Note-worthy Question!

Q: Hello Harv, I am in Pilippines now. My probins Leyte.

I ask why I can never find 200 piso notes here in my country? Why make note but not use? I like green color.

Tnx po, love AskHarv website!

A: Interesting question, dear reader! I have been unable to get accurate information on exactly how many 200 peso notes there are currently in circulation, which means it probably does not exist, but I can answer why the note was created and then subsequently not included in further print-runs.

Once officials released the commemorative note in 2002, it was quickly discovered that it drastically reduced the amount of bribe revenue coming in to police and government officials, as it provided an alternative denomination to the previously well-established and convenient bribe-standard, the p500 note.

This caused many corrupt officials to be unable to feed their families and led to threats of industrial action and work-stoppages.

Interestingly, the government is now considering phasing out the p500 and replacing it with a p720 banknote to boost bribe revenue again.

There is already a design proposed for the new note:

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A dead issue

Q: I was just sitting around thinking about shagging corpses and it occurred to me there's a gap in my knowledge. What is the difference between a Necrophiliac and a Necromaniac? And while we're at it, what the hell is a Necromancer?!

A: Well, dear reader, I am in the privelleged position of having a friend who is all of the above, so I'm somewhat of an expert on this issue!

A necrophiliac is someone who is interested, or even obsessed, with corpses and death.

A necromaniac takes the next step and finds himself sexually attracted to dead bodies. You may find such a person hanging out in cemeteries, exhuming corpses, picking the maggots off it, and perhaps grinding a bit of inanimate skeletal bone.

Note that an early indication of necromania is an attraction to Gwynneth Paltrow.

And a necromancer is all of the above, but more of a gentleman. He will usually take the corpse out for dinner, maybe a chick-flick or a nice museum trip (apparently corpses love Madame Tussaud's!) before taking it home to a bed scattered with rose petals, scented candles and romantic music.

And pounding the shit out of that corpse till the twilight hours.

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Mortality Musings

Q: If I'm gonna die tomorrow, why can't I just die today???

A: I had a friend ask me that exact same question once, and I'll give you the same answer I gave him: you CAN!

It's called suicide and it's a fantastic concept because it gives us all an option to choose the method of our own demise.

When I told me friend this, I added a piece of advice. If you're going to take your own life, you might as well go out with a bang.

Kick a clown in the balls and see if it makes a comical honking sound before shooting your face off. Eat your cat and grin at yourself in the mirror before flattening your testicles with a steam iron and bleeding out. Calculate a divide-by-zero and multiply the N/A result by 10, THEN drop your intestines onto the floor with a Katana.

Of course, my friend chose, possibly unwisely, to donkey-punch a Vietnamese hooker, drench himself in urine, and run around the local mall screaming "I am the ORACLE" -- I assume he'll get back to killing himself by throwing ninja stars at his own face when he gets out of prison.

Anyhow, the idea is: be creative. Death is a once-off experience, so do something crazy in your last moments.

I wish you the best of luck with your self-immolation.

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Toxic Longevity

Q: If poison expires is it still poisonous? I have an old bottle of cyanide lying around and was contemplating suicide, but am not sure if it'll work.

A: Some people will tell you it depends on the poison, but this simply isn't the case. The expiry date printed on poison is the date that the poison loses it's fatal toxicity and becomes a harmless and often tasty beverage.

In fact, expired poisons are often recycled to become ingredients in popular soft drinks and fruit juice blends. Some of the more popular juices on the market are blended with expired arsenic, sarin and anthrax, should they not be used for callous murder or genecide before their expiry date arrives.

So you better get yourself a new vial of cyanide, dear reader, because the one you have most likely tastes just like a delicious gulp of Dr Pepper, with twice the health benefits.

PS: Please don't poison anyone but yourself with this advice.

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Brick a broke

Q: How does one throw a brick through a window without making any noise?

A: Seems there are foul deeds afoot! However, like a nuclear arms manufacturer or the tabacco industry, it's not my place to presuppose the intent of my customers -- it's entirely possible you have a legitimate reason for wanting to throw a brick through a window.

It could be for a hollywood stunt, for instance. Or perhaps you really need to have a brick inside your house, but for some innocent reason don't have easy access to the interior of the house. Maybe the brick forgot its keys and you're just helping it out.

Either way, very sensitive of you to not want to disturb the neighbours with the raucous sound of shattering glass!

One needs only a basic knowledge of the physics of sound in order to answer your question. Sound is caused by tiny particles vibrating and disturbing the particles on either side of it. Eventually some of these distrurbed particles knock against our eardrums, which our brain processes as sound.

However, there is a phenomenon called noise cancellation. You may have heard of this in reference to noise-cancelling headphones. This is the process of generating a sound that has the inverse wave of another sound. At the midpoint of two identical sounds, the movements in the particles cancel each other out, and the human ear can no longer detect that any sound was issued -- eventhough it's really two identical sounds being issued simultaneously from an equal distance!

So all you need to do is convince a friend (who, ideally has identical size weight and proportions to you) to throw an identical brick through an identical window, in exactly the same manner, at exactly the same moment, and at exactly the same distance from the location at which you would like to keep the breaking glass inaudible.

Simple, isn't it?

Sure, it may mean losing two windows instead of one, but your neighbours will have a solid night's sleep.

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