SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: KVETCHING ABOUT A LACK OF QUESTIONS MAY LEAD TO AN OVERABUNDANCE OF QUESTIONS.

Your advice columnist woke up this morning with a vague hangover and a bad attitude. Also with a dentist appointment first thing. Have you gone to the dentist when hungover? I do not recommend it.  There. That is my first advice of the day.

Once again, I’ll be tackling questions whenever I get a moment’s rest from That Other Job, The One That Pays Me Money For Shoes. New questions shall appear sporadically below, in reverse blog-order (newest on the bottom of the page, which is like the new equivalent to reading right to left).  So y’all have to scroll a lot, which is hard and leads to carpal tunnel syndrome and I am sorry, but I will not screw up my lovely journal-like, one-entry-per-day template for anybody.

Question #1, 1:01 pm

Dear Amalah,

How can one get such pretty, healthy teeth like yours?

Also, you are so very, very pretty and special and kissably cute.

Love, Amalah

Why thank you, Amalah. I bet you are pretty too. And you smell nice.

Anyway. Here are my patented 15 Steps To A More Beautiful Smile. Enjoy. And you are welcome.

1)  Have an appliance of some kind in your mouth at all times from the age of six on.
2)  Brush your teeth at least twice a day, preferably with a toothpaste that has sparkles in it. Because sparkle toothpaste = a sparkling smile. It’s a fact.
3)  Braces. They build character and promote slightly more responsible gum chewing. Also a fact.
4)  Wear your retainer post-braces. Maybe. Sometimes. At least consider it.
5)  Make a boy who sort of likes you retrieve your retainer from your school’s dumpster at least once.
6)  When you grow up, get over yourself and go to the dentist every six months already, for it will not kill you.
7)  Buy an electric toothbrush.
8)  Floss at least once a week and think very hard about flossing on days you don’t.
9)  Crest Whitestrips. For real.
10)  Find a dentist with the world’s most gentle hygienist who compliments your hair and your fine bone structure.
11)  Also find a dentist who is smart enough to notice that you, over a decade later, still have fucking CEMENT from your BRACES on your FRONT TEETH.
12)  Give shout-out to Crest Whitestrips for making this startling discovery possible.
13)  Have dentist scrape cement off teeth.
14)  Uncover flawless, perfect teeth unlike anything you ever thought possible.
15)  Profit.

Question #2, 1:39 pm

Dear Amalah,

Is it wrong of me to download fonts by the name of "Punk Assed Bitch" and "Porn Star Academy" just so that I can use them while writing letters to people like priests and teachers? For example, I'm using the "Satan Possessed" font to say things like "Please pray for me" and giggling endlessly while doing so.

Or, am I simply going to hell?

Or, am I simply losing my fuckin' mind?

Signed, Addicted to Typenow.net

Well THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Like I ALREADY DID NOT WASTE ENOUGH TIME ON THE INTERNET. Now I need to TOTALLY REDESIGN MY SITE just so I can use a bazillion different fonts.

Amalah.com is going be a NIGHTMARE of novelty fonts and will look like Typenow.net jest THREW UP ALL OVER IT.  This will be on your conscience. I hope you are happy.

And I hope you gave them some money for all your dirty downloading. Cleanse your font-related sins through the PayPal donate button and ye shall be atoned.

Also, I totally triple-dog dare you write a fan letter to Lisa Whelchel using the "Dimestore Hooker" font.

Question #3, 2:00 pm

dear amy,

i've been talking to the guy online for the last 3 weeks or so. we've been doing the email chatting thing and have been flirting back and forth. we've seen photos of each other and both of us have stated that on a scale of 1-10 in wanting to meet in person, we're both about an 8. he lives in the same town as i do. here is my question. he has my phone number and has had it for a few days, yet he only emails me and doesn't call. he says he wants to meet, but hasn't asked me out definitively. what gives? is he just out for a piece of a$$ as a friend suggested? and if so, don't we have to TALK first so that we can meet?

signed, been out of the game way too long.

(BOOTGWTL: Your question has been answered by a special guest advice question answerer, who answered a question last week and is now all uppity and thinks he has a regular gig now and should get a cut of the t-shirt sales or something. Although both weeks he has made me promise to pretend that I wrote the advice, because he is shy, and every week I have lied and pointed out that I did not write the advice. Anyway, dude needs a blog.)

(Oh, and I sent him this question because he has actually done the whole Internet dating thing, unlike me who got married young, so very young, back before there was an Internet. So I figured he'd provide real and useful advice.)

(I may be wrong about that.)

