Gaining Ps and Losing Qs

 

 

 

 

I remember, I bet you do too, singing the alphabet when I was young. The innocent days of learning to spell, to read, to write.

OK, maybe not so innocent. 

 

I also remember the alphabet song joke. Bet you remember this one too:

 

abcdedfghijklmno qrstuvwxyz

 

 

At which point our not-so-innocent co-conspirator asks, giggling."But where's the P?"

 

"Running down my leg," young you answers, laughing so hard you can barely get your assigned words out (despite having both heard and told this joke about a thousand times).

Ah, bathroom humor. The stuff of childhood. That and fart jokes. Although for the most part we no longer tend to sing the alphabet, on those rare occasions that we do (OK, I'll admit it, I do when alphabetizing a new recipe on this blog's Recipe Box page), all letters have returned to their rightful place.

Or not.

 

While P now stands for good things, like poems, pubs, and pasta . . .

 

 

 Pasta Salad Bites

. . . there's another letter that's in alphabet jeopardy. And it's no joke. It's the Q.

 

Long after my alphabet song joke years, I was probably in high school when I started learning about propositional logic. I loved the study of logic, took a number of college logic courses too. Being left brain dominant, I find comfort in the rational, so the absolutes of logic was my thing. You know what I'm talking about. If P = Q, then whenever P is true, Q is true as well (yes, I'm way oversimplifying). 

Now I know that all of that logic is . . . illogical. Based on a false premise, actually. Because I've learned in the past few years that although P can be a joke, Q is a disease.

Forever more known as the dreaded Q, not funny at all, QAnon (aka Q) is the stuff of lies, mind washing, hateful, harmful, and hurtful conspiracy theories.

 

 

We've all heard them, depraved lies, repeated ad nauseam, advanced with the deliberate goal of causing distress, harm, confusion, even violence. Absurd fabrications, like that Bill Gates is inserting microchips into us all via the covid vaccine. Or that mass shootings didn't happen, are just a hoax. Or that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a DC pizza restaurant.

 

Seriously? These theories are so absurd they'd be funny if a significant number of Americans didn't actually believe them. I can't imagine a better example of a complete lack of logic.  

With maturity, we all (most of us, anyway) learn to mind our Ps and Qs (so to speak), when it comes to the bathroom jokes. So welcome back, P. I vow to never again make you the butt of a joke. 

 

But Q? Sorry, you're out.  

 

Pasta Salad Bites      

                                                       ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients: 

1 pint grape tomatoes

1/2 of a cucumber

1 can (about 2.25 oz) sliced black olives

1/3 cup + 2 TBSP light raspberry vinaigrette salad dressing, divided

12 - 14 jumbo pasta shells (about 1/2 of a 12 oz box)

1 cup fresh spinach 

1/4 cup bacon bits

 

Directions:

*NOTE: for a larger crowd you can double the recipe and use the entire 12 oz box of shells.
*Quarter the tomatoes. Peel, slice, and chop the cucumber. Tear the spinach. Drain the black olives.

*Mix the tomatoes, cucumber, and black olives in a bowl with 1/3 cup of the salad dressing. Cover and refrigerate.

*Boil the shells to al dente (about 8 - 10 minutes). Drain and rinse 2 - 3 times with cold water to stop the cooking process. Gently toss with the remaining 2 TBSP of the salad dressing.

*Remove the marinated vegetables from the refrigerator. Mix in the spinach and bacon bits, then gently fill the shells with the vegetables.