Dear Shotgun: Advice from the Resident Wise(ass)man.

Dear Shotgun,

I’m constantly borrowing my roommate’s mascara and now she’s caught a sty from me. And even though I can’t help laughing every time I see that big, pink, swollen eye, I still feel partially to blame. How can I make it up to her?

Sty-eyed

Dear Sty-eyed,

As far as I know, a sty is nothing more than a poorly placed zit caused (more often than not) by an ingrown eyelash or some type of pore irritation. It is not something one can ‘catch’. In respect to that question, your guilt is misplaced.

Personally, I think the emphasis of your question should be elsewhere. You yourself admit to “constantly” pinching your flatmate’s cosmetics. Why is this? A tube of Great Lash, perfectly functional for everyday wear, can’t be any more than $6.00 at the outside these days. Your guilt should not lie in a feeling that you may have sickened your roommate; you should feel guilt because you are a parasite.

You are clearly an enemy of the people. In a bygone era, husky Soviet premiers would have repaid your anti-social actions with back breaking labor in the wheat fields. Pol Pot would have fucking shot you. You not only stole from your fellow citizen, but you revel in her misfortune. Which you, like an ignorant, superstitious kulak, believed you caused.

  How can you “make it up” to your roommate, from whom you’ve stolen in the name of lining your own pockets? Short of an interminable stint in a re-education camp, buy your own damned mascara. Cheapskate.

 Dear Shotgun,

I’m an incredibly successful, buff, young man who can have his pick of any woman in the city. The problem is, I have problems too, but none of my friends want to listen. Also, I feel empty inside. I’ve never has time for losers, so don’t tell me to get religion or be more spiritual. Do I need to take up some extreme sport?

Curious

Dear Curious,

Though you may think I am kidding, letters like these are often the hardest to answer. We tend to forget that the Zsa-Zsas and Jean-Claudes of this world can feel pain and disappointment just as acutely as the rest of us.

Often, these hyper-aggressive and self-stroking intros (I’m incredibly buff and successful and what have you) are scabs over wounds of self-doubt. If such things were never an issue in these people’s lives, why broadcast that it is not an issue? Comprendez vous? These people are crying out for compassion, the lack of which (perhaps) drove them to over achieve on the material or physical plane. Just because we have achieved extraordinary things does not mean that we are not, at the heart of it, ordinary people.

But to receive compassion, you must dispense some. And put away the swagger, especially when in the position of supplicant. You don’t come off as being a very sympathetic character yourself, which may explain why your ‘friends’ won’t listen to your gripes. And if all the salient points of your situation can be summed up with physical terms (just what does your being “buff” have to do with anything, and how will extreme water polo help you do anything but become more “buff, which hasn’t seemed to help thus far?), perhaps a little introspection, religious or not, might be in order.

You, my good man, have a bad attitude.

So let me close by saying that I, too, have no time for losers. Stew in your own misery, fucker.