Ask Rachel

Interesting fact: I thought that Mark Twain got erroneously credited with all kinds of wrong quotes, until I read where he said that the majority of misattributions actually go to Winston Churchill.

Interesting fact: The title of A Clockwork Orange apparently came from an offhanded Cockney expression overheard in a pub. It’s also likely full of metaphor and symbolism. But this isn’t that kind of paper.

Interesting fact: I was looking up facts about Beyonce? in Austin Powers, when I discovered that Mr. Bigglesworth’s real name is Ted Nude-Gent. Why keep searching from there?

Interesting fact: Three states away from Colorado also gets you to: Washington, Saskatchewan, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Durango – the Mexican one.

Interesting fact: Other North and South Americans get irked that we call ourselves “Americans,” like we United Statespeople have some exclusive right to the term. Guess what, world? We have no other natural terms for ourselves. At least not polite ones.

Interesting fact: Forget fact-checking for veracity. Did you know there is no service for checking facts for intrigue and interest? I wield all the power here.

Interesting fact: Did you know that Google Maps doesn’t work when you want to recalculate your route but have no service? I do now.

Interesting fact: I challenge you to find and listen to a female guitarist this week. I googled “greatest guitarists,” and I clicked on the arrow five times before a woman showed up – and no offense, but Joni Mitchell is not the GOAT.

Interesting fact: Looks like regular Skittles dropped the lime flavor in 2013. Thanks, Obama.

Interesting fact: Colorado has been declared 99.99 percent drought free thanks to all the snow, and I’m just wondering which little plot somehow escaped getting snow in May.

Interesting fact: The goat in the idiom “scapegoat” is based on a misreading of a Hebrew word for the name of a demon. Similarly, all answers herein are likely based on misreadings of regular ol’ English words.

Interesting fact: Antimeria is the rhetorical technique for using one part of speech as another part of speech. I’m going to antimeria the crap out of today’s responses, just for you.

Interesting fact: A “Jerry” is apparently “one who demonstrates complete and utter ignorance in their sport, mostly in skiing.” Looks like we’ll be renaming this column “Ask Jerry.”

Interesting fact: The release of the first “Avengers” movie ignited outrage abroad because it was promoted with the tagline “Hey Japan, this is a movie.” It was probably an innocent translation mistake, like all the kanji tattoos ever bestowed on white people.

Interesting fact: You’d think the Earth could have its own day. But no: Earth Day has to be shared with National Girl Scout Leaders Day and National Jelly Bean Day. At least it only gets elbowed out by National Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet Day when they coincide on the third Friday of April.

Interesting fact: An easy-to-hit pitch is often called a meatball, presumably because meatballs were juicy and enticing and irresistible back in the 1940s when the term was minted. I like to think we’ve advanced our cultural tastes since then.

Interesting fact: Grok is a neologism from Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. It sort of means “to understand,” but with a whole lot of nuance that I just don’t grok yet.