Dear Amritsar,
Have you ever noticed that vacuubots get a dark look in their eyes when you ask them to do something simple like get rid of all the foodstuffs in the back of the fridge that have developed consciousness and appear to be on the brink of bootstrapping themselves into industrial societies? This despite the fact that vacuubots don't even have eyes? I may just be -
Danita Hovercraft
Hey, Babe,
I'm going to stop you there, because I get the distinct impression that you are avoiding the real question you want to ask me. In therapy, this is known as "avoiding the real question." In newspaper columning, this is known as "eating up my limited word count for no good purpose."
What's really troubling you?
Dear Amritsar,
Wow. You're good.
Okay, I...I love my friends and family. Really, I do. That's why I have trouble knowing how to handle it when they get, for lack of a better term, doofusy.
Take my sister. Why would she volunteer me to babysit her two cloned children, Xenosthenes and Arbitrarium, when she knows that I am a member of Hoteliers Against Genetic Science? She's seen my membership card and heard my keynote address at the World Anti-cloning Congress and Kaffeeklatsch in Orlando. Has she ever met me? (If the person who asked me to babysit was a clone of my sister created at her birth, I suppose it's possible that she had never met me. Still, I think I would have noticed a change in her dusting patterns.)
Or, take my friend Jefferson Baby. JB invited me and a bunch of his friends to a Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello movie marathon. Me! Screw beach movies - I don't even like the beach! Just the idea makes me break out in body piercings so bad I need to take a PIL!
The problem is, you try and tell them this and they respond that you're just being difficult and, really, you'll love doing what they want you to do if only you give it a chance. Well! Either I'm living in a Philip K. Dick novel (in which case, I should have much better technology), or my friends and family don't seem to know me at all! Is there any way I can get across to people how doofusy they're being without actually, you know, confronting them?
Danita Hovercraft
Hey, Babe,
You're in luck. Hellmark, whose way with cheap sentiment and cheesy rhymes is legendary, has announced the release of a new line of greeting cards that lets you off the hook for expressing what you really feel to the ones you love. The What the Hell Were You Thinking? line.
One of the cards, for example, has a lovely floral bouquet on the front with the words: "Getting married is one of the most exciting days of your life..." When you open up the card, you find the flowers are dead, and the message concludes: "...and you chose me, the woman who said she would get married over her dead body, to be your maid of honour? WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?"
Another card has a picture of a mirror on the front with the message: "Congratulations. You look years younger..." Inside is a huge multi-coloured clown wig and the message: "...just like you're 12 again. WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?"
My favourite card in the series features a parchment that is charred around the edges with an illegible signature in red ink on the bottom line and the words, "So, you got what you wanted..." on the front. Inside, there is a picture of a rat in a cage and the message: "It wasn't what you thought it was going to be, was it? WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?"
Just about everybody I know could have used this card at one time or another in their lives!
If you can't find a card that expresses the exact sentiment you need, Hellmark has a companion series of blank cards. They usually have a suggestive image on the front (a mandolin with only two strings, a golden tiara, a bottle of blue pills, an ATM dispensing ancient wisdom, three French hens - with passports that prove their nationality - a door slightly ajar, a jar slightly adored, a quill pen being crushed by a computer hard drive, a bottle of red pills, a European Union flag from a universe where there is no France, a tackyometer, an owl driving a Honda Civic, 17 identical picture frames and a baby's arm holding an apple); inside are several blank lines that you can fill in yourself, at the bottom of which is, of course, the phrase "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?"
About the only card Hellmark hasn't created is one that asks what the person was thinking when they gave you one of the other cards in the series. But, I'm sure that was an oversight that will be corrected soon!
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: I probably shouldn't be encouraging people who are trying to avoid confrontation, but the point isn't worth arguing about...