Dear Been Out of the Game Way Too Long (BOOTGWTL),

Excellent question. I think I can solve your dilemma. The reason he hasn't called is obvious-he can't talk. That's right. Dude's a mute.

Now I know you might think this might be a bad thing. But as Amalah always says," When life gives you lemons, take them and bash them in the face of your enemies." Whilst many people shy away from things like "fruit-induced brain damage," I prefer to see the silver lining. You see, having a man who can't talk really has lots of upside. When you get right down to it, why do men need to talk for anyway. They're just going to say something wrong. My Ken doll never talked, he seemed happy. A talking man is sorta like a sale at JC Penny's, or the Canadian army. Let's be honest, who's gonna miss it? What do men say? It's all "four score this," "ich bin that," "where's the remote."

Speaking of the remote. You can have lots of fun with him. Just point the remote at your cyber Harpo, hit the mute button and say "Ha Ha. I just muted you. Now PLAY!" Or if he gets mad at you, you can have fun "conversations."

Him: *Arms Flailing*

You: What's that? I can't HEAR you.

Him: *Arms Flailing*

You: What? You want to make crazy monkey love to me? All night long? Well (shrug) OK.

Both: *Flailing*

Question #4, 3:42 pm

Amy,

My son is completely, adorably cute. And it's not just my opinion, so I know it's not just a "face only a mother could love" type thing.

He goes to pre-k right now, and in 3 weeks, will be starting kindergarten. The girls in his pre-k class are already trying to kiss him. What do I do about the ho's who, in all their prostitutional glory, will be in his kindergarten class? I mean, seriously? The boy's only 5 fucking years old! And I'm just not ready for the girl thing to happen too!

Sincerely, Beth

As I read this question, I was immediately struck with another question. That question was, "What is the deal with my one eyebrow and why does it grow like that?"

Then I was struck with a third question, which was "What would Lisa Whelchel do?" And we all know that Lisa Whelchel would paraphrase, twist and utterly misinterpret the Bible to fit her own purposes.

So here, just for your little boy, I give you Proverbs 7, Revised Yet Again, The Gospel According to Amalah, Complete With Verse Annotations

1 Beth's son, keep my words and if you value your life,
2 Keep the Queen of Everything's commands. My law is the law, don’t you ever forget it, buster.
3 Write it down on Post-Its or tattoo it on your butt.
4 Say to wisdom, “You are my homie” and call understanding, “Amalah”
5 Listen to your mother and Carson Kressley for they will keep you away from the girls.
6 For from the E-Z Pass lane I looked through the car window,
7 And I saw a bunch of kindergarten boys
And one naïve young punk, in particular.
8 Passing along the street near the mall;
And entering through Sears, a dark and evil place,
9 just after dark, before all the stores closed because his mother is a coke whore.
10 And there a girl met him,
Wearing a SpongeBob SquarePants shirt that revealed her belly button and her heart.
11 She laughed way too loudly (trollop) and she was rarely at home with her parents because they were also coke whores.
12 She seemed to turn up everywhere, at the mall, the playground,
hanging out at friends' houses.
13 So she playfully hugged the young man and gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek.
And with a spunky yet feminist look she said to him,
14 “I just came from Sunday School and I played the part of a good girl, because I totally get off on corrupting you good little mama's boys,
15 I was hoping to see you there and when I didn’t see you
I came looking for you. I’m so glad I found you because we're playing hide-and-seek and you are It.
16 I have fixed up my room really cool with a Barbie bedspread.
17 I made a bunch of good smelling stuff from my E-Z Bake oven.
18 Why don’t you come over and we can watch some Olsen Twin videos and kiss.
19 My parents aren’t at home, they are away at a coke whore convention.
20 They won’t be back until Thurday because they never miss the Haiku Smackdown.”
21 With her convincing innocence, the dweeb bought it.
All it took was, “I’ve never met a guy who's potty trained before” and she had him.
22 He fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
23 Till he felt the hook in his mouth.
As a fish swimming for the worm,
He didn’t know it was a trap until it was too late.
It was the hook...of COOTIES.
24 Now, listen up kids, and listen up good.
I know what I’m talking about:
25 Don’t even look down that path.
If you don’t want to end up where the road is headed
Then stay on the sidewalk, or maybe better yet never go outside at all, but stay inside where your mommy can keep you safe from all the bad, bad, evil girls.
26 Girls have been the fall of many a strong young man.
Like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs or that guy from Psycho who all had very healthy attitudes towards women that they got from listening to their mothers because Mother Is Always Right And Doesn't Want To Stay In The Basement, You Bad, Naughty Boy.

Anyway, maybe you should homeschool him too, just to be doubly safe.

