by Tom CONOBOY

Tom Conoboy, who says “knick­ers” in­stead of un­der­wear, be­cause he’s British, and who knows far more than mere mor­tals can grasp, be­cause he was a li­brar­i­an, oc­ca­sion­al­ly an­swers the ques­tions that we ed­i­tors of John­ny Amer­i­ca find our­selves baf­fled by. The fol­low­ing is the sec­ond set of said queries.

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Q1: Why is Nao­mi Camp­bell so angry?

A1:There are lots of the­o­ries re­gard­ing this. One re­cent study sug­gest­ed a lack of car­bo­hy­drate in the typ­i­cal stick model’s di­et turns es­tro­gen in­to testos­terone, but this has been clear­ly de­bunked, oth­er­wise the fra­grant and charm­ing He­le­na Chris­tensen would dis­play sim­i­lar­ly ogre-ish sensibilities.

Oth­er sug­ges­tions in­clude hav­ing a chip (British word for French fry) on her shoul­der, but her shoul­ders aren’t wide enough so that can’t be true either.

No, the rea­son is sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple. As a su­per­mod­el, a sym­bol of all that is suave and chic in our hec­tic world, Nao­mi Camp­bell is still best re­mem­bered for falling off shoes the size of a low-rise apart­ment and flash­ing her fan­ny at the world’s cam­eras. Even now, it still ran­kles Ms Camp­bell that this will un­doubt­ed­ly be her epi­taph and the sto­ry re­fus­es to die.

Oops, John­ny Amer­i­ca may just have en­sured that an­oth­er Camp­bell house­maid gets the sack…

…

Q2: You said that the worst way to die is “be­fore you’re ready.” But would­n’t that be the worst time to die? Al­so, I think most peo­ple die be­fore they feel ready. And that would im­ply that “be­fore you’re ready” is in fact av­er­age, not worst. What about “be­fore you’re ready and al­so while be­ing eat­en alive by bad­gers”? Is­n’t that worse?

A2: The worst way to die is be­fore you’re ready and be­ing eat­en alive by badgers.

I can’t agree with the mo­tion. Bad­gers are car­ni­vores, quite big car­ni­vores. There­fore, they will be ca­pa­ble of tak­ing quite large chunks out of you. With good for­tune, your maul­ing at the teeth of a bel­liger­ent bad­ger would be brief, if brutal.

What would be much, much worse would be to be eat­en alive by a veg­e­tar­i­an an­i­mal, let’s say a rab­bit. Think about it. One, their teeth are small and stub­by, not de­signed for cut­ting through meat. It’s go­ing to take time. At first, it’s go­ing to feel like be­ing tick­led to death. Af­ter a while, the rab­bit might get the hang of it and start bit­ing a bit hard­er but it’s still go­ing to be a long slog. And two, and I think this is the main point, can you imag­ine the ex­is­ten­tial angst that will be go­ing through that life­long veg­e­tar­i­an’s mind? Every mouth­ful of your flesh is go­ing to cause it to re­coil in dis­taste. Re­mem­ber the first time you tast­ed spinach? That’s what it’ll be like for the rab­bit, but a thou­sand times worse. It’ll have to force down every mouth­ful. All in all, it’s go­ing to be hor­ri­bly slow.

Let’s face it, death by rab­bit could take weeks. You’d be scream­ing for a pass­ing bad­ger to come and fin­ish you off.

Filed under Tom Conoboy Knows the Answers on November 16th, 2006

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