Dear Colonel -- Popcorn by The Colonel #49

​Q: So if things go according to plan, how many new units of market-rate rental housing are we talking about in downtown Middletown? --Curious

A: "Plan"?


Q: I am committed to living downtown for the rest of my life for personal reasons. What I want to know is, when I am about to die, will the banshee come wailing for me even though I am only a quarter Irish? --Hibernius

A: No.

Q: I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show, a fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes, because celluloid heroes never feel any pain, and celluloid heroes never really die. --Ray Davies

A: Nice.

Q: All your base are belong to us. --Bad guys

A: Nuh-uh.

Q: Aristotle rejected Plato's belief in the reality of the so-called Platonic Ideals, but is that really a killer defect in Plato's philosophy? Didn't neo-Platonism pretty much solve that problem? --Bugsy Siegel III

A. Yup. Nope.

Q: I take the rumors of your drinking cum grano salis, if you get what I mean, but still, do you have a favorite morning-after quote? --John Bartlett

A: "I can't think of anything worse after a night of drinking than waking up next to someone and not being able to remember their name, how you met, or why they're dead." --Laura Kightlinger

Q: A friend told me that a certain prolific reporter for The Middletown Eye used to brew beer and once sent a sample to a national contest that was offering a prize for the best home- or craft-brewed beer. He got back a letter, but has never revealed the contents. What did it say? --"Dish" Lover

A: "Your horse has diabetes."

Q: Can the people united ever be defeated? --Disheartened Obamist

A: Yes -- entropy.

Q: Is the post office part of the government or not part of the government? --Just Want to Get It Straight

A: It's a chimera, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: technically private but with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink guarantee by the federal government. Expect trouble.

Q: Is the moon smaller than the earth because it's farther away? --Stephen Hawking

A: No.

Q: I sent you my screenplay by regular mail for your comments, and I just got a copy back, certified mail return receipt requested, with a cover letter from you saying that you just wrote this screenplay and wondered what I thought of it. What kind of badger game are you playing? --William Faulkner

A: The Colonel doesn't know what you're talking about.

Q: Is the end near? --Travelers Insurance Company Actuarial Department

A: Depends what you mean by near. It's coming in 2015.

Q: Esteemed Colonel: Can you recite the Greek alphabet from memory? --E.B.

A: Yes -- alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, xi, omicron, pi, rho, sigma. tau, upsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega. The obsolete letters digamma, qoppa, sampi, san, sho, and stigma are omitted because, well, they're obsolete. (That joke never gets old, and by now, if it could have, it would have.)

Q: Did you see that cartoon where two old Eskimo men are adrift on neighboring little ice floes, and one is finishing a cell phone call and telling the other, "It's my kids calling to wish me a happy Father's Day"? --New Yorker fan

A: Yes.

Q: Do you publish just the letters that don't threaten the power structure of the status quo? --Not a Conspiracy Theorist

A: Yes.

Q: Are you into The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Star Wars, Farscape, Battlestar Galacta, Dungeons and Dragons, The Game of Thrones, and that sort of thing?

A: Not so much. And by the way, it's "Galactica."

Q: Why is Middletown called "the Forest City"?

A: At a guess, lotta trees?

Q: Why is Berlin, Connecticut pronounced BER-lin instead of Ber-LIN, like the German capital?

A: Dunno, but the first-syllable emphasis predates, and therefore cannot be the product of, the anti-German hysteria of World War I, like "Liberty Measles." Ask Jeeves.

Q: Who was the greatest man ever to write in Latin? I don't mean the greatest Latin stylist, I mean the greatest man.

A: According to Gary Wills, Augustine of Hippo, of whose writings about a million words survive.

Q: If you're so evil, eat this adorable kitten.

A: No, but if that's how you treat kittens, you will be given no more. All your kitten are now belong to us.

Q: Do you ever run out of ideas about how to end a column and have to resort to some cheap trick?

A. No.