You're a Horrible Person, But I Like You: The Believer Book of Advice (12 page)

The key word here is “respect.” If you don’t respect the fact that your dog comes from a long line of meat eaters, you will not earn his trust, and in the end you won’t be able to manipulate his will. Your dog, if he is like other dogs, has probably been told that eating meat is part of the culture of being a dog. This is baloney. The problem is that eating meat is where his canine identity lies, just like chewing on bones and barking and chasing the mailman. All these things are part of his Current Canine Identity (CCI). However, having written an extensive pamphlet on the subject, I can categorically tell you that what’s needed is to Reverse His Canine Identity (RHCI). It’s been well documented that vegetarian dogs are smarter, less violent, and have fresher breath than their meat-eating counterparts. So, when you catch him chewing on a bone, replace it with a stick of celery. (Paint it brown if you have to.) If he notices and refuses to touch it, just leave the celery in his bowl until it turns into a brown, moldy liquid. Eventually starvation will kick in and voilà, you and your dog will be working together toward a mutual goal. If he barks, let loose a roar that is louder and more intimidating than anything he’s ever heard. In my case, with my dachshund, I purchased a cassette tape of a lion roaring from the National Geographic audio library, and I let it play at full volume, sometimes in the middle of the night, very close to his ears while he’s sleeping. It creates a nightmare association that’s quite effective.

Once these few lessons have been learned, you’ll be on your way to having an obedient dog. Because of this method, I have a well-behaved and mostly mute celery-eating dog who whimpers whenever the mailman comes around. Good luck to you, Lucie. For more information and questions you can purchase my pamphlet at
veggiedog.co.uk.org/whimper
.

Aasif

Marc Maron

Dear Marc:

My mother-in-law hates me, but that’s not really my problem. I think I’m developing a crush on her boyfriend. Is that too weird? How soon should I tell my wife about these feelings, if at all? And is there a chance this has something to do with why my mother-in-law hates my guts?

Giles Russo
Durham, NC

Dear Giles:

You’ve got a lot of things going on here, on a lot of levels. Generally, when family is involved and there is so much unsaid, it is best just to come out with it abruptly and without provocation in the middle of a holiday dinner. It might even be good to offer to say a prayer before the meal and do a gratitude/confessional thing. The worst that can happen is that the meal turns into a mess of emotional chaos and everyone, for their own reasons, leaves the table and you are left alone eating your last supper as the man you were and your first supper of your new life with the muted sounds of crying and yelling drifting in from other rooms.

Marc

…

Dear Marc:

My wife left me for a woman, and though I think I should feel terrible about this, my friends tell me that I shouldn’t take it personally. She isn’t rejecting me; she’s rejecting
all
men. I suppose they have a point, but am I wrong to think that I was dumped for reasons that have nothing to do with my penis?

H. V. Bewley
New York, NY

Dear H. V.:

The sad truth is that she was probably gay going in and you seemed like enough of a lesbian for her to try to snap out of what she hoped was a phase. I say get rid of the penis and try to get her back. You can do that now. I saw it in a special on HBO.

Marc

…

Dear Marc:

I’ve been thinking about leaving the country ever since Bush was reelected, but I can’t decide on the right place to go. Canada is too cold, Mexico is too dangerous, nobody likes Americans (even expats)
in France, and Britain seems as oppressive and fascistic as home. I’m out of ideas! Any suggestions?

Sandy P
.
Somewhere in Iowa

Dear Sandy:

Don’t be a coward. Fight for your beliefs and your country. If you are that fed up with America, start your own country. If you have a little property and a vision, all you need is a constitution. Write it up, make yourself president, head of the military, chief legislator, and Supreme Court justice. Then create some uniforms that you can wear for each role. Build a Sandyland MySpace page and reach out to like-minded people who might want to become citizens. This is the DIY age, Sandy. Make technology work for you. Oh, and write a snappy national anthem and decide on a few regional tourist attractions to bring in some money. If you have a dog, there’s the Sandyland National Zoological Park. You get the idea.

Marc

…

Dear Marc:

My boyfriend makes me talk dirty to him during sex, but I can’t think of anything to say that isn’t a cliché or doesn’t make me sound like a porn star. Can you suggest some conversational topics for sex that are both clever and filthy?

Andrea Gordon
Provo, UT

Dear Andrea:

Talk to him like you’re fifteen and having a fight with your father.

Marc

…

Dear Marc:

My wife is pregnant, and though I love her and everything, she’s been kind of an asshole lately. I know it’s really because of the hormones, but I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. How can I tell her to fuck off in the most polite, I-still-love-you-because-you’re-the-mother-of-my-child-but-c’mon-you’re-being-a-cunt kinda way?

Jack Caldwell
Chicago, IL

Dear Jack:

Just know that any missteps on your part during this harrowing period of pregnancy will be held against you for the rest of your life. Any action you take along the lines that you are thinking will be seen as selfish, immature, insensitive, and perhaps unforgivable. Be politically minded here. Have a little vision. Think about the future. Your wife feels fat, farty, unattractive, and uncomfortable. Do whatever she wants you to do and make her feel loved and sexy. Meanwhile, nourish your resentment of her. Store it and mold it into an emotional disposition that will make your new child love you more than its mother.

Marc

…

Dear Marc:

I have a weird feeling that Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” was written about me. I’ve never dated, been married to, or even met Mr. Dylan, but some of the details in his song are just too eerily similar to my own life. I’ve worked in a topless bar for most of my adult life, and I’m fond of reading Italian poetry (yes, from the eighteenth century) to my boyfriend. Also, I don’t care for either homemade bread or small bank accounts. Am I just being paranoid, or is Dylan trying to get my attention?

