Q: What gives you a mechanical advantage?

A: I've heard the rumors. I know what people are saying. I just want to set the record straight.

My sudden improvement this season, which has resulted in 11 consecutive perfect games, over 300 strike outs before the all-star break and a 15-0 record, has been the result of a new off-season workout regiment and a few tweaks to my mechanics. I throw the ball from a greater angle now, which gives my fastball greater velocity and more movement. That is my mechanical advantage. That an only that. New mechanics. Nothing else.

Despite what you may have heard, I didn't travel to the Philippines in the off-season and have my right arm surgically replaced with the arm of a space robot. That's simply ridiculous.

Sure, a lot of people might find it odd that, in one season, I went from a career journeyman, whose fastball topped out at 87, to a flamethrowing strikeout artist whose fastball now reaches speeds in excess of 152 miles per hour. But there's no secret. There's no magic behind it. There's no futuristic limb found in the wreckage of a meteor, that has been attached to my arm, covered with a skin like substance, and able to pass as human. It's all a matter of hard work and dedication. Sorry to disappoint you.

Sometimes people get better. Sometimes people figure themselves out. In 1919, Ruth hit 29 home runs, an all time single season record. The next year he hit 54. No one asked how he could do such a thing. No one accused him of using performance enhancing drugs. No one put him under the microscope, and had him tailed at all hours, hoping to get a glimpse of his beautiful, shimmering alien technology. No one sent reporters and detectives to the Philippines to interview doctors and scientists, only to find that they had all mysteriously vanished or been the victims of bizarre moped accidents. They just bought tickets, watched him hit the ball out of the park and marveled at the triumph of the human spirit. The human spirit. Not the alien robot spirit. The human spirit.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go see the trainer. I think I blew a gasket in the 9th.

That's a metaphor. Obviously,

Q: Is there a thorn today from the crone of thorns that Jesus wore?

A: There might very well be. As hard as it might be to believe, there's a chance that a thorn, a tiny little thorn, worn by a man, who may or may not have existed, thousands of years ago, might survive to this day. Highly unlikely, sure, but possible. Stranger things  have happened. A thorn from the crown of thorns could exist.

What you have in your hand, however, is not one of those thorns.

I'm pretty sure a thorn from the crown of thorns would be an actual thorn, probably from a bush. Or a rose.

It would not be a thumbtack.

What you have looks suspiciously like a thumbtack.

A thumbtack that has been covered in red paint.

Yup, that's a thumb tack all right.

A thumb tack from Staples.

There's still a price tag on it.

I highly doubt the crown of thorns worn by Jesus Christ was made entirely of Staples thumbtacks. You'd think they would have mentioned that in the Bible.

You'd think Staples would mention that today, by holding a "He Died for Our Sins Sale," or a "Jesus Paid the Price, so you Don't Have to Sale." Something like that.

Q: What is a liver disease that is often the result of drinking heavily for many years?

A: I don't know. I don't drink. I can't. I had my liver removed.

I had a perfectly healthy liver, but my niece was very ill and she needed a liver transplant. So I donated my liver. The entire thing.

Turns out you kind of need that. I probably should have had a second opinion. Or a first opinion. I probably should have run this whole scenario by a doctor at least once. Self-performed surgery is not simple matter and should not be undertaken lightly.

The worst part is that my niece contracted graft-versus-host disease and her body rejected the liver. Turns out we didn't share the same blood type. Again, this is where a doctor would have come in handy. So now she's dead and I don't have a liver.

On the bright side, I've lost a lot of weight!

Q: How did Daniel Boone help the pioneers move westward?

A: When most of the New World was an uncharted mess of overgrown trees and treacherous swamps, where danger lurked around every corner and enemies hid in plain site, Boone possessed the remarkable ability to get completely, hopefully lost.

He could lost anywhere: on the way home from the saloon, on the way to the outhouse, on the way from his desk to his bed. One morning, while walking from his porch to his backyard, he inexplicably wandered into the Atlantic Ocean, some 342 miles away.

He had literally no sense of direction, and he loved nothing more than a good walk, a combination which would have killed him, many times over, had it not been for the intervention of some very good friends.

His friends, realizing that Boone had been gone for hours and was undoubtedly lost, would organize search parties and set out in pursuit. They would make a game of it, first one to find him got the finest goose come Sunday's supper.

One time, Boone wandered so far, that it took the search party forty-seven days to find him. When found, Boone was completely naked, curled up into a ball, sobbing gently and eating his shoes. Once he saw his friends, he stood up, brushed himself off, pointed to the surrounding woods and said, "Marvel at this great land I have discovered. I shall call it Kentucky. This will be our new home."

Boone and his friends decided to settle in this new land of Kentucky. They set about doing all the work needing to be done to establish a community: clearing the woods, building homes and schools and a church, planting crops, hunting for food, and, of course, killing all the Native Americans who already lived there.

Q: Why did Tom Cruise become an actor?

A: He wanted to live a quiet life, out of the spotlight, free to indulge in his lifestyle without a care in the world as to what people would think.

Due to his short stature,  his enormous nose, which makes up over 30% of his body mass, and his complete inability to understand and process human emotion, he felt that a career as an actor would provide him with total anonymity. He looked forward to a life spent playing the Third Cop, or Second Man from right in a series of erotic thrillers.

Then it all went horribly wrong.