July 23, 2004
I’m in Love, Crack Young
I’m in Love, Crack Young Staff
As the regular readers of our humble “weblog” will no doubt remember, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” used to sport an Official Advice Column feature. In the past, numerous (i.e., two) readers have received much needed help regarding a capacious assortment of quandaries.As a reader recently reminded us, however, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have not featured this Official Advice Column in some time. To many, this may seem the result of the recent structural and administrative changes taking place at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” that you have no doubt read about in such sordid rags as The New York Times.
In truth, however, there has been a far less grandiose reason behind the disappearance of the Official Advice Column: No one has written us asking for advice in some time. At first, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” took this very personally: After offering our readers delectable nuggets of deep-fried wisdom free of charge, we have received nary a query. How bloody ungrateful, as our Danish friends would say.
All of our anger, however, has been assuaged by a missive sent by a regular reader. He has chosen his own pseudonym: “A Distressed Lover.” Sounds awfully interesting, doesn’t it? Still, in order to turn this into a real pseudonym (if you will), we must alter it to “A. Distressed Lover.” That way, it seems as if his first name is “Adam,” or “Albert.” Kind of like H. Ross Perot and R. Buckminster Fuller. You get the idea.
Anyway, A. Distressed Lover’s epistle is very interesting, and thus we are more than happy to devote today’s edition of our humble “weblog” to answering it. His letter has been edited for the purposes of euphony. And, naturally, we have embedded, if you will, some commentary in between one of its paragraphs. In part it reads:
Dear Crack Young Staff,
Though I have written to all the advice columns in the lower 48 [states], they have cruelly rejected me. I have nowhere to turn; you, crack young staff, are my only hope.
Before we continue with the letter, dear reader, we want to mention the lackluster job that A. Distressed Lover has shown in his attempt to get some advice. The United States of America, last we checked, is the home of fifty states—fifty-one, if you count Canada. A. Distressed Lover didn’t even bother contacting, say, the Juneau Daily Fishmonger.
You see, it’s like this. There’s this girl, and she, let me say it, is beyond compare. Beautiful, you ask? Not really. They say love is blind. My love, it seems, is Helen Keller.
The hitch (there has to be one) is that she is already attached to another guy. Now this faulty specimen of manhood couldn’t hold a candle to me in any way. He is unworthy of her noble love, but she cannot see, as she is blinded by his kind words and gifts of gumballs.
What can I do? I have tried persuasion, veiled threats, public humiliation. I am filled with visions of grabbing the nearest glove and solving things in the civilized way: Duel, to the death, man to man, kitchen knife to kitchen knife.
What can I do, my hatemongering advisors?
Yours, &c.
A. Distressed Lover
Wow. This, dear reader, is one heck of an epistle. Naturally, the Official Advice Department spent a good deal of time on this query. And, frankly, as the Official Advice Department hasn’t received a letter in a while, it is nice to see it do a bit of hard work. The slackers.
Anyway, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” came up with a few ideas regarding A. Distressed Lover’s predicament. To be honest, he’s in a really tough—and all too common—spot: How many of us have not pined in vain for some horrendously ugly chick? We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” spend so much time chasing gals who look strikingly like Chewbacca that we barely have any time to write this humble “weblog.”
But we digress. The Official Advice Column believes that it is officially a bad idea to get into a duel with this ugly chick’s boyfriend. Sure, it was a close vote, but the Official Staff of the Official Advice Column decided that years in jail for shooting a guy who gives his rancid girlfriend gumballs isn’t worth it at all. And, if you think the ladies in the real world are ugly, wait till you get to prison. So we’re told.
Well, then, what advice do we have? We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” believe that A. Distressed Lover should do the mature thing: He should spread gossip far and wide that this ugly chick’s current boyfriend is a homosexual. In addition, A. Distressed Lover should fabricate some sordid details of this boyfriend sleeping with other guys—particularly with fairly ugly guys, as this will seem even more demeaning to his girlfriend.
Before you know it, Mr. A. Distressed Lover, you will be basking in the glories of sweet, sweet love with a horrendously unappealing woman. We, of course, are terribly jealous.
Well, dear reader, there you have it. Another dilemma solved, thanks to the wily wiles of the crack young staff. If you have a hankering for some advice, feel free to send us an e-mail by clicking on the “Contact Us” link at the top right-hand corner of your computer screen. Our specialty may be hate, but we minored in advice in college.
