The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

Sorry to have been so frustratingly silent on the question of answers. Basically, it comes down to this: I get the quiz up in absurd haste every week, and then the desperate task-fulfillment that now regularly defines my Friday overwhelms me. I leave the office, trailing behind me the detritus of another poorly-managed workweek, and with Sunday night's fill-in-the-missing-pieces marathon already an incipient headache.

The resultant Bad Feelings are treated on Friday evenings by doses of the cheapest wine available (or, in more extreme cases of Bad Feelings, a Manhattan or a Pegu Club) and an avoidance of the computer. Saturday is dominated by an awareness that all of our clothes are filthy, there's no milk in the house, and our feet have been bonded to the floor by a gluelike substance created by a coating of orange juice, sweet potatoes, and various "healthy" cereals that are, let's face it, pretty much Cap'n Crunch made with molasses and brown rice. Various attempts to stave off the final collapse of the household into what is professionally known as a "hell hole" occupy such time as is available between tantrums, playdates, and readings of whatever happens to be the most annoying book Helena brought home from the library.

Saturday evening is dominated by the awareness that we can't drink ourselves into oblivion EVERY night, and so Bad Television is employed to stave off the return of Bad Feelings until exhaustion brings whatever sleep can be garnered between bedwettings, leg pains, and dreams about horrible giraffes that come and put you in jail.

Sunday includes (in no particular order), brunch, a disastrous and usually expensive attempt at a "fun" outing with the kids, the awareness that if I don't cook something in the afternoon we'll be eating pasta with sauce a la Fairway all through the week (baby carrots on the side give that meal a real balance!), and the inexorable arrival of that Sunday night oh-my-god-I've-got-so-much-work-to-do headache.

Not to say there aren't many minutes when I could probably sit down at the computer and provide the quiz answer. But I feel compelled to do more than just spit it out. I have to explain, to defend my stupid question, to argue that even given the idiot way I worded the question, it doesn't mean that boxjam got it in the second comment although at the same time of course he's technically right.

So, I decide to do it later.

Cut to next Friday morning...

Anywhere, here are the answers you're owed. To last Friday's Quiz: Part One was nailed by Jonathan – the actor playing Tybalt accidentally ran his stage foil about seven inches into Mercutio's body. Part Two: Albert Brooks, everyone! And yes, that show would have been SO worth reissuing on DVD. Although Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World was one of the most profound filmic misfire's I've recently seen, I still worship at the shrine of Brooks.

And the clarification on the previous Quiz answer, with regard to the theory about the origin of the name of Oregon – in a 1944 article published in the journal American Speech, etymologist George Stewart cited an early-18th-century French map, on which the Ouisiconsink River (now known as the Wisconsin river) was written as "Ouariconsint", but it was broken across two lines. The "sint" part appeared on the second line, so it looked at first glance as if there was an important river called the "Ouaricon". This error, the theory suggests, was picked up by Robert Rogers and Carver in their papers and maps (with evolving spelling), and then popularized by Bryant.

My humble apologies for the delay in providing the full answers to these quizzes. And if it isn't obvious, I really should take a break this week, so I'll have to beg off from providing a question today. But please feel more than free to hurl insults, counter-rants, or substitute questions in the comments.