Question: I will graduate from colledge (sic) this May with a degree in business administration. I would like very much to work for EHA Industries. I'm sure it would be a very (sic) unique experience. Do you have any openings?
Answer: There are no openings of any kind at present. As you know, EHA Industries is a rather complex multinational-interplanetary operation. If you obtain an advanced degree in marketing from, say, the Wharton School or a school of similar quality, there is a chance that you might be useful to us in the future. Why don't you contact us then? By the way, you ought to learn to spell before you progress much further in your "education" or apply to EHA Industries for a job again. And the word "unique" should never be qualified with the likes of "very."

Question: Everyone I know says I sound like just you--not physically, of course, but with respect to content and tone. "Splendid," for example, is a word I frequently use, and I am rather ironic. Also, if you "de-age" your picture on this site, there is a remarkable resemblance between us as well. Could I be your child? I know I was adopted.
Answer: It is quite impossible that you could be my child as I have produced no children. This is something that you must credit me with being able to discern. Since I have received so many inquiries along these lines in the past couple of years, it seems an almost inescapable conclusion that Martians may have cloned you and others from cells taken from me during the mid-1950s or during one of my periods of missing time since then. If this happened, I guess you would be more of a twin, in which case you'd better keep a careful eye on your cholesterol level and your knees.

Question: Your contests are way too hard. Can't you make them easier so that some of us could have a fair chance at winning?
Answer: I think you should have begun your whining with "Your contests are too hard for me," which would be an accurate assessment of their level of difficulty relative to your own intelligence and problem solving skills and not relative to the entire human species. I'm sure that as I have revealed the solutions, most readers, yourself included, might be heard to say, "Of course! How elementary!" The fact, then, is that the problems I've posed must have been "elementary " all along, and that all that was required for their solutions was a bit of lateral thinking (and in the case of Contest 3, a bit of research and some elementary school arithmetic, too). As far as "fairness" goes, it's simply not a question of fairness, now is it?

Question: I'd like to spruce up my personal website. Where do you get all those graphics you use on your site? How do you learn how to get them into your page?
Answer: The doodads come from various graphics archives on the Internet . For example, here is a splendid site which will enable you to search for GIF images: Clip Search. You'll have to do your own homework to find other types of images and animations like "See Jinx Run!"  It's really not that hard at all. It takes just a little patience to track down the images you want and then to put them in your page, and you do get much better at it with experience. Just in case you are a novice at web publishing, a useful and relatively affordable beginner's resource for building a site is HTML 4 for the World Wide Web by Elizabeth Castro. If someone as technologically inept as I am can create a site, so can anyone! I also use a program called Paint Shop Pro to enhance the quality of many images you see on Mr. Eha's Place.

Question: What can you tell us about the old Grimby place?
Answer: The Grimby place was indeed "old," as I discovered when I looked up its title records at the Oteseraga County Courthouse. While I was at it, I also found out what I could about the owners by browsing through the old newspapers they have on microfiche at the library. It is quite a disturbing, yet morbidly fascinating, history! It all started long ago in the nineteenth century. Ten acres up in the Big Woods had been cleared and the original house built by the Andreas Ernst family in the early 1820s. It was sold to Josiah Drebbler in 1839 by the two survivors of the last "encounter" in the Ernst-Habresch feud. Drebbler simply vanished from the face of the Earth in 1855 leaving his uneaten breakfast on the table, and the property was sold by his next of kin, his spinster sister Phoebe, to Erwin Richter the following year. Richter's widow sold it to Ezra Macy in 1868 when Mr. Richter died of consumption and she could no longer manage the house and property by herself after being cornered by a bull at a neighbor's farm. Macy, a lifelong bachelor, drowned in 1889 while fishing in the shallows at the east end of Oteseraga Lake, and the property passed to Raymond Wilkins (who hanged himself in the attic in 1901 when he was unable to settle his gambling debts), Daniel Whibley (who was struck by lightning and electrocuted as he sat smoking his pipe and whittling on the steps of the front porch in 1923), and then to Arthur Grimby. When old man Grimby and his wife died of food poisoning (bad pork, I hear), his children moved to Tushville and made, now and then, a desultory stab at maintaining the property. Every once in a while they'd have to call the sheriff to drive off some squatters, hoboes, or Gypsies, and finally they just abandoned the by-now dilapidated house which remained deserted for a couple of years until Herb Garble bought it at a tax auction. He was going to tear it down and build a little cabin retreat for himself up there in the woods, but for some reason or other known only to Herb, he sold it instead to Simon Rodere. Well, Herb held the mortgage, which was a mistake. The Roderes wrecked the place and defaulted on the mortgage. Luckily for Herb, some no-account, trashy relatives of Mrs. Bean, the Bismuths from Cleveland, bought the place for a pittance from him, and he was glad to get anything at all for it. Mrs. Bean was mortified to have the shabby Bismuths living in the Centerboro area. When the Grimby place burned to the ground (Everyone knows the shady circumstances surrounding that!), the Bismuths moved in with the Beans, but that's a whole other story. Mr. Brooks, of course, jumbled the chronology in his books. He has the Bismuths burning the house and half the Big Woods down in one book (omitting, naturally, any mention of that damned Freddy's part in it) and then Herb and Rodere owning the property in the next. Not so. Fran Molecule, the courthouse clerk, will be happy to help you with the title records in case you'd like to check the facts for yourself. (Do not comment on her unusual name--her disposition will change quite suddenly for the worse!)

Short  Answers to Infrequently Asked  Questions

• The best pizza in Centerboro used to be from Luigi's. When Luigi passed away, some pudding head bought the business, renamed it "Louie G's," and it was all downhill from there. The box it's delivered in tastes better than the pizza. It certainly smells better.
• Canadian? Of course I'm not Canadian. I just happen to like traveling in Canada, especially to Montreal.
• Yes, I believe that the Martians can infiltrate any server anywhere on Earth.
• I would add Dr. Strangelove to my movie list, certainly. How could I have forgotten?
• Just one Altoid per cup of coffee is plenty for me.
• Dear ET: No, I still do not know who you are, but when I find out, please do not be surprised if you are on the receiving end of a restraining order!
• The "poster" on the Official Contest Page was done by inserting the image and text in a 1-row, 1-column table with a black background. Quite simple.
• I occasionally frequent eBay. I have found a tendency for some buyers to overbid, and I don't enjoy getting into a "fierce bidding war" with dunderheads.
• My Studebaker is still missing, and the private detective I've hired to locate it is getting nowhere.
• Dear P.K.: Castor oil will probably do the trick. Just dab on a little bit with a cotton swab.
• Dear Bobby: Of course it's wrong! You must stop this nasty behavior immediately! Freddy Bean used to burn up ants with a magnifying glass, too, and just look how he turned out.
• I believe capers come from a shrub of some sort.
• I have no idea what the "33" on bottles of Rolling Rock beer stands for. Why don't you find out from them and tell me. I doubt very much whether it is part of any conspiracy or has anything to do with the Martians.
• "Banjo" was just a nickname for one of Simon Rodere's children. His actual name, I believe, was Boaz. Miscreant that he was, Simon had a perverse predilection for naming his offspring after Biblical figures.