Mailbag!!!

I picked up a copy of one of my favorite all-time in-print timewasters yesterday: The Weekly World News. I am only partway through it, and already I've learned so much. LIke eating too much hot mustard can turn a person into a soothsayer, and that almost anyone can become an advice columnist.

Like, for example, me.

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Dear Tiff,

My Mother hates me, I'm convinced of it. She made me clean up some OJ I spilled yesterday, and then this morning made me take out the trash before breakfast. Also, I have to shower every day and brush my teeth and clean my room and get to bed on time and set the table for dinner and not cuss.

How can I make it so that she just leaves me alone to do my own thing? I'm 35 and live in the basement of her house, so it's not like she ever really has to see me or be in my space.

Signed,
Over Her Bossy Ways

Dear OHBW,

Suck it up, buttercup. Then do the laundry, thank her for giving birth to you, make her dinner, tell her she's pretty, and offer to mow the lawn. God you're a punk, and sicken me.

T



Ola Tiff!

I'm in college and don't date. I had thought the social scene was going to be hot and heavy once I left home, but it seems like nothing's happening where I am. What can I do to kick-start my social life?

Lonely and Bored


Dear Prude,

Are you straight? Are you not straight? Are you maybe a little bent? Downright crooked? What are your thoughts on costumes? Do you cry easily? Who's your favorite of the Seven Dwarves? Is there any real use for the letter "x"?

I can't offer you good advice if you don't give me MORE INFO! Write me back with the answers to the above questions, because with some more knowledge and a little extra patience I might be able to stomach counseling someone as unimaginative as you.

OMG, I can't stand it! For Cripe's sake, you're in COLLEGE! Think happy hour! Think football games! Think art openings and concerts and the library stacks and the quad and night classes and tutoring the stupid and easily impressed! Jeez!!! It's not going to come to YOU, unless you're loose, which I'm guessing you're NOT, because if you were you wouldn't be writing to me all moopy and suchlike!

Let me know how it goes, once you DO get a life.

Tiff.



Hey Tiff,

Did you hear that "ginormous" has been included in the Merriam-Webster dictionary this year? That's pretty cool, but I'd like to know what words YOU would include in a dictionary if you could have your say.

Signed,
Netherbit Kisser


Dear NK,

Firstly, I agreed to answer your oh-so-casually salutatorian missive only because it's a good question that takes into account MY feeling on an important matter. Otherwise I would have lofted your impertinence directly into the rubbish bin, where such impropriety belongs.

Yes, I'm channeling William Safire, what of it?

To your question then, and let me start by asking YOU as question as a rather homey didactic technique designed to create a fraternal atmosphere when in fact none exists at all.

You mean, would I include words that aren't really words but are concatenations of other words, like the aforementioned "ginormous"? If that's the case, then I'd have to go with "hugemungous" and "fugly." Also "idiohole," which I just made up but kind of like anyhow, because if you think about it for just a second you'll realize that it's really a bad thing to call someone that sounds rather nice indeed, like "flatulent" or "corpulent."

I hope this answers your question, and teaches you a lesson.

Yours in salubrious ministrations,

Tiff

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See? Being an advice columnist is easy-peasy, and FUN!

Also, it totally rocks when the columnist makes up her own questions to answer. Who needs to wait for actual PEOPLE to ask about stuff in order to dispense advice? Not me, that's for sure. Whee!!