Skeleton Trivia for Monday, 2025-09-22
In which Mr. Skeleton tries to make zhuzh up Buddhist teachings with some laser lights
Hiya Skeleton Crew,
Remember how last week we did a weeklong theme thing? & how I said I’d tell ya TODAY what was the theme if ya hadn’t figured it out??
Well, it’s today! TODAY’s today, I mean! It’s super excitin!!
But first lemme tell ya last Thursday’s answers:
Answers to Last Time
- The United Negro College Fund’s slogan is “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”. It ain’t so often that a slogan really graduates into an honest-to-goodness maxim ... but I think this one mighta done it!
- Alex Trebek hosted the sorta short-lived revival of the old game show Concentration.
OK, so here’re all last week’s answers, one more time:
- A View to a Kill
- Cruel Intentions
- speech-language pathology
- action
- The Book of Job
- Endeavour
- “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”
- Concentration
Any Buddhists in the audience?? ’Cause that’s right, the theme was ...
The NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH!!!
*pew pew pew*
(imagine some laser lights shootin around, all excitin-like)
I took a teeensy bit of liberty in some of the translations, but the eight parts of the Eightfold Path are: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood (a.k.a. job), right effort (a.k.a. endeavour), right mindfulness, & right concentration.1
Now, this ain’t a theology newsletter, so if ya ain’t familiar this Path I’m talkin ’bout then I’d suggest peepin at the Wikipedia article, they got it fully covered there.
But so anyway, I hope even if ya didn’t recognize the theme you ain’t too disappointed. I was just lookin for a set of eight somethings & remembered this one & figured, “hey, this is a pretty major concept from a pretty major world religion—that’s in-bounds for trivias, right?”
Anyways, I hope the connection ended up bein more interestin than some other group of eight—like, the planets, or Santa’s reindeer or somethin.2
Okey doke, now back to our normally-scheduled “whatever the heck I was thinkin about when I wrote the trivias”-style trivias.
Today’s Trivias
Trivia 1
Before we depart the topic of Buddhism altogether, can ya tell me what’s the intermediate state between life & death called in Tibetan Buddhism?3 Mr. Abraham Lincoln (yeah, THAT Abraham Lincoln!) found himself here in the title of a 2017 George Saunders novel.
Trivia 2
Cole Escola won a Tony for Best Actor this year for their portrayal of Mrs. Lincoln in what play? Mx. Escola also wrote the play & finalisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama this year. Not bad, eh?!
OK then
Byeeeeeeeeeeeeee
1 That’s why last Tuesday I gave ya a bunch directions with right turns in ’em, & also on Wednesday I talked about movies with the folding art of origami in ’em, & ALSO ALSO on Thursday I mentioned some noble titles in the intro. ⬏
2 But heck: if ya wanna see more octets, check out last week’s paid subscriber email! We had a whole OCTET of octets in that one!! ⬏
3 Not that I have any experience with bein eternally stuck in some sorta liminal existence like that! It’s just somethin I’ve heard about, is all. ⬏