I don't claim to have the answers, so this is in no way an official answer . . . unless they hire me to be a writer on The Simpsons, which they won't. At least, not in this lifetime.
Considering a majority of Indians are vegetarians (less than 30% of the Indian population eat meat), it is quite possible they were all "tofu dogs."
Vanity? You know how people don't like to say how old he really is. That, and consider the fact that he's moonbat crazy at times.
Manjula's as common a name in India as Lisa is here. Could have been another character with the same name.
Writers could pull off one of two answers. They probably had a dog that looked like SLH and ran away or the writers just screwed the pooch, so to say.
You know, there are times that I could say everybody has a twin. This could be the case for ol' Ruth, or, again, the writers screwed up.
Yup.
Technically, beatniks (a media-made stereotype of the Beat Generation) were around in the late 1940s to the mid 1960s and largely replaced in the mid-1960s by hippies. If he was 10 in that scene with his folks, Ned could very well be in his late 50s or early 60s. Of course, when the episode that introduced his beatnik family, Hurricane Neddy, originally aired, back in 1996, he could have been somewhere between 58 at the earliest (born in 1938, 10 in 1948, around the beginning of the Beat Generation) and 43 at the latest near the end of (born in 1953, 10 in 1963, around the end of the Beat Generation).
You know, Matt Groening wants to pretend that The Principal and the Pauper never existed, and you know what? I want to live in that world too.
He's old, and some episodes have him written as such.
Um . . . time doesn't really exist but is a concept controlled by western media syndicates to be manipulated in their own devices, and some choose not to adapt to said manipulation but control it themselves making their own rules and guidelines for what we call "time." Either that or laziness on the writers' parts.
Everybody has life-long dreams. Some have many. Some do those dreams and have more dreams to dream. And Homer has lived many lives and did many dreams. But he loses track of time. See above answer about time.
Rent Groundhog Day. It's a pretty good movie. I think in reality, the Simpsonsverse is a perpetual time frame that causes people to age very slowly and to rewind every year to the same point. That may explain why there's so many Christmases throughout the years.
Methinks she's a natural brunette and blue was just a phase for her.
That's more or less a graying process with ol' Clancy.
It probably was someone who looked like Ralph. Probably a cousin never seen again. Or, you know, laziness on the writers' part.
Older than George Burns, meaning he was born before 1896.
Could be. Some folks stayed into the 70s groove in the early 80s and let go as they got older. Other folks are Disco Stu.
Stuff happens.
Ten too many beers on Homer's part (it does kill brain cells, you know) and perhaps Apu got a little too into his work at the Kwik-E-Mart?