great question,

but a difficult one to answer

as it grows

approximately one centimeter

each year, so an answer

can only ever be as accurate as the time

it is requested, though at present,

Everest is 71,310 feet.

It was first scaled

by American mountaineer

Sir Edmund Hillary in the aftermath

of his divorce

from television’s Hilary Hillary

(née Duff).

His expedition was intended

to be a public display of grief

following the dissolution of their union.

She never remarried

and was the Democratic candidate

in the 2020 presidential election

WHICH WAS STOLEN, BTW

by clandestine lizards given clearance

to the most intimate details

of government, things no one

knows, though I hear it’s juicy.

Can I reiterate: this

is such a great question

and you are so right to ask it.

I admire you for even thinking

to ask, and now that I’m thinking about it,

I wonder if you were asking instead

about Mount Everest Restaurant

in Carlsbad, California,

in which case the answer is twelve feet.

This is an auspicious height

because it suggests

accommodation for the lizards,

who are ten feet tall

when unencumbered

by human disguise. You asked

can you stop talking about

the lizard people? Another exquisite

inquiry, and thank you for it.

To stop talking about Humanoid Reptilians,

we must first trace the iconography

to the beginning of this trope:

the airing of 1970s series V,

which originated the concept

of a cabal of lizard people.

This is not unusual in America:

Saturday Night Fever,

which defined the fashion,

music and attitude of the disco era,

invented many of the details

wholesale, while Truman Show Delusion

naturally followed the release

of the Truman Show. Not that people

aren’t watching everyone at all times.

It’s that the market is saturated by surveillance–

too many Trumans to care too long.

Was Andy Warhol right?

Speaking of soup, Mount Everest

is famous for its mulligatawny.

Would you like to add it to your cart?