Arrow's Laurel Lance writes to the World's Worst Advice Columnist

[Spoilers for Arrow here, in case that's something you're concerned about]

I've been reading advice columns a lot recently (Captain Awkward for self confidence, Ask a Manager for work stuff, and the superbly cathartic Here's that bad advice you were hoping for) and have also been punishing myself with some truly terrible episodes of Arrow. I particularly hate the fact that I've been given no choice but to despair of Laurel Lance - she's just so badly written that none of what she does makes the slightest sense. I'm sure you could replace anything another character says to her in any episode with "What the hell were you thinking?" and the script would hang together, possibly even be improved. Actually, the same could be said of most of the characters' "motivations", but Laurel somehow manages to be even worse that the others.

So I'm choosing to believe that all of them have been turning to a local advice columnist for help with their difficult decisions, that Laurel has been doing this more than most, and that Star(ling) City just happens to have The World's Worst Advice Columnist. All of a sudden, the series makes sense.

Dear Ethic-quette HQ,

My vigilante sister has been killed by my ex-boyfriend's sister and is now buried in the grave we dug for her the first time we thought she'd died. My father has a severe heart condition - how can I tell him she's dead? P.S. He is Chief of Police but please don't print that bit.

Lost Lawyer

Dear Lost,

Do you have any sort of martial arts training, even just a few weeks of boxing classes? If so, simply take on your sister's crime-busting identity! There is absolutely no risk that your father will figure out that you are now pretending to be both of his daughters. He is also highly unlikely to ever mention your sister to you, so don't worry too much about having to control your facial expressions around him. Happy punching!

HQ

Dear Ethic-quette HQ,

An update on the dead sister situation: I managed to bring her back to life! Unfortunately she appears to have no idea who she is, doesn't speak, is highly aggressive and everyone thinks she might be possessed. How can I get her back and prove them all wrong?

Lost Lawyer

Dear Lost,

The only way to bring someone back to their senses after the traumatic experience of being dead for a year is to chain them to some pipes in your basement. Make sure that they have nowhere to sleep or relieve themselves and that they are still in the clothes you buried them in. You didn't mention in your letter whether you intended to tell your father that his other daughter has been resurrected. In light of his heart condition, make sure you do this in the most alarming way possible.

HQ

Guess what I've been doing a lot of recently

Taking the peace (just a little)

The other day, this note went up in one of the bathrooms of my friend's house. They have two bathrooms, for males and females, and he routinely uses the male one. I sometimes use the female one, which is quite often swimming in water. They have a pretty powerful shower which is very close to the toilet. I feel that may be relevant.

I really can't stress enough how much I hate notes and signs as a form of communication. They are used almost exclusively by people who know they'd never be able to say everything they want to in person without having to, you know, have a conversation and maybe listen to the other person's point of view. This kind of rant has no function beyond pure, one-sided, vindictive catharsis. They are no better than shouting at someone and running away. In fact it's worse than that because you have to walk past them over and over again.
So, out of all the possible ways in which someone could react to such a pollution of their home environment by a self-appointed head matron, my friend and I settled on a brief post-it note. With an arrow pointing somewhere between the words "made my peace" and "you do fuck all" (it could apply to either of those claims) it read:

[citation needed] -->
The next sweeping accusation will be
submitted to passiveaggressivenotes.com

Turns out matron doesn't have much of a sense of humour. To protect the anonymity she seems so keen on (enough to want to keep it all to herself), the following text exchange refers to her as 'Glenda'.

Glenda: I presume u 2 wrote that note? [9.43am]

Glenda: If uve got enough guts 2 write it at least be able to admit it [9.47am]

(If you squint and wait for the words to overlap a bit, you can sort of see what she was trying to say here.)

Friend: Hey Glenda. Sorry, I've had no signal this morning. What note are you talking about? :-) [10.54am]

Glenda: Ok so you or vicki dont know anything about the reply in the bathroom?x [4.54pm]

(This woman is doing a business management degree. One day she could be neglecting to capitalise the names of the employees under her and using kisses to sweeten redundancy-related emails.)

Friend: No, I've been spending the day installing cat litter under my mattress on the off-chance... :-) [6.13pm]

Glenda: Well to be honest every1 else denies it so that only leaves u and vicki. Did vicki write it? I just want to know because its quite cowardly for whoever to not admit to writing it [6.20pm]

(*Whoosh*)

Friend: Does that mean that the original anonymous rant was yours then? Either way, I'll ask her about it next time I see her then :-) [6.36pm]

Glenda: Yes it was because im fed up of cleaning the bathroom after boys peeing on the seat.x [6.38pm]

(If she's going to overreact this much to an anonymous reply to an anonymous note, best give her something she can properly get her teeth into.)

Me: Hello, this is [Friend]'s Vicky. I did stick a post-it to the anonymous note in the bathroom. This would be the cowardly unsigned note which made sweeping, unfounded accusations against all males in the flat, swore, threatened to urinate in their people's beds... I felt a little piss-taking was entirely justified. [1.18am]

Glenda: Thanks I really appreciate being text at early hours when I have work at 8am [7.57am]

(She's got a point there. I also wouldn't appreciate "being text" when I have to work early. Hell, her bathroom's probably full of ink now too.)

Glenda: Actually my note wasn't anonymous because any1 who LIVES in our house who DOES socialise knows I spokt to them about it. I think its disgustin boys pee over the seat and floor and leave it 2 b wiped up so if I wana have a rant in my own house I will. And its not a sweeping a statement because every 1 of them knows they have never hoovered, cleaned or done anything. Cleaning bathroom the odd time in 6 months doesnt really count. I think its damn rude of u who doesnt live in our house or when u r there all u do is keep other people awake that u would undermine me or get involved in something which is clearly an issue. [8.53am]

(Considering she thinks this is none of my business, it's nice of her to keep me so thoroughly informed. Especially 53 minutes into her shift.)

