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Let Us Discuss Your Problems In Depth

 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
08:49 / 26.04.05
Hello Barbelith!

It has come to my attention that after all this time, many of you still have severe emotional and mental problems. This is interfering with your ability to conduct coherent discussions and, in some cases, form coherent sentences.

However, help is at hand! Some of you may not know this, but in "real life" I am the noted alternative counsellor and FKIF practitioner Dr Wallace Batman*, author of the bestselling 'Yes!' series of books including Yes, It Is Your Fault & Yes, They Do All Hate You. So why not tell me about the many, many problems you so obviously have, and I'll try to provide the best advice I can?

*Disclaimer: not a medical or academic doctor.
 
 
Sax
09:07 / 26.04.05
DEAR DOCTOR BATMAN WHY CANT I GET MY LETTERS PUBLISHED IN THE ASTONISHING X-MEN LETTERS PAGE?

PS IS WALLACE A GIRLS NAME ARE YOU A GIRL WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME? OR SEND ME A PHOTO?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:36 / 26.04.05
Dear Sax,

Allow me to turn the question around and ask: why do you want, or dare I say it need, to have a letter published in the pages of Astonishing X-Men? After all, you have published a novel - albeit a piece of genre fiction in which one of the heroines is called 'Magneto' - and thus have contributed to culture in a far more substantial manner than could be managed by a flimsy piece of disposable pop culture entertainment such as an X-Men comic. (Remember when comics aspired to be literature, in the 1980s? Those were the days!)

It seems clear to me that your problems stem from a low self-image. This in turns has led you to be rude and attempt to bully me by suggesting that I have a girl's name. I can assure you that a) Wallace is a perfectly traditional boy's name, much like Stacey and Brett, and b) your fiery arrows cannot hurt me anymore, as I grew used to such taunts during my schooldays, when I was regularly called 'Little Wally Girly Girl' and beaten senseless by the rugby team. It would have been easy of me to internalise those taunts and develop a need to avenge myself by pointing out that I am now the published author of five (FIVE) best-selling books, whereas those boys probably empty bins or something, but I have transcended such petty needs. I suggest you do the same.

Yours,

Dr W. Batman.
 
 
Benny the Ball
09:38 / 26.04.05
Dear Doctor Batman,

We've met before, but my treatment was cut short, surely you remember me? No?

Well, my problems are that I feel ignored, as a result of this I find myself compensating for these feelings of social inadequacies by making very bad jokes to try and fit in.

I hope that you can help.

Mr H R Campanologist

PS - Are you sure my name doesn't ring any bells?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
10:06 / 26.04.05
Dear Dr. Batman,

After months of striving, I still cannot make an adequate bechamel sauce using low-carb flour. This culinary defeat haunts my every dream and taints my every victory with the bitter, bitter fragrance of defeat.

How can I overcome this grievious handicap?
 
 
Benny the Ball
10:08 / 26.04.05
Dr B,

I'm hungry. Should I make a quick spaghetti, or should I get dressed, go out, have a fried breakfast with a latte and read the papers?

B t B
 
 
Grey Area
10:13 / 26.04.05
Dear Dr. Batman,

Despite many home-cooked and retaurant dinners, bunches of flowers and a vertiable slew of Belgian chocolates, the object of my desires still refuses to 'come up for a coffee'. What can I do? Offer flavoured coffee? Move to a glitzier apartment? I am at my wit's, and my credit limit's, end.

GA
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:20 / 26.04.05
Dear Mordant,

Focussing on material desires such as hunger can only ever lead to dissatisfaction and suffering. As my close personal friend and spiritual advisor Richard Gere often tells me when I drop in to visit him at his mansion in LA, the world we see, hear, touch and taste around us is not 'reality' but merely a series of distracting illusions. Who is truly richer: Richard Gere, or a simple noble peasant with a bowl of rice? Think on this, and you will see that you need no sauce, but instead to return to the source.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get a sandwich.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:20 / 26.04.05
But first...

Dear Grey Area,

Have you considered seeking her father's advice?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
10:31 / 26.04.05
Dear Dr Batman,

All my friends think I'm a moaning negative person who hates everything when really I'm a glowing ball of love full of happy, except about The Machinist which really was shit. How can I persuade them to see the real me?

Yours,
Mr Happy
 
 
Triplets
10:51 / 26.04.05
Dear Dr. Batman
As a noted and enlightened scholar on the graphic novel artform I recently put forth the opinion that certain visual pamphlet novellas do not stand up to the works of Phillip Roth, august author and my secret sugar ape. You can imagine how enraged I was to find certain chunkheaded mouth-howlers did not throw garlands at my feet for dispensing such wisdom but instead mocked me - MOCKED!. How can I show these hooting pisswhistlers that I am their mental superior and to take my words on ocular picture-tomes as law?
 
 
Benny the Ball
10:51 / 26.04.05
Dear Dr B,

I'm serious, man, I'm like really hungry here.

B t B
 
 
agvvv
11:23 / 26.04.05
Dear Doctor Batman

My dog seems incapable of loving me, why is this?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
11:34 / 26.04.05
Dear Dr Batman,

I am going on holiday but don't have any of the objects that you are meant to take with you. Should I buy these things at the airport, should I trust my other half to go shopping after work or should I demand a wad of cash?
 
 
Sax
12:10 / 26.04.05
Dear Doctor Batman,

I am in a relationship with a famous comic writer, who we'll call George. Things have been going well, but there's someone who is dead-set on making trouble for us. He posts on a message board and says that he, in fact, is seeing George when it is just blatantly untrue. In fact, I don't even think this "Garnish" character is even gay.

Please advise.
 
 
Brigade du jour
12:48 / 26.04.05
Dear Dr Batman,

I listen to Prince way too much. I even try to sing like him now. Please help! (cheque enclosed)

GKB
xxx
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
15:08 / 26.04.05
Dear Ms. Triplets,

It sounds as if your ideas will never receive a fair hearing in the environment in which you are currently choosing to air them. Can I suggest that you try expressing them only in an environment in which the vast majority of those who surround you are less intelligent than you are and less inclined to question you with any rigour?

Yours,

Batfoot Doctor
 
 
grant
15:42 / 26.04.05
Dear Dr. Batman,

There is a girl in my office who is very cute. She does not work in my division, but sometimes I see her in the hall and we smile at each other. Recently, she started wearing a new diamond ring, and I am afraid she may have gotten engaged.

What's the best way for me to ask her out?

Yours forlornly,

digital romeo
 
 
Panic
16:53 / 26.04.05
Dear Dr. Batman,

For many years now the federal government and its Masonic (James-, not Free-) allies have had me under surveillance via satanic x-rays from their geostationary satellites. I have grown to shoulder this burden as I have many others, but now they have gone too far.

Recently they have begun tampering with my girlfriend's physiology so that during intercourse my brainwaves will gradually be reconfigured until I am one of their compliant droneslaves. And she moves my CDs around. Should I dump her and move on, or address the problem directly and send a terse letter to my local Congressman? Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Transmogrified in Tampa


ps If it makes any difference, she's put on a few pounds.
 
  
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