Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Long time listener first time caller...
  What is the proper way to bludgeon a co-worker without getting in trouble or looking like an asshole?
- the quiet one
Dear quiet one,
  Physical violence, while often satisfying for the soul, is a hobby that you can't really engage in without being punished. You're better off employing the threat of violence to change a co-worker's behavior. If your description of the threatened injury is sufficiently explicit, you can generally bend people to your will without the effort (or evidence) of inflicting actual harm. This tactic also allows you more flexibility, since you can threaten poisoning or other methods that aren't predicated on actually being able to overpower your workplace nemesis.
  This is how a lot of the torture that our intelligence agencies absolutely do not engage in would work if they ever dabbled in it. You convince the victim that she will be injured in messy, painful or rude ways if she doesn't cooperate. If you're persuasive enough, your captive begins to squeal like a newborn piglet.
  The advantage you have over our hypothetical agent is that you're not looking for information. You won't have to corroborate testimony that may have been fabricated to avoid torture. Once you convince the offending cubicle-jockey to stop tapping her pencil, or humming aloud, or eating celery at her desk, your work is done.
  Don't forget to cover your tracks. Include the caveat that you'll pass out pain like a supermarket free sample if your co-worker tells anybody about your coercion. Fear is a fantastic motivator, but fear of losing your job should motivate you to be discreet when threatening to maim a co-worker.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  I am a big fan of lingerie! However, my boyfriend says it's a waste of time and money, because the whole point of it is to take it off. How do I get him to pay attention to me?
- Desperate for Attention and Nookie
Dear Desperate,
  If he's so insistent on taking it off, then he must be showing you some sort of attention. It's probably the man-on-top-get-it-over-with-quick kind of attention that the ladies so adore, but it's attention nonetheless.
  A certified sex therapist would probably have all kinds of advice about communicating your needs effectively, and would offer strategies for obtaining satisfaction. Alas, I am not a certified anything, so I can only offer this perspective. Take full advantage of your power as a female. If your waste of man-bits isn't knocking your boots to their full potential, ask yourself some questions.
1) Does he have some other fabulous qualities that make the physical deprivation worthwhile?
2) If you explained the situation to him, would he be willing to step up his efforts to fulfill you sexually?
3) Would he rather sex you up than watch wrestling?
4) Is he really straight?
  If the answer to any of these questions is no, think about moving on.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Where the hell have you been for the last three years?
- Nobody Really Cares
Dear Nobody,
  I've been busy. I got married to a backup dancer, had two kids, gained forty pounds, got divorced, started going out in public without panties on, went crazy, checked in and out of rehab a few times, shaved my head, and attacked an SUV with an umbrella.
  Wait, was that me?


  Incidentally, if you haven't seen Craig Ferguson's take on the self-destructive media darling phenomenon, you really should. It's much funnier and more thoughtful than anything I could contribute.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Who do you think is the father of Anna Nicole's baby?
- Culture Vulture
Dear Vulture,
  I have this fevered nightmare where the horrible, voyeuristic leering of millions of lifeless tabloid readers somehow coagulated in her womb, creating a queen pop culture bee who will one day mature to reign over a twitching hive of buzz-junkies, combing the Internets for the sweet nectar of public humiliation. Except I'm pretty sure that's what's printed on Perez Hilton's business cards.
  There is no real value in knowing identity of the true father of that poor, almost inevitably damaged little girl. In many ways, she's been turned from a person into a social experiment. We all know how sad the "nature" contribution to her development has been. Now, we'll get to wait and see if whatever "nurture" she'll receive can keep her from becoming an overexposed chew toy for the rabid public. Jeebus knows that Entertainment Weekly will keep us clued in to how the whole thing develops.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  How do I ask a question?
- Insanely Curious
Dear Curious,
  All you have to do is click here to leave your question as a comment to this post, or send an email to lbb(at)suburbanpanic[dot]com. Your question and answer will appear on the main page at some indeterminate future time.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Why won't they let me sleep?
- Fatigued in Fishtown
Dear Fatigued,
  They're only after your sweet eye juices. That's what crows need to give them the strength to lift roadkill twice their size. Distract them with a freshly squished opossum, or a plate of mummified ferret. Otherwise, prepare to surrender your precious bodily fluids to the rapacious avian scourge.
  Or, just close your window at night.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  How do you get a frightened ferret out of your dryer vent?
- Kendrick in 'da boro
Dear Kendrick,
  So many questions occur that, frankly, I'd rather not have answers to. If avoiding the ferret in the vent altogether isn't an option, here are a few tips from my pamphlet, entitled Pets and You: How to Keep from Accidentally Killing Them.
- Reverse psychology: Your pet probably believes he his the smarter member of your dynamic duo. Simply act like you can't figure out where he's gone, and the urge to feel superior will drive him to quit the vent and "reveal" his whereabouts.
- Compliments: Ferrets like to have their egos massaged. In fact, he's probably hiding because you named him "Mr. Wriggly," instead of "The Mighty Cricket-Eater." Whisper to him in your best I'm-in-awe-of-your-amazing-ferretness voice, and he'll be out of the vent and nesting in the couch in no time.
- Run the dryer overnight: Only as a last resort, since in the morning you'll have mummified ferret, which I hear is fabulous with a Camembert and a chilled white wine.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
Why does the sun shine?

