How Are You?

For those times when someone is asking and it might be better to not take the question too seriously, here are some not so serious answers that have been very thoroughly tested and tried out.

"Oh good, you mean you can write me a prescription?"

Of course you don't want to give your doctor an easy one like that. If that's how he gets down to business when you visit his office try "You don't get a lot of really positive responses to that, do you?"

(Looking at the backs of my hands.) "Well, I've been picking up a tan from the light in the fridge. Every time I open the door for a beer it comes on."

"You'd have to pull up a chair for a question like that. Where should I start? Well, I was born at a very early age..." The goal with this one is to get the person to run away yelling "No! I don't want to know. I was just kidding when I asked. Please don't tell me how you are."

After installing ducts in crawlspaces for a while: "Standing up and sunlight seem unnatural to me now."

While working as one of the lowest paid civilians in a police station: "Worried. I always thought I'd get to be chief one day, but the way things are going today, it's going to take longer than I expected."

Another one that had a bit extra at the station: "Still alive, but you probably picked up on that already."

"I was dreaming I was a muffler all night long, and ever since I woke up I've been exhausted."

An added note about this page.

When I set it up, the first sentence after the title was: "The best thing I've ever heard about this question is that it is a good one to ask yourself." I had a couple of strong indications that people didn't like that. One was that the average time spent on this page for a whole month was 3 seconds.

With a bit of effort in the right direction that question can get to be appreciated. To me it is a nice reminder of something obviously important.

A nice shortcut for anyone who does want to move in that direction would be the mp3 files and links toward the bottom of the machine guns at night page. I expect that most people who go there for the video don't get that far, but they were the main reason for the page. I thought they were remarkable and that a lot of other people might appreciate them too.