Me: Really can't stress this enough: you threatened to PISS on the BED of the most obsessively clean and tidy man I know. I tried to point out in a very gentle way that the note was unfair. By all means have a rant in your "own house" but don't go off the deep end if someone mildly objects to your tone. [11.06am]

Glenda: And what u dont seem 2 understand is that I dont know who pissed on the seat and why should I have 2 wipe the bathroom down every morning! I will threaten that because I cant use the bathroom! I was aiming at everyone 2 think about their hygiene! And hes clearly not obsessed with being clean or hed clean up after himself! If [friend] has an issue it has nothing 2 do with u! [11.15am]

Me: I am 100% behind your desire for better bathroom hygiene, but if someone really is missing the bowl that often they need a carer, not a page of abuse. However, as I've clearly upset you far more than intended, I hereby promise to keep my concerns to myself in future. And sorry for waking you last night. [11.26am]

(Either she thinks she's won, or all that irrelevant venting has used up her credit. So far, that's been it.)

...in which I fail to get a room

Love is a very strange thing. It provides us with people who, in order to ensure their safety, we would hack through hoards of clawing, biting zombies to get to. And yet after a couple of days in a bunker with them we'd probably end up wanting to kill them ourselves. Equally, there are people we'd happily spend the rest of eternity with, if only we could feel a little more attracted to them.

Some pub chat a few weeks ago concerned the fact that the contradictory, irritating, or even just banal sides of being in love - and the many possible ways of dealing with it - aren't represented in your typical love songs. A few exceptions were mentioned and I've been (largely against my will) thinking of others all day. I've also been noticing a few songs that can invoke utterly different emotions in me on different days. And so it comes to pass that I am presenting you all here with a playlist for the fucked-up-in-love:

Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
Strange Glue / Mulder and Scully - Catatonia
My Beloved Monster - The Eels
Underwear / Something Changed - Pulp
Ava Adore - The Smashing Pumpkins
Coin-Operated Boy - The Dresden Dolls
Flinch - Alanis Morissette
Shiver - Coldplay
Denkmal - Wir Sind Helden
Fever - Peggy Lee
Trash - Suede
Laid - James
Romeo and Juliet - Dire Straits
A Rainy Night In Soho - The Pogues

And here are some straightforward happy ones I use to blast through all that Leberkäse:

Be With You - Transvision Vamp
Let Your Love Go - Bread
In Your Room - The Bangles
Big Scary Animal - Belinda Carlisle
Private Universe - Crowded House
In These Shoes? - Kirsty MacColl
I Believe In A Thing Called Love - The Darkness (oh yes!)

Plus of course the best song ever written: Love And Affection - Joan Armatrading

I have to agree with this one

Unfortunately, everything I read of Gayatri Spivak's In Other Worlds passed at least 10 inches above my head. I place the blame squarely at the feet of my brain (so to speak).

Not your place to say

That urge to leave angry comments in any available space, even though the writer you're annoyed at isn't going to read your insights and everyone else will think you're a prat? It's not just an internet thing:



From Marianne Hester's Lewd Women and Wicked Witches

Ok, so it's within the bounds of possibility that the reader had genuinely linked two thoughts in their brain and was worried they wouldn't remember, just as they hadn't remembered to buy any paper before starting their course. This one, however, is pure spite:



From Nancy S. Love's Marx, Nietzsche, and Modernity

These are just the ones I found today. Anyone else found a good one?

(White) Christmas Lies

Being lied to by your parents is an important part of growing up, teaching us valuable lessons about trust, critical thinking skills, and not reporting everything as cold hard fact to all your friends. It also gives you material to use on your own kids, making up for the CDs they just used to create a mosaic. For example, telling them that a haggis is a highland rodent with two legs shorter than the others, which only ever runs round mountains anti-clockwise and is always hoping to meet one of the lady haggises (haggi?) running clockwise* - this does no lasting harm and gives your kid an ice-breaker for any social occasion.

Christmas lies are more dangerous, particularly those about a mince-pie-guzzling intruder, who ignores the laws of physics, biology, geography and stranger danger (it's ok to sit on a stranger's knee so long as he's got a big sack). I may be overreacting a little here, but once that damage has finally been undone by big school, one warped idea tends to remain long into adulthood; you can write a wish-list to Santa, containing everything from non-itchy school vests to a talking, flying elephant, scribble "Santa, Norf Poal" on the envelope, smear it with jam in place of a stamp, shove it in a post box... and get at least one thing from the list on Christmas morning.

Of course kids don't think it happens by magic. They know that a postman, probably assisted by a cat, takes the letters out, gives them to another postman, who passes them on to another, and so on, until they find the right elf. That's the damaging part. They begin to believe:

1. that there exists a person or group who have the power to give you anything you want and will do, if you only ask them to enough times.
   
2. that there is a network of public servants who will go to all lengths to deliver your Very Important Requests to the relevant official, no matter which bit of the system you threw your requests at.

This psychological damage during childhood is what conditions many people's behaviour towards large, complex organisations. This is why they think that the local mayor should grit the roads on his day off, or that they can shout at a lowly call-centre worker because they don't like the company's new TV jingle. It's also the only explanation I can think of for this, this and all of this.

Happy Holidays everyone.

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*thanks go to one of the friendliest, funniest families you'll ever meet