Q: Does iron burn?

A: Sure does. Like the fires of hell.

Hot stuff. Hot.

Iron is an excellent conductor of heat. Once it gets hot, you shouldn't even touch it. One second will melt the skin off your hands. Two will sear muscle.

I'm starting to think I made a mistake installing a flame-thrower on my iron exo-skeleton. I'm cooking in here. The smell of roasting human flesh is less delicious than I imagined. I'm starting to wonder if I was right about anything.

Q: What Are The Top Ten Things To Stress Out Teens?

A: When I feel helpless and hopeless after a long day of clock watching and pretending to work at my awful job, stressing out teens gives me a chance to regain a feeling of power. I may not be able to control my own life, but I can briefly control the anxiety of a teen. On most days that's enough. On the rest, there's alcohol.

You can:

 - Steal their girlfriend with the promise of alcohol, which as an adult, you can legally purchase.

 - Pretend to be a big-time college football scout. Call their home. Eat dinner with the family. Imply that his parents have a loveless marriage. Watch highlight videos. Ask if you can get any tape on Mom. Go to the big game. Spend the whole game chatting up his mother. After the game, when he asks how he played, shake your head and say "Can't say. I'm more of soccer guy."

 - Set their house on fire. (Note: This technique will stress out anyone, not only teens.)

 - Pose as their school's guidance counselor. Meet with students individually and ask about their masturbation habits. At first, they will be reluctant to discuss masturbation, but you will soon win their trust, thanks to your scholarly beard and tweed jacket. (Note: Grow beard and don jacket before attempting ruse.) Once they've confided their masturbation habits and frequency, cross your arms, stroke your beard, peer over your glasses and say, "That's all fine, but are you doing it correctly?" Immediately leave the room.

 - Find a victim of cyber-bullying, put your arm around him or her and whisper, "It's okay. These are the easiest days of your life. It gets much, much worse."

 - Hand them a two page block of text without pictures or graphics. Tell them you will give them $10,000 if they can read to the end without sweating or crying.

 - When you see a small group leaving a movie on a Friday night, laughing and joking and quoting their favorite lines, run them down with your car.

 - While wearing dark glasses and using a cane to walk, as a blind person would do, approach a boy in the video game section of Best Buy and him that you are him from the future and you've traveled back in time to undo a life of horrible decisions. Mumble "If only we had know the truth about Facebook."

 - When the cashier at Burger King asks what kind of drink you'd like, say "Whichever one will melt a corpse the quickest."

 - Make eye contact, speak slowly and ask them questions about their day.

I could go on. There are 73 ways to stress out a teen, but you asked for ten. Ten is what you get.

Q: What two things make microwaves more dangerous?

A: Microwaves are death traps. If the door is broken, they can cause radiation poisoning. If you put metal in them, they will explode. They can turn any food into a weapon. To make them more dangerous you'd have to replace the handle with a piece of razor sharp steel, or replace the window with a laser that causes blindness. Only a fool would do that.

On an unrelated note, would you have any interest in buying a microwave? I don't use it any more, but it works great. Trust me.

I'd look you in the eye if I could, but the doctors say I have to keep them bandaged for another month. Let's shake on it. Don't be alarmed by my prosthetic fingers.

Q: Why work in a restaurant?

A: Everyone needs money, at least until we all come to our senses and replace our broken capitalist system with a system based on exchanging hand-drawn back rub coupons for goods and services; what better way to make money than by working at a restaurant, lugging hot plates of greasy food, constantly on the move, your income reliant on the generosity of  strangers too lazy or too incompetent to prepare and cook their own meals?

I see you're starting to form words with your mouth there and I'm going to stop you before you get too far. My question was rhetorical. There is no better way to make money. End of story.

