quora epitome of incomprehensibility Here I mean the online forum for questions and answers. Some of it is useful, some of it is nonsense, and a big chunk is neither. Regardless, this site has thriving boards in other languages than English, which is at least a little useful for me, if practicing other languages can be considered useful. At the very least, signing up for notifications for French and German posts was practice in turning ADHD traits to my advantage - putting distractibility and curiosity to work. Anyway, in the "not really useful but not complete bullshit" category are the sort of questions that give opportunities for people to tell stories or entertain, as in "What's your favourite joke?" Or, as I read in my neglected third language, "Welches ist Dein Lieblingswitz?" This time I was actually able to understand the joke without translating it into English! Yay for small victories. It's kind of stupid, but whatever. Goes something like this: ... A young woman named Katie rushes to her grandparents' house because she hears that her grandfather just died. She asks her grandmother what happened. "Oh," she says, "he had a heart attack when we were sleeping together." Katie says, "You mean you were having sex? Shouldn't you be careful with that at your age?" The grandmother says, "Oh, we WERE careful. We did it to the rhythm of the church bells every night. But," she sighs, "last night an ice cream truck went past..." ... I guess ice cream trucks make rapid ding-ding-ding noises there? The German version is dirtier, saying something about in on the ding and out on the dong - not that sort of dong, a bell dong. But here is the original text, credit to someone named Josh Krischer: Als Katie erfuhr, dass ihr alter Großvater gerade verstorben war, fuhr sie sofort zum Haus ihrer Großeltern, um ihre 75-jährige Großmutter zu besuchen und sie zu trösten. Auf die Frage, wie ihr Großvater gestorben sei, antwortete ihre Großmutter: "Er hatte einen Herzinfarkt, während wir am Sonntagmorgen miteinander geschlafen haben." Entsetzt sagte Katie zu ihrer Großmutter, dass zwei fast 80 Jahre alte Menschen, die Sex haben, sicherlich Ärger bedeuten würden. "Oh nein, meine Liebe", antwortete die Oma. "Vor vielen Jahren, als wir unser fortgeschrittenes Alter erkannten, fanden wir heraus, dass die beste Zeit dafür war, wenn die Kirchenglocken zu läuten begannen. Das war genau der richtige Rhythmus. Schön langsam und gleichmäßig. Nichts allzu Anstrengendes, einfach rein in das Ding und raus aus dem Dong." Sie hielt inne, um sich eine Träne wegzuwischen, und fuhr fort: "Er wäre noch am Leben, wenn der Eiswagen nicht aufgetaucht wäre." 241011 ... raze i don't know how they got my email address. i'm sure i never gave it to them. i haven't made an account. but i get emails from their digest every day now, because i once clicked on a thread that had something to do with squirrels. some recent questions: "my neighbour used my water hose to fill their pool up. i got them on camera. what can i do?" "is taylor swift actually a nice person?" "i am scared of dying. can anyone help? is there an afterlife?" "why is the mouth wired shut prior to cremation?" "what do nile crocodiles fear?" (which i misread as, "what do *nice* crocodiles fear?") "what happened to helen hunt's face?" sometimes i read the animal-related discussions. there are some good stories buried in there, whether they're true or not. 241011 what's it to you? who go blather from