A Two Pipe Problem

I now know how Sherlock Holmes felt.

"My mind rebels at stagnation - the insufferable fatigues of idleness," he said.
"My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built."

Like Sherlock on a slow day, my own cranial cranks and cogs are chewing themselves to pieces because I am, once again, "in between contracts". Add to that the fact that I am not feeling very well - my non-functional innards sapping any strength I had - and I am not only confined to barracks but also seemingly nailed to the settee in the lounge, within touching distance of the TV.

I'm not sure for which work my mind was built but I know it wasn't for scratching myself and breaking wind while watching countless hours of daytime television. Output from the Devil's Lantern during the day is not for entertainment, information or education. It is simply photosonic wallpaper aimed at numbing the senses of the jobless, lone parents and the mentally and physically ill, who make up its core audience, with a view to reducing their cognitive capacity to a level where they are no longer aware of the hopelessness and futility of their existence.

Sadly, my Holmesian leanings make me immune to this form of sedation. Instead, I just lie there and I watch. I think and I watch and I think. I can't help it. It just happens. The gears race, the cogs grind and the motor heats but I don't go anywhere, mentally let alone physically. Instead, these excruciating machinations just keep on pushing the same word to the front of my mind, time and time again - "why?".

I have been cursed with an inquiring mind and an insatiable desire to know "why?" ever since I was a little boy - not something which has endeared me to those in authority, ever since Miss McCartney used to ask me to make a ship out of a Cornflakes box and two loo roll holders when I was in kindergarten. "How", my second favourite, is one those in charge prefer to grapple with but they invariably come up with bullshit just to fob you off and so I am equally tormented by it.

In a desperate attempt to make my mind actually GO somewhere, could anyone out there please answer all or any of the following:

1. Why, when Quincy has a top job, is paid shedloads and is able to pull any bird in
Christendom despite evidently being in his 60s, almost completely spherical and with a face like James Dean (after the accident), is he always so fucking angry?

2. Why, if he is such a brilliant fucking private dick and can afford a powerful, flash sports car, does Jim Rockford live in a caravan on a car park?

3. How does Ironside get dressed in the mornings or go for a shit if he's single and
doesn't appear to have a full-time carer?

4. Why do women seemingly only feel the need to go paragliding or rock climbing when they are on their period and wearing white trousers?

5. If The Champions really can read each others
minds then why has the woman never had the two blokes arrested?

6. What does John do all day in Thunderbird 5 when he gets tired of listening to the radio and why doesn't Virgil just cut down those two fucking palm trees either side of the Thunderbird 2 runway?

7. Why does Kevin's brother Wayne in The Wonder Years stay the same size all the way through the different series and was he the model for Beavis?

8. How would the crew of Star Trek ever know when their five-year mission was over, bearing in mind that they frequently travelled at several times the speed of light and so time warped accordingly?

9. Why does it not occur to anyone involved with Skippy that a talking kangaroo might just be the answer to their money worries?

10. If a puppy ran off with the last of the bog roll while you were sitting taking a dump would your first reaction when you caught up with it be to smile and cuddle the little scamp?

Unemployment, and daytime TV, can go to Grantham.