The "What are you doing at the moment?" question

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ummm, I don't get it.

which bit?

This may help: http://english.stackexchange.com/questi ... -in-a-bath

Read that and then imagine Ferris asking his mum to explain the joke

aha, thanx for that explanation

Fair play to my mum she explained it but I wish she hadn't , I just wanted the ground to open up and swallow me at that moment.

that "wears" joke reminds me of the "pocohontas" sketch on laugh-in where somebody points to john rolfe's wife and asks, "pocohontas?" to which john rolfe replies, "yes, I do."

To return to the topic.

Yes. It IS just you.

When you first meet folks they often ask you "what do you do?"

When folks ask you "what do you do?" they mean "what do you do for a living?". That is what do you do day in and day out.

If they are inviting you over they may say "what are you doing saturday night?"

So if the person is calling you to see if you can drop what you're engaged in at the moment they cant just say "what are you doing?". It has to be "what are you doing right now?", or "what are doing at the moment?".

If you interpret the "right now", or the "at this moment" part of the question to mean the precise nanosecond in which you are replying to them, and only that nanosecond ( and not a longer span of time in which something important like house work can be done), the fault is yours for not understanding the question. Not their fault for the way they ask it. And the fault is yours precisely because of what you are complaining about:that it would be silly for someone to ask what you're doing during the span of single nanosecond. So therefore it should be obvious to you that that is not what they are asking. That on top of what I said above about the various contexts in which folks ask about "what you are doing".

If you make a habit of answering that question with "I am replying to you" folks are gonna think that you're either a smart ass, or a dumb ass. Either way folks will wanna KICK your ass.