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Humor columnist Alexandra Petri is online every Tuesday for a reader Q&amp;A where she’ll offer a lighter take on the news of the day. Submit your question or comment below. The live discussion will start on this page at 11 a.m. Eastern.

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Alexandra Petri is a Washington Post columnist offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of the essay collection "Nothing Is Wrong And Here Is Why." 

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The Washington Post Opinions section features opinion articles, op-eds, editorials by the Editorial Board, global opinions and letters to the editor on the issues of the day. Offerings include columns by Washington Post opinion writers, political cartoons by editorial cartoonists Ann Telnaes and Michael de Adder and podcasts by Jonathan Capehart.

Chat with Alexandra Petri and tell her your jokes

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Opinion | Maybe I don't understand FTX and cryptocurrency after all - The Washington Post

Yikes! I am starting to worry that I don’t actually understand how cryptocurrency works! I sort of thought that if all the money disappeared, that was a sign that your encryption was working?

But I take it from how upset everybody is getting about the collapse of FTX and continuing aftershocks that … it is not supposed to do that? It is occurring to me now that some of the things about FTX that I thought were “totally fine, normal things that are always true” might … not be?

I am a bit embarrassed because I definitely thought I understood how cryptocurrency works, 100 percent. It was explained to me, and I said, “Sure! Of course!” at all the intervals where that was called for, and I have never had it explained to me again — because I thought I understood, of course! Not simply because at that point I had said “Sure! Of course!” so many times that to ask follow-ups would have shamed me.

But now I have some other questions that I might as well get onto the table. Apologies if any of these are silly.

Is it normal not to know where anyone’s money is? I kind of thought that not having any accounting, per se, was maybe a “crypto thing”? Like, if you know that you have someone’s money, and there is any record showing that you have it, then it’s not crypto anymore? Cryptocurrency and the blockchain were explained to me with the use of lots of analogies involving trains and boats and Rubik’s Cubes and Byzantine generals, and I had sort of convinced myself that if you had any record that you had someone’s money, it was just “currency.” Sort of like, if a tree falls in a forest and someone hears it, that’s a normal occurrence, but if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, that’s crypto.

So if there does not appear to be a record of how many employees one has, that is … bad? I thought maybe it was something to do with the blockchain, where if you could count all your employees, the blockchain would stop working? I felt pretty confident about that, so I didn’t ask anyone.

Are your boards supposed to actually meet? They’re not, like, smart, self-executing boards?

When your founder spends almost $40 million on politics, is that not necessarily out of excitement to do good and be regulated appropriately?

Is it normal for you to approve expenses with “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-11-17-2022/card/new-ftx-ceo-says-firm-approved-payments-using-emojis-AZ1zJYUZED6xk2sp58cd" target=_blank>custom emojis</a>”? Again, this sounded very like a Silicon Valley thing to do. And is it normal for some of those expenses to be houses? It seems like not, now that I am saying it out loud.

Is it normal to have your company organization be described by the man whose job it was to unravel Enron as the biggest mess he has ever seen, including the unraveling of Enron? (His <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/new-ftx-ceo-slams-complete-failure-corporate-control-2022-11-17/" target=_blank>exact words</a> were, “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”) Or is that … bad?

Is it normal to not know to whom you owe money?

Thanks! I promise I don’t have any other questions, and I completely understand everything else that’s going on with cryptocurrency! The Byzantine <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/blockchain-for-beginners/how-does-blockchain-solve-the-byzantine-generals-problem" target=_blank>generals</a>!

Oh, one more thing, actually: Is this very good, invisible, costly fabric that I was also given to have made into the finest robes to show my commitment to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/17/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-ftx-crypto/" target=_blank>effective altruism</a> … nothing? Is it nothing? Please tell me if it’s nothing.

Maybe I don't understand FTX and cryptocurrency after all

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Opinion Columns

Come to think of it, maybe I don’t understand cryptocurrency

Humor columnist Alexandra Petri is online every Tuesday for a reader Q&amp;A where she’ll offer a lighter take on the news of the day. Read the transcript of the <b>Nov. 22</b> Q&amp;A below.

Read Alexandra Petri’s columns and past live chats <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/alexandra-petri/">here</a>, or sign up to receive her latest columns in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/newsletters/follow-alexandra-petri/" target=_blank>your inbox.</a>

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Why did the turkey cross the road? Alexandra Petri answered your questions.

Opinion | 9 Thanksgiving songs Alexandra Petri definitely didn’t just make up - The Washington Post

One of the great joys of my job is putting together countdowns of the best and worst songs for key holidays. For Christmas, I <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/07/100-best-christmas-songs-ranking/" target=_blank>ranked 100 songs</a>. For <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/22/best-halloween-songs-party-playlist/" target=_blank>Halloween, 50</a>. It seemed only right and natural that I should provide the same service at Thanksgiving. So that is exactly what I did!

And it was easy, because everyone knows there are <i>lots and lots</i> of preexisting classic Thanksgiving songs, and I certainly did <b>NOT </b>recently make all these songs up in collaboration with <a href="https://www.jack-mitchell.com/" target=_blank>composer Jack Mitchell</a>! And we certainly have no reason to thank the extremely talented performers listed in the credits at the bottom of this column, because, again, these are snippets of preexisting Thanksgiving songs with which everyone is familiar and which we didn’t entirely write and record this week!

So without further ado, the nine best Thanksgiving songs:

1. 9. “Pardon Me (Lament),” from “Les Turquies”

What Thanksgiving playlist would be complete without this song from the iconic 1980s musical about the lives and struggles of turkeys, famously performed on a 360-degree rotisserie stage? (One last time: This is a real musical that exists, not one I invented just to start this list off with a melodramatic song from a pardoned turkey riddled with regret.)

