The Origin of Pasta by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Tortellini in the Struggle for an Evening Meal

In the beginning, there was an egg. Nevermind how the egg got there, just assume that it was. The pasta was void and formless, and the yoke of the egg was hovering over the face of the flour. Nevermind how the flour got there. Once again, just assume that it was.

Through a process of one part Brownian motion, two parts Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and just a pinch of magic: there was dough. This process is far too complex for the un-indoctrinated mind to comprehend, so don't even try. You'll cook your noodle.

After millions of years of random gravitational pulls and both the strong and weak nuclear forces, the dough became supple and extruded into a sheet of uniform 1/8" thickness.

With this perfect substrate of randomly aligned hydrocarbons, starches and that mysterious egg yolk, ricotta cheese naturally appeared. Once again, don't ask how, just assume that it did. Soon to follow was fresh parsely, both perfectly portioned and placed into a disk of dough precisely 1/8" thick and of perfect symmetry.

Through yet another unknown process, probably involving dark matter, the disk (much like space-time) folded over on itself, thus creating two parallel dimensions of dough, ricotta cheese, fresh parsley and that mysterious egg yolk.


Through meiosis (a process by which single celled, ricotta cheese and parsely filled dough replicate without dividing), an entire population developed. Some were slightly fat, some slightly thin. Some slightly tall, some slightly small. Some intelligent, and some as dumb as pasta. Through centuries of millenia, these random combinations of particles with no known origin formed villages, cities, towns and nations. For a while, they experimented with Marxism, then adopted communism with "pasta characteristics."

Then, mysteriously and probably through some sort of meteor strike causing cataclysmic climate change, they were no more. All that was preserved was an empty red pot. Once again, don't ask where that came from, just assume that it did. However, the leftover bio-mass of these little pinko commy hooligans might one day grow into your neighbor. Don't ask how, just assume that it will.

Photos by Missy Reynolds

Written by the Red Hairring

No animals were harmed in the filming of this propoganda (except the mysterious egg, which may or may not be a chicken yet), but 4 children were ignored.