LJ Daily Answers: 2 October 2006

"Fucking Scabbers!" - darksidebitca, summing up both the theme and every Harry Potter-related comment quite nicely, we find.



1. Time for cooking! What Provencial French dish involves a healthy mix of tomato, eggplant, zucchini, pepper, onion, garlic, olive oil, basil, thyme, parsley, salt, and pepper?

(Number of people searching for sage, rosemary, Simon, and Garfunkel: 3. -CV)

"the PREFERRED term is Provencal" - birdboy2000

(Only if you're French. Here in my cubicle, the preferred term is 'ribbit ribbit'. -CV)

"You mean "Provencial Freedom dish"!" - cmzero

"I'm guessing it's not moo goo gai pan." - david_deacon
"Not to be confused with Catatouille, a product of Franco-Cantonese fusion cuisine." - quasilemur
"If it were a Chinese dish with dog meat, it'd probably be called Rin-Tin-Tin." - germankitty

"Cooking? I'm lucky if I can make ramen noodles without hurting myself or setting anything on fire. And I doubt if there's anyone else who can say they've screwed up making easy mac." - supertrink

(Three years ago, I did something quite similar. -CV)

"The dish that contains nearly everything theninth is allergic to." - theninth

"are you trying to mock me? i'm here wasting time cos i have to go buy groceries to cook dinner. and of course by 'groceries', i mean something that comes on a plastic dish that goes in the microwave..." - therhythmthief

(Buy two. I'll be right over. -CV)

"The FUCK is eggplant? Eggs come from chicken-arse, not plants." - puredeadthingy
"Eggplant? I know not this thing. I believe you may mean 'aubergine'." - jonem

"No meat? This dish sucks. Bleeeeeeeh." - woap

"The great Veggie Tales massacre of 2004" - tarpo

"is that what ratatouille is? It was on the menu the other night and I didn't order it for fear there were mushrooms involved. I don't believe in eating parasites." - silensy

"When I was a kid and my mother tried to feed me ratatouille, I never wanted it because ewww, rat. It didn't help that she pronounced it rat-ate-you." - judith_s

"I told my kids when they were little that ratatouille meant rat soup. They cried." - ginalin

(+1, making children cry. -AL&CV)

" + + " - malhablada

Correct Answer: Ratatouille



2. Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and several others were part of a group of "establishment" entertainers that became legendary in the 50's and 60's; what was this group called?

"I challenge to fisticuffs any lad that dares suggest overRATed....Although, you know, they totally are. But still. Dean freaking Martin!" - thechinesecurse

(They are TOTALLY overrated. Now, I accept your challenge. Let's throw it down. -CV, third-degree black belt)

"After about 4:30 in the afternoon, they were usually called drunk." - southbucki

"We're too cool for the mob, too sexy for our martinis and we had to make ourselves into something bigger than we are individually in order to get dates." - wolffepsyche

"The 'Your Girlfriend Will Love Us More Than She Loves You Even After We're Dead And It's The Next Century' Crew. I have a serious hate on for Old Blue Balls, and would gladly never hear his crooning making panties moist at wedding receptions for the rest of my fucking life, thankyouverymuch." - etcet

"How'd they get this name anyway? Did they all cram into dirty kitchens and eat crumbs off floors?" - ccaretta

"Check these names out..SinaTRA, BogART, MARTin..I sure smell a RAT.." - beast_666

(Looks to me like maybe they should've been the Art Pack. -AL)

"The (pickled) Rat Pack; Drunks, Mafiosos, Womanizers, and a variety of Bi and Gay hotshots, sounds like a party of my best friends!" - saldw

"Lauren Bacall was a member of the Rat Pack? I call shenanigans! Splinter was more a member of the Rat Pack than Lauren Bacall. And that's because he's a giant mutated rat." - paradoxotaur

"I don't know why they were called the Rat Pack. Rat's don't travel in packs. They have been known to travel in mischiefs, hordes and plagues, though." - chrysoberyl

Correct Answer: The Rat Pack

"To be succeeded by the Brat Pack, the Frat Pack, and on the Disney Afternoon, the Quack Pack." - stgreyhounds



