Ten Dumbest Things People Ask You About Alaska Part II 2

I got so many emails in response to Part I of the dumbest questions about Alaska that I had to make Part II. Many of these were submitted by readers, and these questions were asked by adults, supposedly with normally functioning brains.

1. What’s the elevation here? Appropriate if you’re standing on top of Mt. McKinley, but unfortunately this is the most commonly asked question people have when they step off a cruise ship. You got on a boat in the ocean and you didn’t get off, right? It looks like this dock is ten feet off the ground, so ten. From now on if anyone asks you this just push them off the dock and yell

“That tastes like salt, doesn’t it?”

2. Do you live in an igloo? Its a sad state of affairs out there. I haven’t heard this one in a while but it apparently gets asked constantly. I don’t think anyone lives in igloos besides a handfull of stupid hipsters trying desperately to get attention. The eskimos kind of gave them up when they discovered houses that didn’t melt every year. As a general rule, if someone is wearing Nikes, they don’t live in an igloo. Its one or the other. Igloo and mukluks or dingy apartment and Nikes. The only igloo I have ever seen is on the parks highway, and I’m pretty sure only the scariest homeless people you’ve ever seen live there.

3. I had a friend who lived in Alaska, do you know Dave? 

No, I don’t know Dave. If he moved to Alaska he was probably out on parole and didn’t go around running for mayor. With 700,000 people spread out over a half million square miles, if Dave doesn’t have a sick jump shot I don’t know him. Do you even know what city he lived in? Okay, I have to walk away from you now.

4. Can you see Russia from your house? 

I’m a big fan of Tina Fey, but this isn’t funny anymore.

5. I think its great that you have so many electric cars. 

Yes, I have the first EPA approved electric 1998 Dodge Neon. Its a limited release. My friend’s microwave is a hybrid as well.

5. Have you ever seen a wooly mammoth? 

Yes, I think one stars in Game of Thrones.

6. Are wooly mammoths still extinct? 

Yes, they came back into style for a while a few years ago, but now they’re gone again.

7. Don’t you, like, get money from the government every year? 

Yes. Alaskans get a check for around a thousand dollars per year. These are special checks that your parents can somehow cash even though your name is on them. In order to get one you have to agree to do some basic cartography when you visit Disney Land. In reality the checks are based on oil profits, and curiously the higher gas prices get, the lower the amount of the checks. People use them to buy snow machines and then pawn the snow machines to pay their heating bills.

Also, this is a snow machine:

This is a snow mobile:

I don’t know what this is.

8. Do you have a green card or a work permit? What kind of currency do you use?

There are a lot of variations of this. One Alaskan reader wasn’t able to board a flight in Virginia because she didn’t have her passport. When this happens I find it best just to ask people to name all fifty states on cue. Once they get past ten and mumbling its really easy to punch them in the face.

9. When do the reindeer turn into elk?

My odds this person was from Florida are high.

10. Where do they store the barrels? 

A reader informed a tourist that the Trans-Alaksa Pipeline pumps around 2 million barrels of oil a day from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. The tourist responded by asking where the barrels were stored. Apparently this genius figured that they put the oil in barrels first and then somehow pumped the barrels through the pipeline like in a Willy Wonka type of situation.