Ask a Stand-Up Comedian
Have you always wanted to know the secrets to life? To a happy relationship? How to drive the big rigs and experience the fulfilling career you've always wanted?
No one affiliated with this Web site knows any of those things, but if you send in your questions, we'll be glad to answer them in a completely useless and at times cosmically insulting way. WARNING: These columns get raunchy sometimes. Read at your own risk.
DEAR ABBY: My 12-year-old daughter is in the sixth grade. She is well-liked and has a lot of friends.We can't afford gifts for all the birthday parties to which she is invited. I let her go to some, but we can barely pay our bills some months. When I try to explain why she can't go, she gets upset. I've asked her not to say anything about our money troubles, but she says she can't like to her friends about why she's not allowed to go to all the parties. Abby, have you any suggestions on how I can handle this situation when it comes up again?
-- Invited but can't always go (actual Dear Abby question)
Chris White: The way to handle this situation, Invited, is to stop being poor. And how can you stop being poor? Pick up your local paper's real estate section. Go ahead, pick it up! It's pretty light, isn't it? It's VERY light if you consider that it's holding your entire future within its pages. That's right, you're going to get rich -- through the miracle of distressed properties!
Ha, ha! I decided to joke a little bit in that first paragraph, because you are poor and probably need the laugh. But seriously, you will never be not poor, unless you learn a valuable lesson: how to invest.
For each Barbie doll, each Teddy Bear, each My First Nipple Ring Home Kit, is an investment toward a brighter tomorrow. The rich world of your daughter's friends can be yours, and those gifts are the key.
Your daughter is well-liked, intelligent, and honest, so the fickle finger of Johnny Law will never point in her direction. $20 for a Britney Spears CD is a pittance next to the street value of the fine china, prescription drugs and jewelry that the nimble fingers of a 12-year-old girl could collect during her "trip to the baffroom." (Note lisping for maximum, non-suspicion-inducing cuteness.) With a reasonable fence, you'll recoup the cost of that gift 20 times over. If you need help finding a fence, just ask around your poor neighborhood, somebody will know one. These are the secrets of money management that make everyday people in to millionaires.
Unjust, you say? Illegal? Then I ask you, Invited, is the cruel system that condemns you to a life of poverty any more noble? When the fruits of your labor are so readily denied you by the capitalist plutocrasts who nary lift a finger and grow fat on your toil? I ask you, can you and your daughter not strike a blow for equality among all men, and while you're at it get me some new cufflinks?
Wampa Jones: Have you considered eating your daughter?