Sincerely,

- Jon
Endicott, NY
Dear Jon,
  As They Might Be Giants once said, the sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace. While this is technically correct, it's also far from the complete story. The sun is also the largest local gravitational force. It's busily pulling on everything around it, trying like hell to drag a large enough object into our orbit that a collision with the Earth will wipe out the human race, allowing us to eventually be replaced by something that's not only intelligent, but nice. The shining is only a side effect.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Is it true that Live Nude Gods, might have a reading or a production in the Millville area sometime in early 2004?
- Interested Theatre-goer
Dear Interested,
  That depends on a few things: 1) When she finishes it. 2) If we can find a venue. 3) Which of us wants to direct it most. 4) The employment situation. 5) Whether or not she realizes I'm a hack and leaves me for someone talented.
  I'll keep you posted.

Wait a minute,
  You just answered one, though. Remember?
- Still Skeptical
Dear Still,
  Huh. How about that shit. Maybe I am after all.

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Is it true that you're going to be answering new questions one of these decades?
- Skeptical
Dear Skeptical,
  Nope. Sorry.

Birthdays are cool.
  Especially when you have a girlfriend as wonderful as mine. I'll freely admit that I'm harder than an extremely hard thing to shop for. I can never think of anything when asked what I want for birthday or Christmas gifts. I don't place a whole lot of emphasis on my wardrobe, beyond trying to coordinate shades of black, and I don't have any hobbies that lend themselves easily to accessorizing. Add that to a general lack of enthusiasm about the importance of my birth, and I tend to make a pretty lame-ass birthday boy.
  Amy, though, doesn't let any of that faze her. She works very, very hard to make my birthday a good thing. She's taking me to New Hope next weekend, and she still got me presents for the actual day of. A really cool book that I asked for, and another really cool book that I didn't.
  She also found this really cool thing online. If you don't feel like clicking, it's a Personal Library Kit. It comes with the pocket sleeves and insert cards that you find in library books, along with a date stamp and ink pad. It even has the stickers you put on reference books that aren't supposed to be checked out.
  It doesn't take knowing me very long to realize how retentive I am about my books. I hoard paperback copies of books that I especially like to loan out, so that my personal reading copies won't get bent or smudged or molested by urine-soaked vagrants. I've loaned out books, and brought them up to the loanee every single time we communicated until they were returned. This kit is simultaneously perfect for me, and something I never would have thought of. I don't know how Amy found it, but my theory is that she's a wonderful, thoughtful girl, who has a knack for finding people great gifts. Every time I open a package from her, I feel like the bar for good presents is raised a little higher. I am so determined to get her good stuff for Christmas, I'm actually shopping for things to supplement the usual books. It's a whole new world of gift-giving for me. I'll let you know how it goes.

Spoiler-free gloating.
  Sometimes, working in book retail can be cool. For instance, I'm reading this before you are. I'm not going to give you any spoilers, because I'd probably get sued and lose my job. In fact, it's probably not even cool that I'm reading it, but I like to live close enough to see the edge on a clear afternoon.

You know what's awful?
  My birthday is tomorrow (10/30). For a moment, I honestly could not remember how old I'm going to be. I had to resort to the actual subtraction. This is a disturbing state of affairs, and I'm not sure if it's attributable to honest absent-mindedness, or some kind of subconscious denial. Either way, it's disconcerting.
  Thought for the day: Cellphones make us stupid. (Before you get all huffy, Huffy McHufferton, I said us. I too have one of these little demon boxes, and it's slowly eroding my cognitive functions.)
  Now, stay with me here. This isn't some kind of rant about how rude it is to sustain a cellphone conversation while conducting a retail transaction. That burns my ass, but that's annoyance. No, I'm talking about a genuinely anxious feeling that overuse of a modern convenience is making me noticeably dumber.
  My basic fear is that having access to otherwise unavailable information is allowing people to cede reasoning in favor of instant communication. Consider this scenario. You go to the video store to rent a romantic comedy for your girlfriend, because you're a sweet guy, who isn't above doing a nice thing to increase your odds of nookie. You get to the store, and the movie that your snugglebunny wants to see has been rented to extinction. What do you do?
  Before the cellphone, you had to make a decision. You had to figure, based on your knowledge of your partner's taste, the type of movie, the recognizable actors, the available titles, and how serious you were about that nookie, what movie to choose as an alternative. At the very least, you had to have planned ahead with a list of acceptable substitutes. Now, in the age of connectedness, you can just call home and ask. Ain't nobody got to do any cogitatin' at all.
  It's the same thing at the grocery store. They don't have regular Oreos? Don't worry! You don't have to sweat, wondering if Double Stuffs are a good go-to cookie. (Yes they are, FYI.) You can just call and ask! Did you get separated from your friends in line for the big music festival? Don't bother trying to figure out where they'd be likely to congregate. Call and ask! Don't surprise your roommate with an after-work snack that might not be her favorite. Call and ask! Don't ever, ever make an independent judgement or decision without checking with someone first. Don't bother to learn anyone's tastes, or try to puzzle out what they'd do in your shoes. Don't take responsibility for anything! CALL AND ASK! *pant pant pant*
  I'm sure this sounds like neo-Luddite nonsense, a badge of my advancing fogey-hood. I'll admit, I'm not exactly riding the edge of the emerging technology curve. Hell, I didn't send my first cellphone text message until last November. But I do use my cellphone, and it often is invaluable for making life more convenient, safer, and a little easier. Still, whenever I find myself calling instead of thinking, I can't help but wonder if I'm surrendering a bit of my mental capacity in favor of the lazy brain's information express.
  Hang on while I call and ask my girlfriend.

I'd like to teach the world to choke.
  But, I'm settling for teaching myself Flash. I spent all god damn day on this little 20 second bit of animation, and I have a newfound respect for the people at Homestarrunner. If you want to check out my freaky little banana/Twinkie guy, speaking in the voice of Michael Mills, click here.