There are too many pasta variants.

 Since recently entering the realm of adulthood, and learning to do many things on my own such as cooking, paying bills, and fending off persistent (and sometimes quite creative) peddlers, I have uncovered many secrets.

The first: carry cash. Although I have never been an avid cash carrier, and have generally pegged all cash carriers to be either parental or associated with recreational drugs, I have learned that it is of great importance when navigating a city, trying to park, and trying to buy chinese food at a hole in the wall that apparently does not accept cards in the year of our lord, or the dragon, 2008.

The second is a much more complicated lesson involving what is commonly referred to as "pasta." Our scholarly friend Wikipedia describes pasta as "a generic term for Italian variants of noodles." Wikipedia also tells us that "there are approximately 350 shapes of pasta." UMMMMM..Ok, so I've spent the last 22 years sampling spaghetti, ziti, sometimes some bowties (or farfalle as I have also learned) for good measure. This is going to sound crazy, but just recently I discovered that there is absolutely no difference between any of these 350 shapes. WHAT?? In my opinion, this means that the Italians spent entirely too much time with their little play-doh machines, calling to one another when they discovered yet another crazy thing to put tomato sauce on.

"Giovanni! Come quick! I have made one that even smaller than the smallest elbow noodle! It will be incredibly popular!"

"Bravo, mio fratello!" (that means bravo, my brother- thank you google translator; google makes tons of money maybe I'll write about that later.) Then Giovanni and his brother embrace, slap each other on the back, and watch some soccer.

So yeah, there's 350 types of pasta. There probably aren't even 350 types of sauce to put on them. Well, maybe. That's too mathematical to get into. What it comes down to is this: why? WHY would you make that many different types of one thing if you're just going to chew it up anyway? In my experiences, the only difference between any pastas is that some of them are easier to stab with my fork than others.