In addition to the money - and I'm talking hundreds of dollars a month, more than enough to support your drug habit or deadbeat boyfriend or elderly parent - working in a restaurant has certain ancillary benefits. You get to eat all the food we throw away at the end of the night. Sure you have to fish it out of the dumpster and knock the maggots off it, but once you do, it's yours. Bon appetit. If  customer doesn't finish his soda, you can finish it. That's like three gallons of free soda a week. Free food, free soda, free sex with the restaurant manager - how much better does it get?

Let me stop you there. No better. None. Rhetorical.

Aside from the free food and drink and sex - and it's good sex; I keep a nice rhythm, and I know just when to pinch and tickle and bite - there's one benefit to working at a restaurant that you can't get anywhere else: If a child gets lost in the restaurant and stays the night, he becomes the property of our employee of the month, no questions asked. You can do whatever you want with him: teach him to sing, to fight, to talk like a robot, to pick pockets, or grift, or act as body armor - anything. Kids get lost in here all the time. Once they enter the playroom, they have a hard time finding their way out, probably because it's shaped like a maze, and we play loud Danish death metal to disorient their sense of direction. And we drug all the kids meals. Whatever the reason, there's a lot of lost kids in that playroom. Enough to build an army. An army of disoriented children, bleeding from their ears and crying for their parents. Just so you don't feel bad, the parents sign a waiver before their kids enter the playroom. It holds up in court.

So, are you going to take the job? Or am going to have to sweeten the offer with some erotic photos from my vacation to Belize?

Great. Welcome aboard. Just sign this start paperwork and you're all set. As a new member of the team, you get the first session of free sex with the restaurant manager. Slip into this panda costume and meet me in the break room. I did mention that the sex, while free and incredible, is mandatory, didn't I?

Oops. Guess you should have read that paperwork. There's a zipper in the back of the costume. It's a one piece. If the smell bothers you, don't worry, you won't have it on that long.

Q: What is a lions effect on man?

A: Before I had a lion, I had a wife, I had kids, I had a house, a nice one with three and half bathrooms, enough for everyone to use at once.  I had an important job, as an executive for a growing advertising company. I wooed clients, recruited writers and artists. I wore a suit to work, except on Fridays when I wore a designer jeans and a blazer. I had an expense account.

My son, Reggie, wanted the lion. He talked me into it. He said all the other kids in his class had exotic pets, Mike had an iguana, Tyler's parents bought him an emu, Jake got a orangutan for his 12th birthday. Reggie looked at me, tears in his eyes, snot in his nose, with a quivering lip, and asked "Don't you love me, Dad? Is that why you won't buy me a lion?"

I didn't love him. He had been an accident. My therapist told me I could never let the boy know, not ever, not for any reason, no matter what he did or said, no matter how much he disappointed me, no matter how often his presence reminded me of the beach house in Maui I could not afford thanks to his need for food and shelter and private education.

I bought him a lion. He named it Emmet. I thought that would be the end of it, and I could go back to ignoring him and dismissing his questions with a nod of the head, a raise of the eyebrows, by saying, "That's great, Reg. Daddy's busy."

When I bought Reggie the lion I bought three hundred pounds of ground beef. I thought that was the end of it. The lion ate the beef in four days. On the fifth day Reggie asked me to buy more food. I nodded my head. I raised my eyebrows. I said, "That's great, Reg. Daddy's busy." I finished my drink. I searched the internet for pictures of college girls posing in bathroom mirrors. I was not busy. I did not buy more food.

On the sixth day the lion ate Reggie. On the seventh day the lion ate my wife and my other children. On the eighth day my company's accountant questioned me about my expense account. Had I really bought 300 pounds of ground beef? Had I really bought a lion? I nodded my head, raised my eyebrows and told him I was busy.

On the ninth day I lost my expense account. On the afternoon of the ninth day, I lost my job. I still have the lion. He's stayed with me through it all, through the toughest time in my life. I wouldn't be where I am today without this lion. They say a dog is man's best friend. They lie. Man's best friend is a lion. I've never been so happy in my life. Although that may be shock. The lion took a big chunk out of my thigh a minute ago. Looks like he's coming back for more.