3. What 80's metal band was best known for its single "Round and Round" off of its album "Out of the Cellar"?

"Now I have 'You Spin Me Round' stuck in my head, and it's going to be there all day." - ladyiapetus, fleurdelista, supertrink, ghymoreid
"Here is what's now stuck in my head: 'The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round..." - shadowed_guise, judith_s

"CUM ON FEEL THE NOIZE!!! GIRRRLS ROCK YOUR BOYYYSSS!" - piney61

(Ladies and gentlemen, Quiet Riot is in the house. -CV)

"maybe a modern day Little Drummer Boy with a rat-a-tat-tat 'stead of a rum-pa-pum-pum?" - firebrand618

"Rage Against the Farmer's Wife? Or, wait, that was mice..." - the_wanlorn

"Rat-allica?" - amphelice, spatialrift47

"You need to stop asking music questions I don't know the answers to. I'm a goddamn music reviewer. I put out monthly reviews and pretend that I actually know about music and am not just crushing on Bjork. EVery time you ask me an obscure question I should know, a little part of me dies inside, sad and alone and damned to be shamed for the rest of eternity. I hope you're happy, LJDQ." - thomas_small

(+1 to us, breaking someone's soul. -AL&CV)

"I never understood why Milton Berle was in that video. Did they really think it would give the video some class?" -

"20 years later, and my ears are still ringing from front row RATT seats." - southbucki

"VH1 Classic has a commercial of a guy scraping a Grateful Dead sticker off his car and replacing with a RATT one. I thought the bear was much cuter." - jrho

"Ratt. Which reminds me of the best named tour I ever saw (listed; did not attend). The Ratt/Poison tour. That's really a stroke of marketing brilliance." - theninth
"Kinda like a twinbill with Madonna and Supertramp." - i_calql8

Correct Answer: RATT

"with 2 Ts." - wellowned
"The extra T is for terrible." - pheltzer
"It works for the Finnish language..." - etumukutenyak



4. Noah's Ark supposedly touched down on the peak of which Turkish mountain?

"Mount Doom" - uncut_diamond

(Geek. -AL)

"Mt. Youcantparkhere" - wiredwizard

"The Ratskills" - plantingseeds

"But how can anyone know? As Indiana Jones taught me, looking at the Ark causes HORRIBLE MELTY DEATH." - blunder_buss

(Yes, but no. -CV)

"Mount Arafat. No wait, that's the dead Palestinian dude. Mount Afarat. Mount Alfalfa? Whatever. They had olive trees in the area." - gaaak

"There's nothing funny about Turkey... except the tryptophan." - paradoxotaur

"It is pink and made from starch and sugar, isn't it?" - altoidsaddict

(-1 to you & everyone else who referred to Turkish Delight. Yeeeecch! -CV)

"Mount Ararat was actually composed of the collective dung produced by two of every animal over a 40-day period. Shovelling all that out of the ark was no Turkish delight, I can tell you." - quasilemur

"Why Ararat? Shouldn't it have been, like, Everest? That one's taller." -

(I guess Noah was just sailing in circles for 40 days & 40 nights & didn't venture far from the former location of the Promised Land. -AL)

"I doubt they let Noah steer that thing whilst drunk again. I wonder if he had to explain himself to Jehovah: 'So, Lord, about the *hic* ark on the *hic* peak... I can explain!'" - finding_rowan

"Ready for the influx of conspiracy theorists, ljdq? 'zomg it's on Mt. Ararat but the Turks won't let anyone look because ZOMG it'll mean the Bible is true ZOMG. Heathen Muslims!'" - halo4

(So far, you're the only one to reference this particular brand of hooey. -AL)

"Here-a-rat, Ararat, everywhere-a-rat-rat, Old Man Noah had an ark, E-I-E-I-Oy." - i_calql8

"Middle of nowhere Turkey. Somewhere, someone came up with a great idea for a tourist trap. 'Let's lure all these Islamo-Judeo-Christian tourists by putting a boat on top of a mountain!'" - fleurdelista

"And lo, God saw that Noah and his kin had survived the flood, and were happy. Yea, then didst Noah turn to his son and sayeth 'Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?' And God wept for the future of humanity." - spatialrift47