Question #5, 4:36 pm

Dear QofE,

Please tell me how not to hit people in the face when they assume - because of my Canadian status - that I a) have no class, b) append "eh?" to every sentence and c) live in an igloo.

Thanks, Montrealer

P.S. Love your site.  Très pretty.

Dude, what is the deal with curling? And why couldn't I stop watching it during the last Winter Olympics?

I was in Canada once. In Ontario. It was cold and I almost missed my flight and completely burst into tears at the airport when they told me I was only on standby because my job's corporate travel agent fucked up my reservation and that job laid me off like, a month later even though I was very nearly stranded in Canada on account of that damn job. I also got food poisoning there from some undercooked chicken.

And I have some vague memories of being at a strip club and someone buying me a lapdance. The stripper smelled really nice.

So the next time someone says something like that to you? Just tell them that your strippers smell way better than ours. Ours are skanky.

(Also, I just realized my guest advice-giver person insulted your army. I am sorry.)

(Do you have an army?)

Question #6, 4:49 pm

Dear Amalah, giver of excellent advice,

About three months ago, I decided to go on yet another diet. For the first 8 weeks, I was Sarah, eater of lettuce, prime example of willpower. I lost 10lbs no problem. Lettuce was my best friend. We would have sleepovers and talk shit about cheeseburgers and fried chicken.

About 8 weeks in, I was walking down a street in NY and a vendor of hotdogs lured me in and i ate a rat dog and I'm pretty sure it was drugged. Because since then? Food talks to me. I am not the crazy.
Cheeseburgers are like, "Come here sexy, you know you want a bite of me" and meatballs are all like "Look at us, so round, so delectable, you know you want to pop us in your mouth." The list could go on and on. On Sunday at a picnic the meatballs spoke so loudly that I ate 45 of them and their extended family. So, help, make the food voices stop.  By the way, I'm sorry if I emailed the wrong address.

Thank you in advance, Sarah

I would just like to say that the subject line of Sarah's email was "Make the meatballs stop talking."

I'll give you a minute to recover.

The first rule of the Wednesday Advice Smackdown? I bring the funny to the Wednesday Advice Smackdown. When you start getting all uppity and funnier than me? I keel you. Or maybe I'll just pout a little.

Either way, I totally won't answer your question, but will instead use it as a springboard to bring the conversation back to being solely about ME. Me me me me me. The funny one, over here, making the funny face for the camera and who TOTALLY could have come up with a visual EVERY BIT AS FUNNY as talking meatballs if you'd just let her think about it for a minute.

I would like a Snickers bar right about now.

Anyway. I feel the diet pain. Mr. Amalah and I have been doing the South Beach Diet thing, sort of, for awhile now.

(DUDES. I JUST REALIZED THAT WE ARE GOING TO SOUTH BEACH FOR OUR VACATION. THAT IS WEIRD. WEEEEIRD. THAT DIET IS A CULT THAT IS AFFECTING OUR TRAVEL PLANS. RUN!)

The first two weeks of South Beach? Food definitely talks to you. Potatoes cry out; soft cushiony bread tempts you with its yeasty deliciousness. Alcohol weeps for you. Sugar taunts you from the bowl like an oasis of pure, uncut cocaine.

Then it gets progressively easier. I've totally lost my taste for french fries and potato chips. We broiled some sweet potato fries the other night that were very yummy. I really could care less that I'm eating hamburgers on whole wheat rolls now. It's hard to get worked up over fried foods when freaking filet mignons are allowed and encouraged.  Low-fat cheese is still cheese with cheesy goodness. I put Splenda in my coffee and drink that C2 Coke and can't tell the difference anymore.

And I'm down to (get ready to hate me) 122 pounds. I am wee! I am a pixie! I am alienating all my readers!

Jason bought me a very pretty outfit from Banana Republic? And the top was a small? And it was too big. Like huge. And I returned it and got the extra-small and Jason said the most wonderful words I have ever heard: "What HAPPENED to you? You're so SKINNY!"

This is me in the outfit. It is blurry because I looked so totally hot I literally made Jason tremble while taking the picture.

No, not really. He forgot the flash. But I like this one better than the flash version because blurry is so flattering. Plus my arms looked fat in the other one.

HOLY CRAP PEOPLE. I am tired of giving all this amazing advice. And I still have like, five more questions to go. Make it stop!

Also, I am becoming a serious brat and would like to smack MYSELF down after that last question, because that just took self-aggrandizing to a new and scary place. Shut up, Amy.

Sarah just sent me a picture of a talking meatball. Oh yes.

