From the desk of: Giles Fuquard, Language Usuage Investigator

I have noticed as of late a disturbing trend: the use of the phrase, “Quick Question for you.”

At the office, when a person approaches another person with a query, this oft-heard phrase seems likely to preface it:

“Quick question for you.” [Pause for a response, hopefully.] “Do you know where last week’s data accounting system merger backup files are located?”

First, I take issue with anyone who not only wants information from me, but attempts to limit my answer before I have even assessed the nature of their question. If you indeed wish to consult me for my expertise, you will have the courtesy to listen to my full reply. Otherwise, you must seek elsewhere for your “quick answer”.

Second: By using “Quick Question,” are you hereby implying that you are such a rush that you must abbreviate your question, or is it that you really just do not want to spend much time talking to me? And you are kindly informing me of this aversion to my presence with the polite “fuck you” synonym known as “Quick Question”?

This is a disturbing trend. The linguistic meme that spreads like a plague— until it inundates every corner of the culture, uses up our valuable intellectual resources and then disappears into the netherworld prefabricated nostalgia. It goes back to viral phrases such as “no doubt” … or the dreaded, “not for nothing” (a phrase that is truly “for nothing”.)

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I hereby, formally request that upon hearing the phrase “quick question” uttered, all parties should respond appropriately with e.g., “long answer”, “too late, not quick enough!”, or “dumb person” or, simply with a swift but firm smack to the side of the mouth of said inquisitor with a standard office stapler or similar implement.

II.

I was inside, it was dusk. The sky’s light was just beginning to turn that early-evening gray. I heard a rumbling, and then a thunder like a vast sheet of tin being shaken up and down. I ran outdoors to the front of my house, which was a little house with a roof like an upside-down ‘V’ with a little patch of very green grass in front of it, surrounded on either side and behind by other houses shaped exactly the same, those surrounded by an indefinite amount of same-shaped houses, in no particular arrangement as far as I knew. In front of my house there was a shed-like building and in front of that a set of train rails.

Things were starting to fall from the sky. Shiny, even luminous, yet clear blobs no more than a few inches long began to rain down at first slowly. I looked up and saw a gray blanket of turbulent, rolling stratocumulus clouds. I looked down at the ground and saw the transparent blobs starting to collect on the green grass of the ground. I tried to step around them as I walked out into my yard. I had brought my camera with the intention of photographing these things.

My neighbors didn’t seem particularly alarmed but I had a growing sense of fear. This is an invasion, I thought. That thought crept through the back, hidden part of my mind, made it’s way into the front. I tried immediately to suppress the next thought that snuck in to my consciousness, which was: these things are going to kill everything on this planet so that they can use it for themselves.

The things continued to rain down with increasing intensity and I continued to try to step around those that had landed on the ground with increasing difficulty. I may have stepped on a few as I opted to return to the inside of my little house. I stared out of the kitchen window, looking at the sky, looking at the houses around my little house, looking at the ground, wondering what to do next.

A report of some sort came through the wire, finally. This wire was either a T.V. or radio news program I overheard, or a thought that came directly into my head. The report was this: scientific analysis of the “creatures” (I am still not sure whether they were in fact “alive” in the sense that humans, or jellyfish, or even protozoa, are alive) showed that these things were unable to continue their existence (or “live”) after having come into contact with water. I felt my worry diminish as I knew that 71% of the Earth was covered with water. I felt a little more relief as I realized that approximately the same amount of the human body – my body – was made up of water. Whatever might have touched, stung, infected, or infiltrated my body would not survive. And most likely I, and most of the rest of the population of the world, would survive.