Dear Abby: You're Obsolete. Part III[c]: FTFY

And now, Random Etiquette Non-Issues:

DEAR [SH]ABBY: I work as a hotel clerk. How should I address our guests when they check out? I normally tell them to "have a good day," but when they are here for a funeral I feel uncomfortable saying this. Please advise. -- "SUNNY" IN HILLSDALE, MICH.

DEAR "SUNNY": If someone has been staying in your hotel because of a funeral, say, "Thank you for staying with us. I hope you'll consider staying here again the next time you're in town." It will let the person know you are grateful for the business, and plant a seed that could benefit the hotel at a later date.

I got a few good suggestions here you might enjoy. How about "have a good family brawl over the inheritence." Or maybe, "have a nice not guilty verdict." Oh, here's a good one: "so was it open casket or closed? some corpses look kinda sick even with the mortician make-up." Hmm ... I'm kind of running out of ideas here, but how about telling the bereaved, "hope you paid the insurance so the embalming was rape-free!" Try 'em out and let me know!

DEAR ABBY: I feel sorry for a friend of my husband's. "Joey" is a really nice guy, but his wife is driving him over the edge. She's obsessive-compulsive and, despite their financial problems, refuses to get a job. She says her mother never had to work and she shouldn't either.

They went to three sessions of marriage counseling, and she refused to go back because their therapist told her she had a serious problem. She told her mom what the therapist said, and they agreed he must be a quack.

Joey is so worried about having to pay alimony and child support that he won't leave, but he confided to my husband that he has thought about doing something to himself. Any advice? -- BONNIE IN MICHIGAN

DEAR BONNIE: The economic realities are very different for today's generation of women than they were when Joey's mother-in-law was married. If you and your husband haven't already suggested it, you should urge Joey to seek professional help -- not for his marriage, but for his sanity.

Instead of aiming his frustrations and anger where they belong, he is turning them back on himself and in the form of self-destructive impulses. Counseling will help him regain his perspective. And consulting an attorney will give him a more realistic view of what his responsibilities will be if his marriage cannot be saved. Both will do him a world of good. Please urge him not to wait.

Christ on a stick doing flips and giving tips, some of my readers are retarded (Ed. note: I'm making a half-assed and thinly veiled attempt to act like her; you guys are still assholes though). You need to tell your friend to say, "BITCH! Get a fucking job!" Should this simple request be met with resistence, then tell him to get the following items, which are easily available at any any of the local friendly hardware stores: (1) Finely ground limestone, (2) a shovel and (3) a Roto-Tiller. Hey, no body, no alimony, no child support, no problem. Thanks for helping chlorinate the gene pool!

DEAR ABBY: Like "Fine, Thank You in Gastonia, N.C." (March 23), I, too, was annoyed when people greeted me with the mindless, "How are you?" "How ya doin'?" etc., which required me to respond to someone who clearly had no interest in a real response. (I understand their feigned interest is more automatic than rude.)

So, I make a game of it. Unlike the greeter who blurts out the salutation without thinking, I listen and am prepared with several responses. For "How ya doin'?" I answer, "Not so good. My wife and oldest son and I just got out of three months in rehab for peanut butter addiction. I was a two-jar-a-day man myself. My boy had it even worse -- three jars of the hard stuff, crunchy!"

When asked, "What's up?" I'm inclined to respond, "My blood pressure, cholesterol and body mass index!" -- DAVE IN MARSHALL, WIS.

DEAR DAVE: Many readers who wrote to comment on that letter said they were perplexed at how "How are you?" has essentially replaced the greeting "Hello." And they were eager to share the quips they use to answer that rhetorical question.

LOLOMFGROTF!!11!!one!!six!21THATWASTHEFUNNIESTSHITI'VEEVARREADG!!!!! Just kidding, if that was humor, then I can easily help you make a noose with this nifty picture-book-for-hopefully-suicidal-morons I've been working on in my off-time spent not drinking wine and giving completely obvious, for-Christ's-sake-grow-some-balls advice. Seriously, you're as funny as testicular cancer on an AIDS paitent (although that is kind of funny since everyone knows that every AIDS paitent is a flaming homo, at least according to my non-offensive, Captain Obvious, majoritarian Christian logic).

Please, for the sake of humanity, either get a vasectomy or off yourself.

Read on:

DEAR ABBY: I have an alternative to the answer you gave to "Fine, Thank You" that I often use.

I'm a recovering alcoholic. When someone who knows I'm in AA asks me how I'm doing, my favorite reply is, "I'm walking, breathing and sober -- anything beyond that is gravy."

