Dear Captain Obvious: My son and daughter have gone too far this time by exposing my child bride to vicious propaganda and making her cry. I will crush them. I will bring them to their knees. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll bloooooow their house down. And, for good measure, I’ll cut them out of my will and evict them from my property. Mad Dog.
Dear Mad Dog: Calm down for heaven’s sakes! We all know that children can test the strongest of wills. The key here is to maintain your composure and let them know who is boss while at the same time trying to remember that they are the fruit of your loins. They may be rotten fruit, but still fruit nonetheless. At your age you can’t afford to be huffing and puffing over anything so skip the theatrics and call a family meeting. Tell your brats that if they don’t shape up, and fast, you’ll send them to a cage in the basement without any supper. Have the small forgotten toddlers of this town testify to the atrocities of being locked up and left to decay until their next outing and I assure you your offspring will correct their wicked ways.
Dear Captain Obvious: Is it wise to seek answers to life’s question from a Ouija board? My fiancé gave one to me as a gift when he got back from Europe. Being a complete kook I’ve grown absolutely obsessed with it.
Every time I ask it a question it points to “goodbye”. I ask it if my friends will live happily every after: goodbye! If I want to know if my fiancé and I will live a long and happy life together: goodbye! I am positively frantic with worry over this. Looking For Answers.
Dear Looking: Next time you take it down off the shelf try asking it this: Will the day ever come when I can stop being a cheap comical device used to fluff and pad other people’s story lines? Goodbye!
Dear Captain Obvious: Mayday! Mayday! My website is getting too much traffic as a result of a salacious article that was printed in the latest issue and then posted on the webzine. I’m afraid we might crash. Do you read me? Too much traffic… (static, static)… emergency landing… (static,static) …crash…(more static).
Dear Mayday: Roger that, Mayday. Please be advised that as an online magazine and web publishing company you should have the common sense to purchase enough bandwidth from your server to handle unexpected spikes in online traffic. Please also be advised that you are stupid.
Dear Captain Obvious: My husband is a habitual liar. He can’t help himself. He’s been lying to me since the day we started screwing and has been going non-stop ever since, lying I mean, not screwing. It has been a perpetual dark cloud hanging over our relationship. I was getting ready to tell him that I wanted a divorce after his latest fib made me look like an idiot in front of the whole town but then something caught my eye as I was leaving the house—a reflection of myself in the mirror hanging over the fireplace. My hair…. It. Was. Awful. It’s clipped in varying lengths hanging down on either side of my chin and then gets really long as you go towards the back. My roots are showing and the whole thing is divided by a part down the middle to ensure equal outputs of ugly. Could it be? I wondered to my self in, you know, wonderment. Could my husband be lying because he can’t stand to look at my hair any longer? Scary Hairy.
Dear Scary: People who are habitual liars do so as a cry for attention and rarely because their partner is either too boring or too lazy to wear a hairstyle that is fashionable and flattering. If it’s funds you lack why not skip the hair salon all together and wear a wig? You get the benefit of looking less stale and outdated and keeping your real hair away from the judgmental eyes of the public.
Dear Captain Obvious: I slept with my best friend friend after getting wasted on booze and now everything is like, weird between us. He was like a brother confidante to me. I feel so gross inside. This doesn’t make me a slut, does it? My friend was just as drunk as I was. My bad.
Dear Bad: Are you per chance the same “Bad” who wrote to me in issue 4? Because if you are I would say it’s time to embrace your real identity: a raging alcoholic whose legs fly open each time moonshine touches her lips. My God, woman! Log on and download some dignity, will ya?
Dear Captain Obvious: When I threw my boyfriend on the garbage heap at the Relationship Landfill, I fully expected him to remain there, languishing and pining away for me as the flies and vultures circled overhead. But I was unlucky to discover that he has had the nerve to move on, and with a decolorized hussy no less! To say that I’m outraged would be putting it mildly. Just because I don’t want him doesn’t mean he has the right to put his life back together. The whole thing is simply preposterous and makes me want to pounce on him, make frantic love and then refuse to answer his calls the next day. What am I missing here? Love Him, Love Him Not.
Dear Love Him: What am I missing here? It seems you omitted the part in your letter where you were supposed to tell me that you had purchased your boyfriend in a quaint little gift shop and that you were his owner. Because only a receipt indicating the date of sale and items purchased could justify this abominable behavior. Really, young lady! You aught to be ashamed.
Dear Captain Obvious: Hey there. Just dropping a line to update you that I’m still as pathetic as ever. When I’m not making it my personal crusade to investigate my ex-lover’s husband to see if in fact he IS a murderous lout, I spend my spare hours baking at about 350 degrees in the Genoa City Athletic Club’s tanning beds. I’m almost a delicious crispy orange—think Oompa Loompa but without the creepy green hair and white eyebrows. Hey, there’s no law against looking tanned and sexy while bringing down the bad guys. Detective Clueless.
Dear Detective Clueless: But there should be one against wasting precious time and ink writing this back to you.
Originally published: Jul-19-2008
