Q: What Words Start with Q? A:

Way back in the D entry, fellow Blogger friend JoshC had challenged me to words that I can come up with that start with the letter Q. I'll admit, it's a tough letter, it's kind of useless (then again, tell that to Arabic Pronunciation), but there are several words that start with this letter.

So to accept this challenge: Here are words that start with Q.


Quick Stop: The famous convenience store where the movie Clerks is filmed in. Located in Leonardo, New Jersey, Keven Smith was employed there when he was filming the now-famous little movie that could, and shot most of the movie during the nighttime. Since he had a cheap, black-and-white camera, explaining that someone stuck gum in the locks gave a logical explanation about the lack of sunlight in the movie. As far as I know, it's still sitting there! That movie sure got me through High School.

My co-worker Tim and I frequently say "Bunch of savages in this town" whenever something dumb happens during our CVS shifts. He always wanted to go see the actual Quick Stop and buy a pack of gum there.

Quantas: It's an Australian Airline. Why this, you ask? In its ads, it plays an orchestral version of "Land Down Under" in the background. I was going to post a vid of this for the Soundtracks For Summer entry for the song, but two reasons prevented me from doing so:

1) No vid of it is on Youtube
2) I had no idea what the damn Airline was called at the time. A Youtube search for that also yields no results for the song.

Quisp: A fairly obscure breakfast cereal. Released in 1965 with partner Q-related partner cereal Quake by Quaker Oats. The mascot was an alien named...Quisp who advertised his Flying Saucer-shaped cereal, while Quake was a Construction Worker/Cowboy/Aussie who toted around his Sprocket-shaped cereal. Here is what its box looked like:



That random picture is fairly recent, as it looks like the box hasn't changed much in years. It was decided in 1982 that Quisp was more popular than Quake, so it survived and Quake descended into Cereal Hell. Cereal Hell, by the way, includes Crazy Cow, Fruit Brute, Yummy Mummy, the 23 versions of the "Corn Pops" box, the Cocoa Crispies Monkey, all of the Lucky Charms marshmallows that aren't on the box anymore, and the other two bakers from Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Due to low sales, Quisp itself was taken off the shelves in the Mid-80's, then reintroduced and later shelved in the 90's, with a re-reluanch in the last few years that has proved moderately successful. I dare you to try to find it, I've actually managed to find it in a few stores by me. Alas, I've never tried it.

The cereal is probably best known for its old tv ads directed by Jay Ward of Rocky & Bullwinkle fame. Why, here's one now:



Man, did children of the 60's have longer attention spans (and shorter commerical breaks). I'm pretty dead set that it was Daws Butler providing the voice of Quisp.

Quik: Now sadly known as NesQuik. It's Nestle's answer to Yoo-Hoo, or, more likely, the winning combo of Milk + Hershey's Chocolate Syrup. It was an awesome childhood drink that was better when it was a single syllable. Now that "Nes" has been prefixed to the name, it sold out. I have no clue why this name change came to be, I always thought Nestle had copyrighted the name. Seriously, how much fucking time do you actually save by saying "NesQuik" instead of "Nestle's Quik" or just "Quik?" Not much.

This name change has bee especially awkward for the product's mascot, which is a Rabbit that wears a "Q" pendant around his brown neck. Unlike fellow rodent mascot the Trix Rabbit, Quik is for rabbits and usually commercial exploits involve him acquiring Quik for his friends for the NesHoneycomb Hideout or Something. I prefer the Trix Rabbit better, all those kids in the ads were dicks.

Quoting The Simpsons: The real reason why I looked forward to writing up this entry. As you all may know, the Simpsons is my favorite show of all time. Since the show has been around for at least 19 seasons with a grand total of 420 episodes as of this entry, there's been a lot of dialogue. I shame myself by admitting that there are two episodes that I have yet to watch. They happen to be the Season 19 episodes "Apocalypse Cow," and "All About Lisa." Since the latter episode is currently up on Hulu, I still only need to watch that one episode.

As I was saying, the show has been on for so long, there is literally a Simpsons quote for everything. May it be about Former President George HW Bush ("No one-termers!"), Pogs ("Remember ALF? He's back! In Pog form!"), Star Wars ("I bent my Wookie."), Monorails ("Mono means 'one' and Rail mean 'rail.' This concludes our extensive 6-week course."), Bears ("Let the bears pay the Bear Tax! I'll pay the Homer Tax!" "That homeowner's Tax!" "Don't you start!"), Corn ("Oh no, the corn! Paul Newman's gonna have my legs broke!"), Cell Phones ("Hey, he's trying to save you money on long distance!"), Pro-Meat Agendas ("Jimmy, if a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!") or even the Opera ("I've decided to retire from Opera. It's just too popular.").

There are thousands more, and the slightest dumb situation or related quote would trigger a random quote from my memory banks, and I would impulsively speak it aloud. I am honest in which that whenever someone says "Hi, Everbody!" I must instinctively answer "Hi, Dr. Nick!"

My friend Steve and I have these moments constantly, and most of the time we don't even need to say the line out loud to acknowledge what we're implying. ("Imply...or implode?" "Mom, make him stop!") See, it happened again!




There you have it, Josh, some words that start with Q. Personally, I find the letters U, X, and Y to be tougher letters. We'll see what I come up with for those!






"Quoth The Raven: Eat My Shorts."