Anjanette H
.
San Francisco, CA

Dear Anjanette:

There is no doubt in my mind that you are absolutely correct about your feelings. To get some real clarity, begin a daily crystal meth regimen. Start out slow but do it until hallucinations induced by sleep deprivation become your guide. I think it will be clear that you need to follow Dylan—he’s always on the road—and when the time is right, corner him and tell him everything you are thinking. Try to maintain some charm through this process. If your hair and teeth start falling out, you’ve waited too long to make your move.

Marc

…

Dear Marc:

After twenty years of marriage, my wife suddenly announced that she wants an open relationship. At first, it felt like I’d won the lottery. But lately it’s occurred to me that I’m a fortysomething man with a paunch, and she’s a trim hottie in her sexual prime. Am I setting myself up for disaster?

Stephen Goldstone
Jacksonville, FL

Dear Stephen:

It doesn’t sound like you have much of a choice. You only have a few options. I don’t know how you are set up financially, but you might want to get some Viagra and put an image together that would make younger women think that you are well-off and virile and dupe them into sex that way. Or you could level the playing field by finding a woman your own age, telling her what you’ve been through, and actually having an age-appropriate relationship. My fear is that you will be left no choice but to unintentionally reveal your fear and desperation to your current wife and tell her she can do whatever she wants as long as you are part of it somehow. Then you spend the rest of your life quietly masturbating in a closet while she fucks a seemingly never-ending parade of men in your bed. The only way this scenario can end is, a day comes when you wrap your lips around the end of a shotgun. On that sad day, I would make sure you are in the closet and she is in the middle of a particularly heated fuck session when that hammer comes down.

Come on, Stephen. Open relationship? Are you out of your fucking mind? Lose her.

Marc

Adam McKay

Dear Adam:

I’ve heard that you can legally buy marijuana if you have glaucoma. I’d like to avoid optic nerve damage, as anything on or around my eyes kinda creeps me out. Are there non-eyeball diseases that would allow me to smoke government-sanctioned weed?

Thanks
,
Sandy
San Francisco, CA

Dear Sandy:

You’ve asked a very intriguing question. Right now, in the great state of California, there are many ailments that doctors will treat with weed: back pain, anxiety, that time of the month, etc., etc. Some lesser-known ailments include: being bitten by a fruit bat (let’s face it, if you’ve been bitten by a poodle-size bat, you need to get high fast so you can laugh about it), being dead (8 percent of marijuana users are zombies, thus explaining their slow walk and lack of jobs), and being haunted by a ghost (if you walk into a doctor’s office and yell, “The ghosts won’t get out of my head!” what serious professional won’t hook you up with some ganja immediately?).

Adam

…

Dear Adam:

I’ve heard so much recently about an impending global grain shortage. Should I be hoarding bread?

John B
.
Seattle, WA

Dear John:

It’s shocking to me that you haven’t already been hoarding bread. I’m going to assume you’re Amish and don’t have access to any kind of useful information. I started hoarding bread back in ’79 and now have approximately thirty-four tons of fermented bread in U-Store-Its across the country. I’ve got Wonder bread with Justice League of America trading cards in it, and frozen Lender’s bagels from ’82. Recently I was arrested for operating a still because apparently the guards at the storage facilities were getting drunk off of my old bread. But that’s a problem I can live with, while you starve to death up there in Washington State.

Adam

…

Dear Adam:

According to the old adage, “Beer before liquor, never been sicker; liquor before beer, you’re in the clear.” But what if you prefer
popping bennies? Where’s the snappy, helpful rhyme for those of us who like our bliss in pill form?

T.J
.
Portland, OR

Dear T.J.:

It’s tough to be from the Northwest, because popular culture and medicine take decades to get to you folks. Having said that, we Easterners and Southwesterners thank you for your gold and potatoes. The saying is “Bennies before Dilaudid, never clouded; huffing Wite-Out before injecting CAT into your dick, you might get a smidge sick.” Another popular one in my neck of the woods is “Grain alcohol before a glass of liquid acid, always placid; pulling a three-hundred-dude train while high on angel dust before cliff diving on meth will lead to televised death.” A good way to remember these is to put them to a popular song melody. I use Rage Against the Machine’s cover of “Maggie’s Farm.” Hope I was able to help! And when you guys get phone lines out there in Oregon, give us a call and let us know how it worked!

Adam

…

Dear Adam:

I’m not a virgin, but every time I have sex with a woman, I tell her, “This is my first time.” It gives her a sense of accomplishment, and my below-average skills in the bedroom suddenly seem really impressive. Am I being immoral, or just making lemonade out of lemons?

Not a Virgin but Willing to Learn
Ann Arbor, MI

Dear Not a Virgin:

Lies and fantasy are the nectar of good lovemaking. What you’re doing is adding spice to both your lives, and spice is never bad, unless it’s condensed into a highly concentrated form and put into a spray can and sprayed at a person’s eyes. I myself will sometimes tell a lover I was raised in the Koresh compound and was taught that sex with more than one girl is wrong and I will burst into flame if it happens and that’s why girls won’t do it. After she brings her crying friend into the room to join us, the fun begins. So if it makes you feel good, it can’t be wrong. Which is why I’m addicted to cooking sherry, glory-hole sex, and blackjack.