Ask Dr. Death

By now, dear reader, you undoubtedly know that Dr. Jack Kevorkian—a.k.a. “Dr. Death”—has been released from prison. Dr. Kevorkian, of course, became infamous for his work on behalf of and spirited defense of euthanasia. Before heading to the slammer, Dr. Kevorkian lent his hand in a large number of so-called assisted suicides.

To be honest, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have always found Dr. Kevorkian a mite troubling. We mean, come on: If he cares so much about euthanasia, why doesn’t he seem concerned about, say, youth in Africa? (Boy, that was a lame joke—and it doesn’t even translate well on the computer screen.)

Perhaps you also realize that Dr. Kevorkian has announced that he will no longer take part in the assisted suicide racket. Go figure: maybe he couldn’t make any money in it, because all his clients insisted that they reimburse him after the procedure.

By the by, this leads us to the topic of today’s humble “post”: What will Jack Kevorkian do for the remainder of his (living) years on earth? He could, we suppose, push some sort of diet pill, since he appears to have the kind of figure we’ve only seen on Nichole Ritchie and a corpse. But, to be honest, he’s probably not sufficiently telegenic to serve as a spokesmodel.

And this brings us to our brilliant idea: Dr. Kevorkian, having hung up his assisted suicide cap, should start his own nationally syndicated advice column. He could be the next Abbey—or, failing that, the next Basilica. (Wow, that was an even lamer gag.)

Just think of it. On the back page of your local paper, jammed up against the dull “This Week in History” section, you’d read “Ask Dr. Death.” Really draws you in, doesn’t it? What’s more, it would allow Dr. Kevorkian the opportunity to help people—without giving them cyanide. We all win.

In order to offer you the full effect of our clever idea, we’ve decided to present a sample version of the “Ask Dr. Death” column. In this little preview, we’ll produce Dr. Kevorkian’s answers for him, since—try as we might—we couldn’t get in touch with him directly.

Further, we couldn’t think of any good queries for Dr. Kevorkian, so we purloined some from the “Your Problems Solved” section of the June 2 number of The Spectator. As the Speccie is a British rag, we hope you’ll pardon the limey-tinged questions. And the bad teeth, for that matter.

Okay, without any further ado, here goes:

ASK DR. DEATH—with Dr. Jack Kevorkian

Q: I have a boyfriend, of whom I am very fond, for some time now. There is, however, one slight problem. On special occasions when he comes to visit my family, he always dons his best pair of shoes of which he is extremely proud. Unfortunately these are not of the gentlemanly variety. They are of a particularly common style and colour and would perhaps better appeal to a Sicilian waiter out on a Sunday jaunt. I thought this would be a matter of little impediment but my boyfriend only has to enter the room for the eyes of all my family to become incurably transfixed on his shoes. What should I do?

A: You must kill your boyfriend.

Q: Around these parts one regularly runs into a particular dinner-party know-it-all. He speaks about the topics of the day with an air of terrific authority and no one challenges him, but quite apart from him boring people’s pants off I sense he is actually quite uninformed, and once or twice have found out too late that some pronouncement of his was quite wrong. Help, Dr. Death! He is due to come to dinner soon and I’d like to arm myself with some solid facts about, say, green issues—dismissing the greenhouse effect is one of his favorite hobby horses.

A: You are obliged to murder this dinner-party know-it-all. In addition, I recommend that you do in the rest of the party attendees. Or at least maim them.