Correct Answer: Mt. Ararat



5. Crotalus adamanteus and Crotalus atrox are species of which creature?

(We really liked the range of knowledge displayed on this question. We have arranged the answers starting with Zero Biology Knowledge, going up. -AL&CV)

"Look, the only thing I learned in my biology II class was that if you threw a pencil hard enough to get it to stick in the ceiling tile, it typically wouldn't fall down until the next class period." - whiski_sour

"Ah, the deadly Metal-sharded Crouton and the uncommon Atrocious Stale Crouton, both of which reside in the deep pools of your soup to lunge at you when you least expect it with the strange tactic of jumping head first down your throat!" - shadowed_guise

"I have no idea, but atrox is my new favorite word!" - supertrink

"Adamanteus?
" - alliancesjr

"They're the 'hardy womp-rat' and 'ugly womp-rat' respectively. Neither is much bigger than 2 meters, so good luck bulls-eye'ing them in your T-17." - rikchik

(Geek of the Week? -AL)

(I say yes. Bulls-eye this -1, kid. -CV)

"I don't know. But I betcha they aren't rats. I wonder how many people you expected to catch with that....Out of curiousity (which the LJDQ is always evoking in me) I went to wikipedia and typed in 'rat-' and on a random page I found an entry called exploding rat. Very amusing - but not in the least bit helpful." - distractogirl

"I think they're snakes. Unless they're politicians?" - ophelialaughs

(Same thing. -AL&CV)

"Rattlesnakes. Which, contrary to popular belief, will not chase you down and gnaw on your face. They'd rather just sit two inches from your foot and then laugh when you finally notice them and run off screaming. This actually happened to me last week." - ccaretta

(Wait a minute, you heard a snake laughing at you? -AL)

(Shenanigans! -CV)

"I've been talking about rattlesnakes on a mailing list all week. Weirdly coincincidental..." - ginalin

(Curious. -AL)

"The Eastern and Western diamondbacks. Possibly the very first occurrance of the East-Versus-West rapper wars." - theninth

Correct Answer: Rattlesnake



6. Rodents: cute fuzzy mammals, pestilent vermin, or pan-dimensional overlords? Discuss.

"I dunno, but I can tell you that if your (synagogue/church/mosque) has a rat infestation, all you have to do is (bar mitzvah the rats/confirm the rats/take the rats to Mecca) and you'll never see them again." - spatialrift47

"...my husband calls them 'an omniverous snack food' and my girlfriend just chimed in with, 'they taste good with sweet and sour sauce'. Once more, LJDQ is bringing me closer in my relationships. To what, I'm not 100% sure." - ghymoreid

"Cute fuzzy mammals! I trained mine to bite my ex!" - thomas_small

"Pan-dimensional overlords. Proof: Hitchhiker's Guide and Secret of Nimh, Stuart Little, PINKY AND THE BRAIN... the list goes on and on..." -paradoxotaur

"I believe a rat can be repurposed into an attractive pair of mittens..." - jonem

("Repurposed"? -1, use of corporate Newspeak. -AL)

"Rodents: hard-working members of society, who contribute daily to the ongoing research that benefits the lives of millions around the world -- and humans too. Without rodents, we wouldn't have all kinds of lovely medicines, surgical techniques, implants, and so on -- so the next time your doctor jabs you with a needle, thank the thousands of lab mice and rats who went before you. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4135096.stm" - etumukutenyak

"Depends which rodent. I've always been suspicious of capybaras, to be honest." - queencallipygos

"I, for one, welcome our new murine overlords." - quasilemur
"...our new verminesque overlords." - canadianevil
"...our new Rodent overlords." - mrfishes
"...our new ratty overlords." - theninth
"...our new Alien Overlords." - david_deacon

"I saw 'pan-dimensional' and thought you were referring to a frying pan. And I was not even remotely surprised that you might consider frying up some rodent. And by 'you' I mean chaosvizier, not angledge, since he's the one with the penchant for eating cute fuzzy things." - jelymo

(Busted. -AL)

"Varmint. Scum. Menace to the golfing industry." - i_calql8



Rats; that's the end. We'll scamper back here tomorrow with a new one. Everyone else, share, enjoy, and go eat some cheese, because it's good. Mmmmmm, cheese.

Rock On!

AL&CV