The Password’s Lasagna.

Sorry.  That’s not a comic.  Now I’m just showing off.  I’ll try to produce something more humble next week.

Like the fact that the girl MAY be in danger of being eaten. Also, is that a dinosaur or a sock puppet? Also, the palm tree looks diseased. Otherwise, a light-hearted masterpiece speaking on the topic of inter-species harmony.

Here are a few of my favorite.   1.  The Intersection.  That moment when you’re walking down the sidewalk and someone is crossing the street perpendicular to you, and you arrive at the corner at the EXACT SAME TIME and one of you has to step to the side or slow down or you will bump into each other.   The problem?  Do you say “hello” or just give an unnatural nod? 2.  The Eye-Contact-With-A-Stranger-While-Yawning.  That moment when you yawn a gaping, horrifying yawn while gazing blankly towards the horizon...and a stranger drives/walks/transports past and locks eyes with you. You freeze with your mouth at peak open-ness.  They are gone before you can alter your expression, so they are undoubtably left with the impression that you are a living corpse from an Indiana Jones film.   The problem?  Why do all Indiana Jones films have so many a) skeletons, b) spider webs, and c) Nazis? 3.   The Talking-To-Yourself Before R...

This is a story about saving the environment.   Or is it?   I’ll let you decide.   A while back, I moved to a house with a sizeable yard.  And since there were no parents in the vicinity, I had to mow the lawn myself.  That’s what I like to call a “Real Problem” (for all you poverty-stricken, hovel-dwelling, lawn-less, unprivileged folks who don’t understand what trouble is.) First of all, I knew I wanted to practice kindness to the planet and all the life contained therein by using an old-fashioned manual mower.  “It’s so simple!” I exclaimed as I removed it from its heavy packaging and assembled it in my densely overgrown backyard.  “Why burn holes in the ozone when there are manual machines like lawn mowers and bikes?  I’ll never drive anywhere again and I will only eat three forms of grasses, most of which I can forage within three feet of my door!”   I was ready to do my part in saving the world. Until I actually h...

It’s true.  

Have you ever thought much about those teeth that stick to the ceiling in dentists’ offices?   They have teeth.    What kind of teeth do teeth have?    Do the teeth of teeth have teeth?     What would that look like?  Would it look like this?   That’s terrifying. Of course, those teeth also have arms, so they can’t be 100% scientifically accurate. Or are they. 

The first, and only, time my parents took me up in a Ferris wheel, I cried (a lot). Now take that sentence and replace “Ferris wheel” with every other nausea-inducing motion device you can imagine, and you’ll have, in a nutshell, my experience with theme parks and carnivals throughout childhood.  Throughout my teen years as well, except my parents got wise sometime around my tenth birthday and never took me anywhere fun ever again. Basically, carnival rides, water slides, roller coasters, and related torture-mechanisms are not my cup of tea.  Once, it took three grown adults (redundant, but redundant with purpose, for emphatic emphasis) to pry my apparently heroically-muscular fingers from a safety rail at the top of a water slide.  It took them literal minutes.  I’m actually a little proud of that.  How many seven year olds have “heroically-muscular” anythings?   Another time, though I’ve mostly blocked the circumstances from my memory, I ...

I used to eat a lot of yogurt.  But then I took a look at the ingredients.  And wouldn’t you know it, but listed far down, way down, deep deep down on the list, I saw that it contained “Live, active cultures.” Ethically, what could I do but abstain from then on?

Not to be overwhelmingly syrupy, but...sometimes there’s nothing sarcastic to say.  Peace out, people.

I know a small dog who tries to eat toads. Every time she sees a toad, she thinks “Ah, yes, today I will eat this toad and it will be delicious.”   And every time she thinks this, she gobbles up the toad. And every time she gobbles up a toad, she instantly regrets it. She thinks “I will never eat a toad again.  I have never felt so terrible in all my days.” Then she sees another toad. And gobbles it up. This is not dissimilar to the way I act around French fries, and yet, I still judge her.   She is a dog who does not learn.  Moral:   Always eat the toad.     Eat the toad.     The toad.     Toad.  

Some days, I have deep and powerful thoughts.  Thoughts that, if vocalized, could change the hearts and minds of a humanity racing coldly toward destruction.   Other days, I spend twelve hours wondering why there are instructions in Braille on the drive-through ATM.  

And if you don’t get it, you’re an ignorant moron.  

Live for the moment.   Which moment?   Not sure.   THE moment.   I assume we’ll know when it happens.   Unless it’s already over, in which case...would you like some Kool-aid? And here is a trippy picture of swirling colors which looks a lot like an oil spill, now that you mention it.  But hey, anything for you, readers.  

You know those times when you ask someone how they are and they answer honestly and you realize you don’t actually care and you’re in for more than you bargained for, and then you look into their eyes and realize that they know you don’t care, but they’ve decided to take the plunge and tell you anyway?  And then you have to be sympathetic even though you know they know your sympathy is false?  Those are rough times.   PS: I wrote that one day when I couldn’t think of anything to complain about.  Nobody had done anything irritating for over 24 hours and I was barren of ideas.  So, apparently, to counterbalance the lack of self-centered jerks in the world, I became one for five minutes and wrote one of the most honest, terrible things about myself I could dredge up.   I think I need a little sympathy. PS the 2nd: That day was today.

That said, let’s talk about roasted vegetables.  The top 3,000+ Google search items for “lasagna” are recipe blogs (versus MY blog, ahem ahem), so I might as well delve into the wonderful world of cooking for a quick second.  Oneee Mississippppp....done.   Anyway, there’s a movement going around (specifically, on all those recipe blogs you’re probably reading instead of this one).  It’s called “Everything tastes better if you cover it with salt and oil and roast it at 500 degrees for fifteen minutes, stirring halfway through the cooking time!”  The “ETBYCWSOR5DFMSHTCT” movement, for shortness and ease.   I am here today to take issue with this movement.  In short, it is not true.  Admittedly, potatoes and sweet potatoes, being the classy, upscale vegetables they are, excel under this type of treatment.  Other things do too.  I assume.  I wouldn’t know because every non-root vegetable I’ve ever roasted has either 1) been burne...