As best as I can understand, the producers who believed “Cats the Musical" was a good concept looked around for other animals to make into a musical and discovered that turkeys were not trademarked, and then they did not supervise the creative team closely enough, and this musical happened.

And who could forget the resulting travails of Butterball the turkey, offered a pardon by the president while his friends go off to garnish tables everywhere? Or his stirring renunciation of that pardon in this 11 o’clock number? “Why do I get to gobble on while they get gobbled on?” Not a dry eye at the table.

2. 8. “Draw a Hand Turkey!” by The Gobblers

<i>The thumb is the head. The fingers are the feathers.</i>

“Electric Boogie.” “Wobble.” “Cha-Cha Slide.” No festivity is complete without a song that gives you instructions.

Fortunately, we have this line dance, a fixture at Thanksgiving weddings and bar mitzvahs from time immemorial. You know how it is — you’re at your Thanksgiving wedding and the bride’s uncle shouts, “Get on the dance floor! It’s time to Draw a Hand Turkey!” and then everybody rushes to the floor and grabs a sheet of construction paper and a drawing utensil.

This artist kept trying to follow up the hit with other attempts at dance songs, but everyone knows that “Dye an Easter Egg!" or “Send a Thank-You Card to a Veteran!” are goofy, unsustainable premises for holiday songs that are trying too hard, whereas “Draw a Hand Turkey” is not.

3. 7. “Pumpkin Spice,” by Unknown (Corporate)

<i>It’s in the streets, it’s in the air.</i>

<i>It’s in your sheets, it’s in your hair.</i>

<i>It gives your meats a special flair:</i>

I hear what you are saying. “Pumpkin Spice” is more of a jingle than a song. You’re not wrong! But does that mean “Lexus December to Remember Holiday Sales Event Theme Song” isn’t on your Christmas playlists? Do not answer that question. It is rhetorical and I consider my point proved.

The point is, “Pumpkin Spice” is in the canon. It’s short. It’s catchy. You know it’s pumpkin spice season when you start to hear it on TV. It’s got pumpkin in it, or, to be scrupulously correct, a blend of spices used to give flavor to pumpkin.

The second verse, often omitted in commercial use, does raise an interesting question: “If this is a real jingle, why does it imply that pumpkin spice is in your house coming for you in a threatening way?” Luckily, I don’t need to answer that question, because we all know that it definitely is a real jingle!

4. 6. “It’s Not Christmas Yet!” by Scaly Dave from “This Is Not A Christmas Album”

<i>Thanksgiving takes a clear back seat.</i>

<i>But why? There’s pies! They’re delicious!</i>

This rousing protest anthem about the fact that it is not Christmas yet sadly never charted or entered the popular memory, because it was released the same year as Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” But it has retained a cult following among those who are annoyed that we give Turkey Day short shrift.

This was supposed to be the single for Scaly Dave’s “This Is Not a Christmas Album,” but record executives were confused by the concept of an album that was not a Christmas album but also wasn’t a regular album. The remaining 11 songs, all of which were about how much Scaly Dave hated Christmas music and the whole Christmas season, did not help. When the record executives suggested that, technically, it was kind of a Christmas album, just a negative one, Scaly Dave went to a mountain and locked himself inside.

In 2005, Constantine Maroulis performed “It’s Not Christmas Yet!” on “American Idol.”

5. 5. “Uncle John’s Had One Too Many Cocktails,” by the Uncle John Singers

<i>Uncle John’s had one too many cocktails,</i>

<i>And now he wants to tell us about Q.</i>

<i>He also has opinions about Epstein,</i>

<i>And I am pretty sure none of it’s true.</i>

Every holiday gets the novelty song it deserves, and this is Thanksgiving’s novelty song. Just be grateful I did not choose the Chipmunk version, the unexpectedly wrenching Johnny Cash cover, or the Kidz Bop version where Uncle John had one too many “candies.” That is definitely something I could have done, though, because this song (a real song) has been covered lots of times!

6. 4. “Terminal B,” from the musical “Princess of LaGuardia”

<i>My whole family’s gathered together,</i>

<i>'Cause I’m stuck here in Terminal B.</i>

Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s concept for a Disney musical with a princess stuck in an airport over the Thanksgiving holiday never came to fruition, but this demo track was made.

“I’m sorry," Disney asked, “What’s the idea for the musical?”

“She’s a princess,” the duo explained, “and she’s stuck in an airport, over Thanksgiving.”

“We feel very strongly about this project! Her animal sidekick is going to be a meowing piece of luggage that might or might not have a cat in it."

I cannot understand why this was not made.

7. 3. “Uncle John’s Had Three Too Many Cocktails,” by the Uncle John Singers

<i>Uncle John’s had three too many cocktails,</i>

<i>He’s shouting [unintelligible noises].</i>

Uncle John is back! Bolstered by the success of “Uncle John’s Had One Too Many Cocktails,” the makers of this novelty song decided to return to the well, with mixed results. The audience of “Uncle John” expected maybe some kind of twist on the premise, but the band felt adamant that what people really wanted was more of the same. Given that the song’s premise was pretty clear and the first time through really let you know what the joke was, going through it a second time just reminds you of all the flaws with the concept!

Whenever this comes on in a Yankee Candle store everyone sighs audibly. But I like how there aren’t as many lyrics in this one! Hypothetically, if you had co-written all these songs in one week, you might be running out of lyrics around now!

8. 2. “1-800 Butterball (Counter Space Oddity),” by David Buoy

Alexandra Petri

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