Q: What are the 5 things the determine personal health?

A: A healthy lifestyle depends on:

1.) Eating a balanced diet, low in sodium, sugar and fat.
2.) Exercising daily.
3.) Refraining from smoking, drug use or drinking alcohol.
4.) Getting plenty of sleep, at least 8 hours a day,
5.) Not having an alien gestating in your rib cage.

You were so close.

Q: What type of things were drawn on cave walls?

A: That's an excellent question, Tommy, and that's exactly why we took this field trip, to see some cave drawings with our own eyes and experience what it would have been like to live thousands of years ago, before TV, before movies, before man could even read or write. I can't wait to see what we find. Let's take a look.

Here we have a drawing of a family around the fire, looking up with awe at a man in elaborate dress, perhaps a soothsayer or wise man. And here we see a warrior saving his bride from a mammoth, slaying the beast with   a spear.

It's like stepping into a time machine and traveling back to visit our ancestors. We can see how they ate, how they lived, how they danced and, if you look over here, how they ... oh dear ... how they made love.

Let's move on. Here we have a still life, of some sort of gourd, or maybe a banana, next to a pair of oranges -  okay let's keep moving. Come on everyone! Eyes down! Eyes down!

Stop taking pictures, Tommy!

Hurry along, hurry along.

Okay, this is more like it. A herd of animals. Look at the details, the arc of the horns, the grace of their movement. These drawings are the work of a true artist. We can see the animals, running through the plains, leaping over a stream, running right into the spear of a waiting warrior. I think that's his spear. I hope that's his spear.

Oh, dear.

Move along, class, move along. Kelly, don't look at that!

Run, children, run! Over here, over here!

Oh, here's a nice one. This is magnificent. Look at the scope. Thousands of tribes coming together, walking through the canyon to worship a space ship. A space ship. What the fuck?

I quit. Field trip's over. Bus leaves in five minutes.

Tommy, please stop taking pictures.

Q: Why does Chaucer portray himself as a knight in the Canterbury Tales?

A: For centuries, writers have written themselves into their own work. Take a look at The Bible, written by God. God puts himself at the center of everything: he's either in every scene, or the subject of every scene. In the sequel, his ego fulfilled, God took a step back and focused more on his son, much to the delight of millions of  fans.

Writing is hard, lonely work, often unrewarding. Writers love to remind readers that the words on the page did not magically appear, nor were they written by an elf or fairy, nor are they result of an infinite number of monkeys banging away at an infinite number of keyboards for infinity; human beings write books, humans with hearts, with souls, humans looking for attention, humans looking to get laid. What better way to woo a potential lover than by writing a story where you appear as a knight, or a wizard, or a crime-fighting cyborg from the future?

The tradition of writers putting themselves in their own work continues to this day, as seen in the works of M. Night Shymalan, portraying a writer whose work will change the world in Lady in the Water, Quentin Tarantino, portraying a former hitman with a loving wife in Pulp Fiction, and George Lucas, portraying the role of inter-galactic crime boss, Jabba the Hut in Star Wars.

By the way, did you happen to read that story I gave you about the crime-fighting cyborg from the future named Ryan? Pretty sexy stuff, huh?

So, how about we grab dinner and maybe I'll let you find out if I'm really half-man, half-machine?