Dear Ask the Fish,
I need help thinking of a word. When you have two contradicting concepts or ideas in your mind, and you try to make them work with each other to reduce the conflict you feel in your head, what is that called?
-Go with fish on words

Dear Go,
reconcile.
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
Split peas? What's up with that? Are they split by machine? Did they split them by hand before the Industrial Revolution? Do they taste different than whole dried peas? So many questions, so little time.
-Visualizing Whirled Peas

Dear Visualizing,
My grandmother was an odd lady. One of the things about her was that she hated having to buy things from the grocery a few blocks away from her apartment (in Ozone Park, NY). She bought all of her foods from individual shops - meat from the butcher, bread from the baker, etc. However, one of the problems with that was there were certain things that you just couldn't get unless you went to the grocery. Along with apple juice (which irritated me to no end when I went to visit), one of the things you couldn't get was split peas. The vegetable stand on the corner sold whole peas, by the pound. Grandma Suzie, who loved her split pea soup, had to make do. And she did, by freezing the peas after buying them, and crushing them with a mallet.

And speaking of that mallet, I remember an anecdote my mom told me about something that transpired between my uncle and my grandmother. He said something smartmouthed to her (this being 1962, it was probably something to the effect of "I don't want to wash my hands before dinner") and my grandmother went after him with the mallet, which promptly broke over his head. He immediately started laughing at this, to which my grandmother replied THWACK! with a metal spoon she had at the ready. Which just goes to show you never to laugh at your mother, since she's had years of practice in being prepared for the unexpected.

Oh, and we use split peas instead of whole peas because giving the broth access to the inside of the pea gives the soup more flavour. Which is great if you like peas, but disgusting if you don't. These days, the splitting is not done by little old Italian ladies, but is in fact done with machines. It's all machines these days. In fact, it's done by computers, since it's all done with computers these days.
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
Why do humans sweat out of their arm pits?
-Harry Pitts

Dear Harry,
Evolution, my friend. Humans used to sweat from all sorts of body parts, such as their ears. But as it turned out, the sound of sweat pouring out of the ears is far too weird to deal with. It's an evolutionary path that was cut short by people exerting themselves to death; thinking they were drowning, people would expend enormous effort attempting to swim out of a body of water in which they weren't.
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
Why does opera crash immediately upon opening? I have to say that it is better than Mozilla, because at least I see the Opera splash screen before it fatal exceptions. But my question is, why?
-opera off-broadway

Dear opera,
Because you're using Windows and not running Internet Explorer. Duh.
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
favorite flavor of Gatorade overall? Favorite flavor of Gatorade Ice, Original, Frost, Fierce, and extremo?
-Thirst Quencher

Dear Thirst,
Frost. Frost.
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
I was just reading over some old askthe fish columns, and read something that I'm afraid I had to make a point to disagree with. In March 24th's column (http://www.alltooflat.com/serious/ask/archives/03242002/) you say that the stripper that Aprile killed didn't really deserve it. But I have to say: come on! She was a whoo-a!
-Jonesing in Jonestown

Dear Jonesing,
While I do appreciate you reading the ATF archives, I would appreciate it more if you included actual questions in your submissions. Thanks.
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
everyone uses pdfs, right? but only adobe makes a pdf reader. why is that? is it a proprietary format? there are pdf converters, so the format must be open-source...
-acrobat in akron

Dear acrobat,
That's just not true! There are plenty of other .pdf readers out there, such as DocuCom, PDF Xtra, Big Faceless PDF library, and Palm Pdf Reader.
To top it off, Adobe makes a great product and gives it away free! Tough to beat that!
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
I don't know what to do about my career pathway. Should I go for a job that I won't really like but will have a lot of job opportunities and money, or should I go for the career path I will love but may not be able to get a well paying job if I get a job at all? Dreams vs. Practicality???
-bored late at night

Dear bored,
I don't understand the question. The minimum salary in the NBA is over $300,000! That's not well paying?!! Sounds to me like you'd love your job AND get paid a lot of money. So the answer is, drink your Sprite and make it in the NBA! Trivial.
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
About that Puzzle Contest thing. When you solve it, does it reveal some big secret--oh, I dunno, like where Manfred Mann's Earth Band is?
-Puzzled in Pawtucket

Dear Puzzled,
yes.
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
my house is being over run by ants what can I do to get rid of them?
-ants in da pants

Dear ants,
Victorpest is the world leader in non-toxic pesticides. We were so impressed with non-toxic pesticides that we designed a Rachel Carson Scientist Card! In fact, if you act now, you can win a free Ant Killing Kit from Victor. Finally, a quick word of warning. If you do end up killing all these ants, and you do take pictures and put them on the internet, make sure you add a disclaimer stating that "no animals were harmed in the killing of these ants." It will save you lots of grief down the road.

-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
Is it fashionably acceptable to wear gold-toe socks with sandals?
-Fashionably challenged

Dear Fashionably,
Of course fashion is subjective, and totally depends on the person. So I'm going to have to say that if you really don't know the answer to this question then, yes, for you it is perfectly acceptable to wear socks and sandals. And if it gets hot, you can take off your socks and put them in your fanny pack.

For more on socks and sandals, check out Sandals and Socks 4 Ever (Google Cache)
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
As a vegan, I have a serious ideological concern with your overfeeding experiment. As I recall, you purchased ten fishes, yet only eight were used in the experiment. I demand to know where my lost brothers are!!! Where are they, you heartless fishdog!?
-Puffing Puffing and Giving in Oakland

Dear Puffing,
First off, if you reread the Fish Myth, you'll see that the lady wouldn't let us get 10 fish, and we only actually bought 8. But to answer your question, here's where they are now.
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
Why not put that Ask The Fish Haiku at the top of the ask the fish page? Heh?
-Bill in VIRGINIA

Dear Bill,
I knew it was a bad idea to put that dogfish on top of this page after someone asked for it. Now everyone has their own brilliant ideas. Now everything thinks they're smarter than the fish. Well, Bill in VIRGINIA, why NOT put that Ask The Fish Haiku at the the top of the ask the fish page? heh? heh? heh?
-ATF

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Dear Ask the Fish,
I'm a huge fan of muzak. In my dream world i'd have a huge bathroom with muzak playing every time I turned the lights on. What's the reality of this? How much will it set me back? Can you think of anything better then taking a dump listening to an instrumental cover of Brian Adams "Everything I do I do it for you?"
-Muzac fan

Dear Muzac,
It would be relatively easy to set up. I'd recommend the music to play when you enter the bathroom instead of when you turn on the lights. This is good for 2 reasons. First, some people like to poop in the dark. Why deprive them? Second, you can pick up a really cheap motion detector for pretty cheap that will start some music (most likely an mp3 player) when you walk in.
As for your second question, here are a list of better songs to listen to while taking a dump: