INTERVIEW:

Senior Terry Lippin asks Fr. Phil "Peanutbutterface" Harapnoid some tough questions.

Do you like him MORE or LESS today, twenty-some-odd years later?

Of course, I would have to admit that time has tarnished the lustre of my enchantment towards his lofty stature and shaggy arms; but I still appreciate the important role he played in saving Luke Skywalker and his rowdy band of rebels.

When you compare the basic moral foundations of the rebel cause with the unspeakeable actions of the Evil Empire, it becomes quite clear that "Chewbacca" could and should be considered one of the greatest figures in the Cause of Moral Right.

Now the Spanish language tends to be pretty straightforward, but it can sometimes be tricky. In this case, the word for "hunger" is hambre.

Now you might be saying to yourself, "So if I want to say I'm very hungry, I'd say Yo soy muy hambre or rather, because hunger is a temporary condition, Yo estoy muy hambre--which roughly translates into 'I am very hungry.' "

But here's the twist: In Spanish, the literal translation of "I am very hungry" is "I have very much hunger." That's right! In Spanish, the language of Picasso and El Cid and Don Quixote (written, of course, by Cervantes), you would say Yo tengo mucho hambre. You could even say Tengo mucho hambre. You could even go one further, if you were truly very hungry, and say Tengo hambre.

Ten years ago you could go to your local drugstore and purchase a lice-killing shampoo. . .and it worked. Today's louse is all but impervious to these poisons, having built up immunity over generations of active evolution.

There are, of course, still ways of killing lice. The first step is to wash all of your bedding materials (as well as the bedding materials of your various pets). Next you have to coat your hair with a layer of Vaseline (or some other type of petroleum jelly). This prevents the louse from breathing.

After several hours you can begin the process of washing the Vaseline out of your hair. This will take several dozens of washings, spread out over about a week a so.

I've tried several other variations, but none of them worked as well as Vaseline..

I tried peanut butter. I tired jelly. I tried milk. I even tried both regular butter and clarified butter. None of them worked as well as Vaseline.

I'll tell you what clarified butter did work well on, though: grilled cheese sandwiches.

You see, I'd been having trouble with my grilled cheese sandwiches because the butter was burning before the cheese would melt. I was faced with two options: cook the sandwich at a lower temperature (which just never seemed "cooked" enough) or eat a grilled cheese sandwich with melted cheese and charred-black bread. I just couldn't win.

Then I discovered clarified butter. All you do is melt the butter in a pan, allow it to cool, and remove the frothy top and the collected solids. What you're left with is practically purified, or rather clarified, butter-oil (what the Indians called Ghee). This ghee we call "clarified butter."

Now because all of the proteins and such have been removed, the clarified butter has a far higher flash point (burning temperature) than regular butter. Using this marvellous clarified butter, I could cook my grilled cheese sandwiches over a high enough flame to both brown the outside of the bread and deliciously melt the creamy American Cheese within.