More questions you have that you don't want to clutter up GQ with.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

What’s the male equivlent to a mistress?

What are the characters Snap, Crackle and Pop supposed to be (of Rice Krispies fame). One’s a baker, yeah. One’s a soldier, yeah. What’s the third one?!

Why is the phrase “Oh boy.” Why isn’t it “oh girl”? Where did the exclamation or utterence of “oh boy” come from, and why is it male based? Or is this just one those things that happened to be and doesn’t really have an answer?

What will ultimately become of the earth and all living creatures on it (at the time)? The sun isn’t going to be around forever, being a star and having a death date eventually. What will happen then? In a couple billion years, isn’t it true that there will be no more earth or living people (unless they exist in other worlds or we’ve managed to move off of this planet by then)?

If I don’t need my appendix, then why was I born with one?

Feel free to answer any you can and leave your own small questions that you ponder over, but that aren’t worthy of a whole General Questions topic.

2

I think I read somewhere that it used to be Master. I have no cite for that, though.

I always assumed that he was supposed to be the goofy one, so he doesn’t need a career.

3

Checking the Kelloggs Site and Wiki it becomes clear that while Snap wears the Bakers hat and Pop wears the Military Hat, Crackle has no determined career.

I learned long ago in school that the Appendix was used by our distant ancestors to help process foods we no longer eat. I believe current science is not so sure.
I recommend Googling some science sites like SCIAM & New Scientist.

Jim

4

The Sun will eventually start to expand as it approaches its Red Giant phase, whereupon if anybody is till around they will die due to massive heating, and the Sun will eventually consume the planet as it grows. As I understand it, all the planets up to and including Mars will be enveloped by the Sun.

5

I’ve been telling people for years that that thing is a liability.

It’s not yet known to Science, but the appendix is actually the seat of the human soul. Those who have it removed are forever divorced from the Divine

6

The appendix is a vestigal organ. It’s useful in other animals, but we don’t need it. But since it doesn’t kill us (often), it hasn’t been selected out of the species yet. There’s some evidence that it plays a small role in the immune system, but we’re fine without it.

7

A gigolo is the most usual term. A male concubine is (very obscure and archaic word ahead) a concubator.

We’ll all convert to Mormonism and pull handcarts to the Pleides.

Because your great-great-great-great (to the 1000th power) grandparents needed their’s, plus there are theories we do use it, just not as much as we once did. Men have nipples and vestigial wombs because we’re formed on a female template (oversimplification I know). Humans still have body hair even though it’s really not that useful anymore either, and childbirth was probably far easier when we walked on four limbs.
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Here’s a question I have: What was the main advantage of firearms against skilled archers? I know that in the Americas the sword was actually a deadlier European weapon to the Indians than the gun (in the very early decades of colonial exploration) but then again the Indians used flint arrowheads and their bows weren’t generally as powerful; in Europe where a longbow could be fired several times in the time to load a musket and arrowheads were metal and mass produced (at least compared to the time it took to knap a flint one) it seems firearms would have been a drawback.
And did 18th century Americans smoke marijuana? You’re always reading that they grew hemp, but that’s used in making rope and cloth and other products- did they actually smoke what we would consider pot? (i.e. did George and Martha Washington really put on some mellow harpsichord and chill?)

8

PS- Some useless trivia to the above- the word gigolo is closely related to the word jig; a gigolo was technically a paid dancer and women would pay them for dance instruction or to dance with them, and of course often for other services. Rudolph Valentino was a gigolo in this sense of the term and, prior to his success, it’s rumored the other.

For a gay/bi man a male mistress is usually just called a “boy toy” or “hustler” if it’s strictly a commercial arrangement, a “companion” otherwise. (There seems to be more disdain for rich older gay men [Ian McKellan, say] who live with much younger trophy boys [which McKellan does] than for, say, Kelsey Grammer or Robert DeNiro (both of whom have very attractive much younger wives).

9

Crackle’s a slacker.

Ack. Suddenly I’m picturing Ahhh-nold carrying a shotgun and wearing a veil.
The Concubator…

10

Short Answer: Training to use a musket is minimal and the large bang it made was fairly useful for scaring opponents upon their first encounters.
The Long Bow is a great and powerful weapon compare to the early firearms, but they took dedicated training and great strength. It required far more craftsmanship to build the bows.

Jim

11

Kept man?

I always thought Crackle’s outfit resembled an archaic sailor’s or pirate’s outfit.