Another favorite I often use with people who don't know I'm in AA is, "Well, I woke up on this side of the grass, so I must be doing pretty well!" -- SHIRLEY IN PENNSYLVANIA

DEAR SHIRLEY: I just called Coors. They just said that they will give you a lifetime supply of free beer if you promise to never, ever crack a joke again. Or rape the institution of humor before the third coming of Jesus Christ.

DEAR ABBY: I have been having a lot of fun with this response to the "How are you?" question. I say, "I can't answer that." Expecting the worst, most people ask me why. That's when I say, "Because of the Medical Privacy Act!" Everyone has a good laugh and is relieved not to have had to listen to a list of my ailments. -- HAPPY BOB IN KIMBOLTON, OHIO

I hope you get cancer and lose everything you own after your insurance company deems you "high-risk" and cuts off your insurance.

DEAR ABBY: I am driven nuts by know-it-alls who like to correct others. Most often, the detail is small and superfluous. Why do people do this? Is it a matter of control?

I am close to a couple of people who correct me in public on a regular basis. Hey, I'm flawed and I know it -- obviously they are perfect. How does one deal with those who constantly correct others? -- CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE

DEAR CAN'T TAKE IT: People who feel compelled to correct others are practicing a form of one-upmanship. It can also be a reflection of their own social insecurity. The way to deal with it is to first point out to them that correcting others in public is rude, and if they continue, to avoid them whenever possible.

Congradulations, you hypocritical nimrod. Now, the reason that "Know-it-alls" correct you is quite obvious: you're either stupid or a Right-Winger [a slightly more advanced form of stupid, often brought on by either theist delusion or a lack of the balls needed to perform cognitive dissidence]. Now, those of us who operate on such crazy things as "facts," "logic" and "knowing what the fuck we're talking about" despise douchebags such as yourself. Why?

BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT ONLY HELPING TO KEEP THE "STUPID" GENE ALIVE, WHICH SHOULD BE PUNISHABLE BY DEATH, BUT YOU'RE ALSO HELPING TO MAKE IT TABOO TO DISAGREE AND / OR SPREAD KNOWLEDGE!!!!!!

You know how I know you're some kind of dumbass Right-Winger? Because you are using the same basic, alien, totalitarianistic "logic" that fascist assholes began using after Sept. 11 and continue to use since most citizens are basically fearful, ignorant sheep. Here's an example, to refresh your memory:

SomeAssholePunditDisguisedAsAJournalist: We HAVE to invade Iraq to help spread freedom and democracy! Saddam will bomb us with WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION unless we WIPE THAT MOTHERFUCKER OUT!! If we don't intervene, Saddam Hussein will kill his entire country and then rape a baby on international television! Freedom! Freedom! 9/11!

AFreeThinker: But there is no documented evidence of state-sponsored terrorism in Iraq, WMDs, and the only reason I can think of that would make you fuck with random people for no reason is to help out Bush's Oil Buddies and Cheney's former company, Halliburton.

SomeAssholePunditDisguisedAsAJournalist: WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA, YOU FUCKING TERRORIST!!!!

AFreeThinker: *Wets self, doesn't get another word in.*

People like your dumb-ass automatically bought this shit, without being corrected or second-guessing what the aristocracy was telling us, and now, we have the entire world completely pissed off at us, over 3.5k soldiers six-feet-under instead of contributing to our economy, EVEN HIGHER GAS PRICES (and the corresponding PROFITS!), and over 100k dead, innocent Iraqi citizens who are powerless in being caught up by fat-cat profiteering.

Oh yeah, and our underfunded education system is spawning more dumb motherfuckers like you. Great.

As for hypocritical, this also makes you a turd in the gene pool. So you're correcting them for correcting you. Is that not correction of a behaivor / idea just as much as they're trying to teach you not to be a dumb motherfucker who writes randomly to advice columns as some kind of reassurance that you're not as dumb as you thought? Fuck you.

When I'm in class, most often, pending on the size of the class, I am one or two of about 30 people who will actually either enquire about something I know nothing about or have the balls to argue with the "expert." And it's people like me who are the reason we broke away from England ... we questioned, we smelled the bullshit, and we responded. Jesus-Tap-Dancing-Christ-On-A-Corn-Dog-Stick, WHY DO YOU HATE FREE INQUIRY AND KNOWLEDGE.

Kill yourself. Painfully. And stop polluting my animo acids voting.

/next: the last category and the end.