Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Why are Tom and Jerry so mean to each other?
- Jennifer

Dear Jennifer,
  The struggle between a physically powerful oppressor and a diminutive but intellectually gifted challenger is as old as the biblical story of David & Goliath. And considering the liberal ways that the bible borrows from previous mythology, chances are it's considerably older. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera simply transposed the ageless struggle into the anthropomorphized animal oeuvre and added modern household instruments of torture to the combatants' arsenals.

  Alternate Answer: Because cats like to eat mice, whereas mice generally prefer to remain uneaten. Duh.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Why is douche such a funny word?
- jenny

Dear jenny,
  Douche is a great word. First off, it's just fun to say. Douche, douche, douche, douche, douche. Like the best profanities, it's a single syllable that's easy to yell at the top of your lungs.

  Douche also has advantages over many of the traditional swear words. It fits into the "dirty" category of "things intended to go in a vagina" (see also: dildo) without the usual sexual connotation (see: dildo). As an insult, it carries the added bonus of association with the dreaded no-so-fresh feeling. When you call someone a douche, you're impliedly telling them they deserved to be jammed in a skanky vagina, in a way that will be pleasurable for no one. It's simultaneously skeevy and emasculating, like a crack whore who laughs at your teeny winky.

Spotted On A Sweltering June Day:

  Two boys, alike enough to be brothers, approximately 10 and 12 years old, respectively. Both of them were built like a "before" picture on an ad for some fad diet. Big, round bellies had completely engulfed the waistlines of their shorts; slabs of boy-breast that would have failed the pencil test even if a small dog were substituted for a trusty #2.

  How does that happen? Is there not a single adult in their lives that thinks "maybe these boys shouldn't need training bras?"

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  How come the El train in Philly turns into a subway in Center City? Also, why does the subway turn into an El train when it's not in Center City?
- Blue Line Bandit

Dear Blue Line Bandit,
 There is doubtless a Perfectly Reasonable Explanation, involving water tables, soil densities, and other dull technical information. However, my Wildly Uninformed Perspective is skeptical about all that blather. In the early 20th Century when the line was being constructed, Center City's roster of well-to-do residents and businesses was "important" in a way that the poorer western and northeastern neighborhoods weren't. That disparity of economic swagger still holds true today. Coincidentally, Center City's residents and businesses get to have their rail transportation buried underground, while people living in Kensington and West Philly have the pleasure of a gigantic metal monstrosity covering their streets and trains rattling by at the level of their second-story windows.

  This is, of course, rank speculation. If anyone has a less invidious explanation, I'd be willing to entertain it.

SEPTA Update:

  When it's hot and humid - as if it's EVER hot WITHOUT being humid in this town - the back of the bus smells like ground in BO rinsed in stale urine. Then again, so does most of the city. When the bus exhaust is the best-smelling part of your commute, it's time to buy a gas mask.

 EDIT: If I ever publish a book, I hope a typo somewhere will label me a "poorly-smelling author." That would rule.

Rethinking My Sartorial Choices

  I stopped wearing t-shirts that were wittier than myself a few years back, but this new design has me pondering a reprieve on the ban.

  Webcomics OG Jeffrey Rowland (When I Grow Up, Wigu, and the semi-true journal comic Overcompensating) has a designers eye and a zeitgeist radar that's visible from space. His t-shirt designs are consistently among the smartest and most visually appealing product to crawl out of the shameless merchandising whore-factory that is the sole means of revenue generation for most webcomic artists. If you're a t-shirt guy or gal, and my endorsement means anything at all, you'll buy a shirt (or twelve) at Topatoco.com. My birthday is in October.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Why oh why? Delilah?
- Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,
  Samson has been asking himself the same question since Long Ago, BCE. Delilah was Samson's wife; she coaxed him into revealing that his long hair was the secret of his Herculean strength, and then gave him a quick trim and betrayed him to his enemies. Fortunately for Samson, Old Testament God (before he got all New-Agey and lame) was cool with guys who bludgeoned hundreds of non-believers to death, so he got his revenge in the end.

  I always think of this story when Trolling Fundies decry the morals of modern entertainment. Here's a tale prominently featuring thousands of beating deaths. At the end, the hero commits what can only be called a low-tech suicide bombing; he pulls the Philistine temple down on himself, killing "many more as he died than while he lived." (Judges 16:30). But if someone says "fuck" on TV, the world will explode and we'll all be cast into hell. Or something.

  When I was a kid, I had a set of View-Master discs featuring illustrated bible stories. The only thing more awesome for a pre-adolescent boy than a picture of hundreds of beating victims and their jawbone-wielding assailant is a picture of hundreds of beating victims and their jawbone-wielding assailant in 3-D!

  In other news, Wikipedia has an entry for hair. Seriously? Does anybody sophisticated enough to look things up in an online encyclopedia not know what hair is?