inane question

One my favorite early internet time wasters came courtsey of Jeeves. They were very proud of their dapper fellow's ability to field searches in the form of a question. The question format was a good alternative for anyone who thought that a Boolean operator was a character from the first episodes of Star Trek. Maybe we all want a servant, no matter how humble.

I rarely used Jeeves as a search engine. However the site had a great, great feature which I loved. You could click into some pantry and watch the questions scroll by that people were asking Jeeves. "What does purple mean?" "How do you teach a child to tie a shoe?" "European or African Swallow?" "Where is Burkina Faso?" I liked that a lot.

I was reminded of this watching the list of new blog posts that scroll along on the Blogger homepage. Just not the same. Blog rolls names are aggressive by design. Questions have a built-in poignance and invitation. Maybe that's why I've been finding them interesting for the first time in a long time. Have I gotten to the point where questions are a kind of comfort? If I think so, I'm probably asking the wrong question.