sit down with the firm’s CEO for a final interview. This CEO, let’s call her Z, is so well regarded in the field of executive recruitment that if the interview goes well enough, you’ll get the job. You will be Thanos.
A grueling six-hour interview ensues in which you are refused everything from water to Kleenex to a phone call. You feel like a prisoner. You, in fact, feel so much like a prisoner that you say to Z, “I’m really starting to feel like a prisoner here.” Z assures you you’re not a prisoner, that you can get up and leave any time, but leaving will impact your eligibility for this coveted role as 2 D supervillain. You get up to leave anyway. You’ve really had it with this Z’s bullshit at this point. However, she raises a hand to cut you off before you can go. “Just kidding,” she says. “There’s only one more question, and if you ace the answer, you’ve got the job.”
You sit back down. “What is it?” you ask.
“Instead of being able to blink half the beings in reality out of existence, the Infinity Gauntlet allows you to select one famous dessert to blink out of existence. You must choose the famous dessert, the absence of which from our timeline would have the most far-reaching negative effects on reality. Which dessert do you choose? Please describe the effects corresponding to its nonexistence in detail.” Please be comprehensive and convincing. Your future career as a wealthy, famous two-dimensional supervillain is on the line.
Cleary the only choice, as cruel and catastrophic as it is to me personally, is the Oreo. While some may argue—what has the Oreo changed about the world? I would argue what hasn’t it changed? We will no longer stand mystified at the aisle of Limited Edition Oreo flavors and be able to marvel at the ingenuity (sometimes hubris, sometimes genius) of the flavors. So many young dreamers and scientists will never think “if they can go that hard, why can’t I?”
There will never be someone who tries some palette-abomination and learns from it? Will never reel at the taste and look of Swedish Fish Oreos, their vibrant and sinister red, and understand that this too is a curse that you survive, and it makes you stronger? To remove the Oreo is to remove the beauty and mystery of the universe.
Is God real?
I think that one’s up to everyone to decide for themselves.
Chloe N. Clark is the author of Collective Gravities (an NPR and Brooklyn Rail pick for Best Books of 2020), Patterns of Orbit, Escaping the Body, and more. Her forthcoming collection, Every Galaxy A Circle, will be published by JackLeg Press. She is also a founding co-EIC of Cotton Xenomorph.
Kurt Baumeister is the author of the novels Pax Americana and the forthcoming Twilight of the Gods. His writing has appeared in Salon, Guernica, Electric Literature, Rain Taxi, The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Nervous Breakdown, The Weeklings, and other outlets. An acquisitions editor with 7.13 Books, Baumeister holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College, and is a member of The National Book Critics Circle and The Authors Guild. Find him at kurtbaumeister.com.