Ask Professor Classypants: Backlash Edition
You know, advice-seekers, the thing about life is you just can’t win. My general advice to you this week is to quit. Quit caring. Quit trying. Quit trying to give people advice who clearly do not want your help. Those people, it seems, only write to an online advice columnist because they want to be famous. So not only are they hopelessly self-absorbed they are too dim to understand web analytics.
See? He gets it.
So, Negative Nellies and Neils, I dedicate this column to the complaint mail that the Professor receives. I refer to myself in the third person so said complaint mail can’t hurt me.
Dear Professor Classypants,
You never answered my question (should I wear the green pants or the red pants to my office party). I haven’t left the house since.
-Chafed
Dear Chafed:
Of course I never answered you. Because Captain Kangaroo and most of his friends (the ones who wore pants anyway, so everyone except Slim Goodbody and Mr. Moose) are dead. And since those are the only people who have the right to wear green or red pants, I knew it wasn’t a real question. – P.C.
Dear Professor:
Didn’t I see you wearing red pants just the other day?
-Mr. Professor
Dear Sir:
I respectfully decline your letter. And, besides, red jeans are different. – P.C.
Green jeans are not.
Dear Professor Classypants,
Why do y’all at Act Classy hate me?
Sincerely,
Taylor Hicks
Dear Taylor:
Whooooooo boy. Here we go. One more spoiled celebrity who can’t take the heat lashing out at some honest bloggers trying to make a honest(ish) living taking potshots at people who don’t have to pay for parking at any of your better family style dining establishments in Branson, Missouri.
So you have a problem, Mr. Hicks, with Act Classy’s witty-zen (we’re not mere citizens over here, ya know) Jive Turkey merely suggesting that it’s time to recycle your catchphrase “Soul Patrol?” Well, to be honest, so did I. I voted for you. I loved you. And Jive Turkey’s callous disregard for my service in the Patrol has forever driven a wedge between us. From a 23-year friendship to blood feud just like that because people like her like to complain, grow their hair long, and write comedy on the internet while some of us defend her right to do it by courageously pulling on our Soul Patrol fatigues each and every day [six years ago for, like, a week]?
Yet the tone of your message challenges my loyalty. I did not write the Soul Patrol article so I expect the respect you would afford other people who did not write snarky things about you. All five of them. – P.C.
Hurts, don’t it?
Dear Professor:
I wrote you to ask if you might take these broken wings and learn to fly again. I asked for my response offline because I am not ready to learn to live so free. Your answer was entirely unsatisfactory. “Why can’t we just hold on to each other’s hands?” What the Hell is that supposed to mean?
-M.M.
Dear Mr. Mister’s Mom:
I’m on to you. Stop writing to me or I am going to kick you all the way into Scritti Politti. I’ve got just the way to do it. The perfect way. – P.C.
And I hereby issue the first vague threat to Mr. Mister in the history of the internet.
Dear Professor:
Um, remember, when you told me I shouldn’t become a flight attendant because I was kidding myself… that I loved the Cinnabon and not the travel? Well, I took your advice and decided, instead, to go work for Cinnabon. Now I have to buy two airline seats to accommodate my weight gain. I blame you. Do you work for the airlines?
-Shy in the Sky Is No Longer a Fly Guy
Dear Shy:
I am sorry to hear of your struggle. You are the first advice-seeker I truly feel as if I have let down. It really makes a professor think. Of all that sticky, cinnamon-y goodness. And the warm embrace of cream cheese icing, dripping on to your lap so you can suck on your own pants before taking them to the dry cleaner. Yep. It makes me think of all that. Happy flying! – P.C.
I am never more than three feet from a Cinnabon.
Happy writing! Thanks for stopping by to live, love, and learn. Be sure to join us next week. And remember: Act Classy and you will be classy. Ish.
Have a question for Professor Classypants? Feel free to use our magical form that lets you enter information into rectangles. When you hit SUBMIT, the form sends electronic mail to Professor Classypants with your message. Great… now we’ve over-explained things.
PS: SOUL PATROL!!!
About the Author
Molly Martin Professor Darla Von Classypants is actually Molly G. Martin. Because Ann Landers and Dear Abby and Dear Prudence haven't used real names in 67 years so why should she? And if you're thinking this reminds you of an old Dave Barry schtick: when you grow up and get your own blog, THEN you can have opinions.
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