Question #7, 6:20 pm

Dear Amalah,

I was reading various "DON'T EVER HAVE LASIX BECAUSE YOUR EYES WILL ROT" promotional websites and then I went back to check on your advice post and apparently I have already had the vision-wrecking surgery, because that picture of you is waaaay blurry.  You DO look fabulous, but oh-so-blurry.

Also, I so want to take you to Krispy Kreme right this very minute.

That is all.

Mir

I would so like to go to Krispy Kreme with you right this very minute. For there is a drive-thru Krispy Kreme right by my office that has this monstrous red beacon that they light up when the donuts have just been made. Sort of like the Grail-Shaped Beacon from Monty Python that wicked, bad, naughty, evil Zoot lit to attract Sir Galahad the Pure.

Oh my god. ZOOT. I get it now. Unless that's not what she meant. But if is? Fucking brilliant.

Give me a donut.

Dear Amalah,

What is an appropriate wedding gift for a person you don't really like?

Loave, Coleen

The worst gift we received was a big-ass serving platter shaped like a fish. It was this yellowish-brown colored glass and basically looked like one of those novelty singing bass things in platter form.

We gave it away as a gag gift to someone. I bet it is still being re-gifted out there. You should find it and give that. Then post their thank-you card on the Internet, because it doesn't matter that you gave them a big-ass serving platter shaped like a fish, they still have to thank you for it. Haaaa.

Question #8, 6:30 pm

Here's my question: So how do I go about getting more people to read my blog? Aside from the obvious writing something interesting, of course. I mean, I've gone this long without doing that; why change
things midstream?

Do I even want the general public reading it?

-Mary B.

Of COURSE you want the general public reading your blog. There is no greater sense of validation than having a swarm of minions out there to do your bidding and buy CDs because you say so and to tell you that you're pretty on command. It's like having your own little bunch of trained seals, really.

I have a lovely group of readers. They are pretty and they do what I tell them to and they kiss my everlovin' ass at a moment's notice. I got them all in 10 Easy Steps To Improving Your Readership and Readying Your Own Army:

1) Latch onto a more successful site like a leech. Comment like crazy. Trick blogger into linking to you a lot.
2) Rinse, Repeat.
3) Adopt a stance like you totally don't care if anyone reads you because frankly, you are better than everyone. Incorporate this into your design. Come up with a clever tagline that asserts your massive ego. This makes everyone think you are super-cool and they want to be friends with you and maybe buy you things.
4) Form a posse of like-minded individuals. Make fun of everyone else.
5) Register for JournalCon.
6) Threaten to quit writing or change in some way so everybody will comment and tell you "NOT TO OMFG I LOVE YOU PLEASE DON'T EVER GO AWAY I WOULD CRY."
7) Post pictures of self. Watch the male readers crawl out of woodwork.
8) Meet other bloggers in person. Sure, it's risky since they may murder you, but if it cements the idea that you are part of some Secret Inner Circle of Cool People, it's worth it.
9) Don't ever, ever let your readers see you refer to them as a bunch of trained seals.
10) Profit.

Question #god-knows-what, 6:55 pm

My Dearest Amy,

I have read your advice pimping of the Crest Whitestrips.  I will back you up in your love of the results that they provide in the form of sparkly white chompers.  But, the thing is, I just can't stand to wear them.  And those Crazy Crest people?  They expect you to do it TWICE PER DAY for half an hour each time.  Fine, I can slap one on while I'm taking a shower and getting ready in the morning -- the shower distracts me a bit from that semi-icky taste that they leave in my mouth and from the feeling that I daren't move my lips even the tiniest bit because that might dislodge the strip of whiteness.  But after that?  I don't have a lot of spare time in which to whiten. Because they tell you you can't eat or drink with the strip in.  And all of my free time in the evening after I return home from work is spent drinking wine.  What's a girl to do?

-Martha

Holy crap, I'm tired. (Hey look! Reruns!)

You know, I loave the Crest Whitestrips, but I do not kill myself if I don't use them twice a day, every damn day. It's like flossing. I've found that on the days you don't use them? Just stare REALLY HARD at the box and THINK about using them. I think that's good enough.

Question #five billion and four, hours and hours later after Question #1

Dear Amy,

How does one prevent oneself from eating the entire contents of the office vending machine?  I've tried asking my officemates to make fun of me every time I go down the hall, but they're all sort of afraid I
might actually rip their heads off.

Don't even try some silly advice like "use will power," or "don't bring loose change to work," either.

Signed, It has Spicy AND BBQ Chips!

Am...so...hungry. Fucking...South...Beach...Diet...and for the love...of...carbs...bring me potato chips...both flavors. Plus...sour cream & onion. And a Snickers.

And where's Mir with my donut?