"The universe is a bar," Buck says between swigs of beer, in one of those lines that led the late poet William Stafford to observe, "Everyone wanders into poetry sometimes." If Buck hadn’t just told …

To: Matmail: The City of San Diego owns how many golf balls? — A. Pismo Clam, La Jolla Okay, I’ll bite. My answer is zero, but something tells me Senor Clam is already preparing his …

Dear Mat: Since even a minute quantity of somebody’s blood can be analyzed to determine the person’s DNA, what happens when somebody’s entire blood has been replaced by someone else’s blood during a transfusion? — …

Dear Matthew Alice: I lived in Pennsylvania in the 1960s. One of the things that I remember about the place is that there were underground coal fires that had been burning for years. Have they …

Dear Matthew: A cocktail waitress at Milligan’s told me that a maraschino cherry will stay in your stomach for four years. Something to do with the preservatives. This seems unlikely, at best, but it raises …