No Church In The Wild: An Advice Column

I'm starting my freshman year of college tomorrow. What should I keep in mind? I'm a little worried about new friends and the amount of work I'll be faced with.

Oh, don't worry about WORK. Didn't anyone ever tell you the work in college is OPTIONAL? What you need to be concerned about are the Dementors.

No, but seriously: you should definitely beat the shit out of someone on the first day. Otherwise people will think they can push you around. AND THEY CAN'T. Make 'em get it right.

No, but seriously (for real): college is pretty easy to navigate. Petty high school shit has or will very soon melt away for almost everyone. People in college are cool because everyone is eager to make friends, have sex and get booze. There's no time to be a dick when it's so important to GET DICK, am I right?

Say yes to everything, or as much as you can reasonably say yes to. I mean, don't say yes to the Army recruiter. Or the guy with the meth pipe. Or the improv troupe. But join the other clubs. Go to weird events! Strike up conversations with people before class! Hop into random beds! Invite people into the shower with you! It's college!

We recently got a new coffee machine in our office that brews one cup at a time and my manager keeps "forgetting" to clean it out after he's finished with it. What is a tactful way of dealing with this so I don't get in trouble? I kinda like my job but I hate bad coffee.

Oh god, what THE FUCK is with this K-cup trend? They're so stupid! If I'd finished reading Shop Class As Soul Craft (I started it, at least) I'd probably be able to show how the K-cup trend is just another way we distance ourselves from the LITERAL nuts and bolts of technology. It's alienating us from the physical world, but we keep doing it with every new device. Think about it: You can't see inside a fucking iMac. What's in there? Nothing? Magic? Pretty soon cars will be like that, too. Some of them already are.

We want to believe we have a knowledge economy, that everyone can get jobs working at think tanks or some shit, and our phobia of the down and dirty mechanics of our everyday appliances* is a symptom of that delusion; the new American dream is "you don't technically have to do anything for a living." That's only true for a select few, but those select few are cultural gatekeepers who can't see beyond the narrow band of their experiences. People still have to make shit, and if we keep denying that all of the rest of our manufacturing jobs will vanish and a lot of Americans will just fucking starve to death. And starving to death is more intellectually stimulating than working in a think tank am I right but still, fuck. We're fucked. I wish I knew how to fix shit. I wish I worked with my hands more. Whenever I do, I feel so much more alive.

(*We've retreated so far from the physical into the technological that even PHYSICAL KEYBOARDS on computers are too much for some people. "Ugh, why can't I just THINK the text onto the screen?"-people)

Fuck, I worked in an office for three years and now a few days a week I wait tables and it feels INCREDIBLE, just putting that much effort into a job, it's totally restorative in a spiritual sense, you know? I'm drunk, a little at least, as I write this, so fuck guy, I'm sorry if I'm throwing you off the trail a little.

The point is, why are we afraid of COFFEE GROUNDS? What the fuck is wrong with us? This is the end of the American Empire.

But I digress. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who once said "A passive-aggressive anonymous note keeps the doctor away." This is when he was working as a file clerk at a doctor's office in Philadelphia, but it works for your situation too. Leave the bitchiest anonymous note you can muster. SOLVED.

Boyfriend's ex-girlfriend still talks to him about her problems like they're dating. She can't understand why I hate that. He understands entirely, but is still kind of overly nice to her about it. How do I stop this? She has her own boyfriend now to talk to, but she says my boyfriend is "the only one who has anything interesting to say." I even told her boyfriend about it because we are good friends and he doesn't like it. But no help there. So I come for hilarious advice instead. Help?

First of all, I dig the jazzy first sentence of your query; I picture you getting up on a stage and reciting this question while you snap your fingers and someone plays a walking bassline underneath. Secondly: murder her.

Also, um, YOU TALK TO HER BOYFRIEND about this? Think about that for a second and get back to me.

So, I'm a junior and it's time to start looking at colleges. My mother who is somewhat of a control freak is pushing F.I.T on me, because she never followed her "dream" of designing jewelry. And thus, it's my job to do so. I have no interest in this whatsoever. I personally want to go to either Emerson or Amherst to study marketing or publishing. Her compromise is "go to F.I.T to learn how to market the jewelry you'll design." How do I get her to realize that she's trying to live though me?

There's no easy way to say this: your mother sounds pretty self-centered and oblivious and now there's only like an 80% chance that I'd want to fuck her. You've got to be direct with her. Sit her down and say "I don't want your life." And please do your best James Van Der Beek impression when you do. Do you guys remember Varsity Blues? You probably just remember the whipped cream underwear scene. Fair enough! (Health-wise, the whipped cream underwear seems unsafe. Ladies, put down a base-layer of shaving cream, okay?)

Anyway, it's possible that she won't hear you out even then. What you need to do at that point is apply to Emerson and Amherst and really ROCK the application process AND THEN really do a job of the financial paperwork, which is just as important. Especially at Emerson. Those fuckers will do everything they can to keep from having to give you any financial aid at all; I know because I went through the ringer with them twice. Fuck Emerson! Whoops! I mean, uh, it's a cool school and you can go there if you want?

Now here's the fun part: apply to FIT and botch the application HARD. When they ask about your SAT scores, leave the last digit off. When you fill out financial aid forms, attach a sticky note that says "I hope you're not going to try and Jew me out of my money like those Greensteins at Emerson." When they ask questions like what you want out of a college experience, write that you just don't want to have to talk to any fucking wetbacks. Tell them jewelry making is your passion, in fact, you'd like to give their mother a pearl necklace. And so on.

Got a problem? Hit me up here. You have the option to submit anonymously, and in fact I encourage it. Got advice for these people? Comment!

Previously: "My advice is to have sex with someone who lives near you and who likes having sex with men."