Open response to a private email asking me why I hate mushrooms.

1. Many serial killers have eaten mushrooms.

2. The popular acceptance of mushrooms have crowded out toadstools, which are much more interesting on both an aesthetic and philosophical level.

3. Everyone likes mushrooms and that makes it difficult for me to get the pizza topping I want: artichoke hearts and garlic.

4. Snowshoe Crab also hates mushrooms.  And does she look unhealthy to you?

5. They taste really, really bad.

6. No mushroom has ever had any good words to say about me.

7. I once misplaced my car keys for a little while, and for all I know mushrooms were responsible.

8. If I fell into a 30 foot vat of mushrooms, I would eventually suffocate and die.

9. When radiation in our atmosphere turns mushrooms into 50-foot man-eating killers, don’t come crying to me.

10. The only good mushrooms I ever had were in Italy when I had this amazing mushroom risotto that tasted so good that it didn’t even taste like mushrooms, which means it wasn’t actually mushrooms but a big Italian trick played by Italians, which proves that mushrooms are always bad and therefore I hate them.