Dear N'3lvra,

How can I be sure that my son (just a baby now) grows up to be a left wing radical who will stand up and take action for what he believes in even in the face of threatening authority and potential punishment?

Truly,

A popular canned meat

P.S. The Momma Penguins would sit on the friggin’ eggs until the iceberg melted or the little P’s moved out and got their own igloos.

Dear Pam in a Can, or something like that,

It's all a big crap-shoot, this parenting thing. My only advice, which I'm not particularly qualified to give, is forgive yourself for how your babies turn out. And be able to actually believe you did the best you could. And, if you feel compelled to grow organic peas, squash them by hand, freeze them in little ice cube trays, and carefully heat them for your little baby, well, I dunno. You can easily look back on that and wonder what the fuck the point was when you see what they're apt to do to their own body a bit later on.

It was lovely that you wrote, and especially that we agree on the penguins.

But perhaps Courtney sounds a little bitter today, and she's sorry for that.

Dear Courtney,

I am writing to you for advice. Some random, unknown advice columnist wrote to me a few weeks ago offering her advice column, for free, for my newspaper. I didn't write back, because her so-called column seemed kind of, well, if I may say so, too sarcastic, and well, I hate to say it, but kind of low-brow. I don't know if she gets it that we are running a Serious Newspaper. And, it didn't seem like a real advice column, like maybe she just made up the letters.

Our paper is sold by homeless vendors as a stepping stone back into the rat race, and we like to run Serious Articles that are very grown up and important. For example, we like rehashing the election results (still, if you can believe it!), interviewing people who unload dead soldiers from airplanes, and we also include poetry written by vendors about how you sometimes can't even keep a dog when you're homeless. My point is that our newspaper is sort of like The Atlantic Monthly for people without so many resources: serious, intellectual, and tending toward the grim.

But it's been a few weeks since she wrote, and I feel sort of sorry that I didn't even reply to her, because, well, I guess it was a nice offer. So my question is this: after all this time, should I write back, or should I just assume she forgot all about it?

Signed,
Adam

Dear Adam,

Lighten up already. We all love your newspaper and all the good you're trying to do here on our tiny planet, but grim doesn't sell papers. Write back to her and tell her you'd love to run a trial column in your paper. Then get everyone you know to write in for advice about Very Grim Topics, so the column could get skewed in a Very Grim and Serious Direction right off the bat. Chances are she'd get bored and give up quickly, and you'd be off the hook, but you wouldn't have to feel more of that damned liberal guilt.

That's what I'd do, anyway.

Cheers,
Khortnee

Have you heard about those penguins in Antarctica who are stranded because of a huge iceburg blocking their path to the ocean?

In the penguin world, the girl penguins lay the eggs, after which the boy penguins say, "sure, sweetie, go grab yourself a bite to eat. I'll sit here for 6 days while you go for a snack with the other moms." But the problem is that this iceburg has made it a very long waddle out to the ocean for fish, and the girls aren't back in 6 days. So the boys just leave the eggs and start walking to the ocean themselves.

My question, dear reader, is this: If the roles were reversed, how long do you think the Momma Penguins would sit on the friggin eggs? Would they just say, "um, times up, he said he'd be back now, so whatever, I'm leaving. These little eggs can just sit on the ice by themselves"

How's this? Cortnee was weary of that grim color scheme.

I've been trying to get an actual job, but alas, looks like the advice market is all tied up with insiders.