Or, given that the first picture shows Pop in a baker’s or food-worker’s type hat, perhaps at some not-fully-thought-out point, they were supposed to be the Butcher, the Baker and the Candlestick Maker, as in, “Rub a dub dub, three men in a bowl of milk and aerated grain products!”

I found an etymology site that claims the phrase dates from 1910, but gives no cite.

The ones that are around (which will most certainly not be humans, unless we manage to buck the usual extinction pressures and become the most unprecedentedly successful species ever)O will leave or watch the seas boil away around them as they burn to death.

It hasn’t been evolutionarily selected against.
Mine: why are the things crossbows fire called “bolts”? Why don’t they just call them “arrows”?

12

Looking over various images, it struck me that Crackle looks a lot like some variation of elf.

The Kellogg’s Canada site notes

From which I deduce (correctly or not) that when Snap and Pop picked up more specialized uniforms, Crackle remained a brownie.

(I would also point out that while everyone (including Kellogg’s) refers to Pop’s military hat, his overall uniform is more specifically that of a musician in a marching band. (This does not rule out “military,” of course.)

13

If I don’t need my appendix, then why was I born with one?

It’s a gift from Allah, so when your caught stealing the first time, they can cut an equal weight of flesh from your body, without losing something that matters.
What are the characters Snap, Crackle and Pop supposed to be (of Rice Krispies fame). One’s a baker, yeah. One’s a soldier, yeah. What’s the third one?!

They all have severe bone desease, which is obvious, by their diminutive size and the fact that they snap, crackle and pop. Crackle is on disability and never worked.

What’s the male equivlent to a mistress?

A mistertress

What will ultimately become of the earth and all living creatures on it (at the time)? The sun isn’t going to be around forever, being a star and having a death date eventually. What will happen then? In a couple billion years, isn’t it true that there will be no more earth or living people (unless they exist in other worlds or we’ve managed to move off of this planet by then)?

Having developed into energy beings by the year of Nim 1,000,000,001, the beings of Earth will just get extremely fat gorging on the expanding sun. Most Earthlings will have settled multiple galaxies by that time since all will be capable of effecting the material universe by thought alone. The sun will go nova on the day that the Earth’s custodians are distracted and nobody is keeping the sun in check… They will be heard to say “I suppose this means we’re fired…” “Nah, shit happens.”

Why is the phrase “Oh boy.” Why isn’t it “oh girl”? Where did the exclamation or utterence of “oh boy” come from, and why is it male based? Or is this just one those things that happened to be and doesn’t really have an answer?

The phrase is a corruption of Glad to see you old boy, and miss. Since it’s rude to call a lady old girl, but fine to call your male friend old boy, the phrase became oh boy

14

“Boy toy” is also used for straight men, particularly when it’s an older woman and a younger guy.

Also, on a British TV show I heard the term “fancy man” used to describe this sort of person.

15

Thanks. Makes perfect sense of course. (Basically the same reason the Westerners had the saying “God created man but Samuel Colt made 'em equal”, only a few centuries before.)

16

OK, I’ve got one that’s been niggling at me for a while: Anyone see the film Johnny Got his Gun? I saw it years and years ago, and I seem to remember a scene where a nurse tearfully gives Joe a handjob. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

17

I won’t say it confirms it, but I saw an edited version of it on TV where it certainly seemed (if it weren’t edited for TV) that’s what she was doing and it’s what I always assumed she was doing. (Godamighty what a depressing movie.)

18

Yep. Muskets made conscript armies much more feasible, logistically. A farmboy could become a musketman in six weeks, where archery was a lifetime study. It strikes me as very similar to what happened when the pike entered the scene a couple centuries earlier. Hell, muskets and pikes even had overlapping philosophies. Stand in formation, strike in unison and with a rhythm, and always always stand firm.

Also, as was said earlier, cost was another huge factor. While muskets were a lot weaker than longbows, they and their ammo were a lot cheaper and faster to mass produce.

As with damn near everything in war, it all boiled down to logistics.
As to the crossbow question. The simple answer is that a bolt ain’t an arrow. They look similar in shape but are quite different in almost every other way. So I imagine that they’re just like every other weapon; they have a specific name. It’s like swords or rounds or coffee or cars I guess. To a layman, they’re all pretty much the same thing but to an expert, distinction is pretty important.

19

I thought Crackle was a “fool”.

20

Never saw the film but I know she does it in the book.