Welcome to Day Two of Ask Domesticat - the advice column that is neither columnar nor containing any actual advice! [What is Ask Domesticat?]

Dear Domesticat:

Please answer the following question in haiku:

Green is a color.
Near daily content updates.
How do you do it?

Would you please sign me
"A criminally insane
haiku man"? -- Andy

Writing, like breathing,
causes problems if you stop.
Verbal addiction.

Dear Domesticat:

Is it wrong to wish for the destruction of the fashion dictates of Old Navy?

Sign me…

Wanting To Be Creatively Not Naked

I'm more disturbed by the fact that you felt the need to ask the question. Isn't it obvious? Have we, the liberal media, failed in our mission to drum anti-capitalistic rhetoric into your skull? Is it possible that, after all these years, you still feel some kind of materialistic attachment to this malevolent representation of all that is bad in a capitalist society?

Bourgeois pig!

I understand that some less liberal (and therefore wrong) righteous factions have debated the relative merits of such drastic measures as firebombing. No matter how much we may be disturbed and disgusted by the weak imitations of 'fashion' that Old Navy wishes us to purchase and wear, we must not give them a battle cry! We must not give them a rallying point!

They're like the Axis of Evil: if you firebomb them, they scurry away and rebuild. If you just taunt them excessively, they'll spend their money on PR managers and spin doctors and less money on the creation of more actual evil.

Keep in mind that it's easier to teach others about the wrongness of Old Navy if examples of the wrongness still exist.

Just remember: you always have a choice in clothing. Shop sensibly, for the only thing worse than looking bad is, well, being naked in public in front of all your co-workers.

Especially the ones that have webcams.

Dear Domesticat:

when fighting in a bar where I've had to much to drink oooooh look at the pretty doggies in the street where I grew up such a nice street there's my house where I read all the books what's the deal with James Joyce anyway?

Sign me….

names and grammar are not everything and do you have a problem with that.

Ah, Mssr. Joyce, the bane of lit-critters everywhere. All these years and we still can't quite make sense of one half-crazed and mostly-blind Irishman, but his words certainly are pretty, aren't they?

I have a love-hate relationship with Mssr. Joyce, of which I'm certain he cares nothing about, what with that terminal case of death he contracted last century.

Come to think of it, I'm told contracting a terminal case of death almost always has a serious drain on one's writing output. There is a surprising example to the contrary, though: V.C. Andrews. What is that twisted family doing, waking the corpse up every morning and forcing her to write more novels? Someone should really tell the under-17 reading crowd that VC Andrews has [according to various news sources] been dead since 1986.

In other words, longer since most of them have even been alive.

I think Joyce is supposed to be a litmus test for those poor unemployed scribbling sots who think that they need to devote their lives to the study and appreciation of the written word. If you're able to pretend that you 'get', 'like', or 'appreciate' Joyce, then you're handed a diploma, booted out on your unemployed ass, and told that you're prepared to hoodwink further generations into believing that they're incompetent because they don't understand Joyce.

If, however, you're crazy or brave enough to admit that you don't [ like | enjoy ] this writer, who supposedly took English literature to the greatest dizzying heights seen since the premiere of the Death-Defying Wm. Shakespeare** Rollercoaster, you're pretty much guaranteed an F for the course and plenty of sneers from the righteous Students of Literature who think you're less worthy because you don't get it.

Read what you like. There are plenty of men and women in this world who felt the compulsion to put pen to paper; at least one of them will have written a novel-length combination of words that will speak to you. Saying that you're incapable of reading because you're not a lit-critter is as stupid as saying you're incapable of putting on a Band-Aid® because you're not a trauma surgeon.

** Some contend that William Shakespeare was actually a nom de plume of Christopher Marlowe. It's an engaging theory, one which is difficult to believe and equally difficult to discount. If so, my hat's off to Marlowe - the most lasting joke by a lifelong prankster and rogue.

Ask Domesticat will undoubtedly return again tomorrow. Jump for joy. Hide your children while there's still time.