Are you much taken by jewelry?

Why won’t the aliens step forth to help us?

Do you know the distinctions, empirical or theoretical, between moss and lichen?

Yes, they are, aren’t they? The questions, I mean, all taken from the first four pages from The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell. This book is now on my Required Reading for Sentient Beings.

Here’s a paragraph from page 4:

Can you ride a bicycle very well? Was learning to ride one for you as a child easy or not? Have you had the pleasure of teaching a child to ride a bicycle? Are your emotions rich and various and warm, or are they small and pinched and brittle and cheap and like spit? Do you trust even yourself? Isn’t it, forgive me this pop locution, hard being you? If you could trade out and be, say, Godzilla, wouldn’t you jump on it, dear? Couldn’t you then forgo your bad haircuts and dour wardrobe and moping ways and begin to have some fun, as Godzilla? What might we have to give you to induce you to become Godzilla and leave us alone? Shall we await your answer?

This small volume is comprised entirely of questions. I merely dipped into it this afternoon and am having to force myself to stop reading it.

Would you like to live a life that allows for frequent use of acronym, as in “Let’s proceed according to SOP?”

Can you stand Pat Boone?

Are you daft?