How Do You Query a Key-Value Store Anyway?

Just picked this joke up via a (warning:  expletive) cartoon a friend mailed me.  To spare those who want to avoid the expletive, here's the text.

Bob:  So, how do I query the database?
IT guy:  It's not a database.  It's a key-value store.
Bob:  OK, it's not a database.  How do I query it?
IT guy:  You write a distributed map-reduce function in Erlang.
Bob:  Did you just tell me to go screw myself?
IT guy:  I believe I did, Bob.