Pointless Questions...with Aaron Mucciolo

So all my grandiose (that’s French!) promises as to what would be covered in this week’s column have failed to come to be. Of course, you’re not about to dig up a month-old paper just to find out what I was supposed to be writing on this week.

Where does the phrase “to boot” come from, as in, I’ve got a headache and a runny nose to boot? -Wendy Taylor, OC ’02

It appears to derive from a lesser-known use of the verb booted or boots meaning ‘to be of help or advantage.’ That word in turn derives from the Middle English boten meaning ‘to be of help.’ This usage is largely found in the southern US, according to the American Heritage Dictionary.
And it’s down in the South that we can find a better connection between ‘boot’ and the idiomatic phrase of the question. The word ‘lagniappe’ (that’s right, the lagniappe)—otherwise known as boot—is something extra or an unexpected gift. It’s usually used in reference to an additional item, something nice (perhaps even…helpful?) included by a storekeeper with a customer’s purchase. So ‘to boot’ is an offshoot of these ‘accompanying’ verbs and nouns.

What if this weren’t a rhetorical question?

If you can solve this one, you will be doing a great service to a violinist from Missouri: how does the Nintendo know when you’ve killed a duck in the 1980’s vintage Duck Hunt? – Mark Barden, conservatory senior
Nintendo kept shuttling me to their PR people (which was an amusing enough situation—‘Hi, I have a question about Duck Hunt’ ‘About what?’ ‘Duck Hunt… it’s a game your company made.’ ‘I don’t really know anything about that, sorry.’) So I turned to the web, and surprise, surprise, all our questions were answered. Including my editor, Blake’s, one about his weird fungus. I won’t reveal Blake’s full name so as to protect his reputation with the ladies.
Okay, random asides aside, here’s the skinny: think back to playing the game and you may remember that when you pulled the trigger on the pistol the screen went all black with just the duck shape standing out in white. Inside the gun is something called a photodiode that senses light (like the white shape of the duck in the middle of blackness) and converts it into electrons, which create an electrical current or signal. That signal is then sent to the computer, so when you pull the trigger the computer checks whether it’s getting a signal from the photodiode in the gun. If so, the duck is dead.
Hmm. ‘The Duck is Dead.’ Anyone see a bad indie-rock band coming out of this?
Anyway, there’s your answer—the gun isn’t shooting the screen, it’s the screen shooting the gun.

If I start right now, I just might get caught up on all my work. Or, I suppose, I could pay a first-year to do it. Maybe I could call it an internship and offer it for credit and not have to pay anything… Anyway, email your questions to aaron.mucciolo@oberlin.edu or mail ‘em to Pointless Questions c/o The Oberlin Review, Wilder Box 90, Oberlin, OH 44074. Your name will only be used with your permission.