Q: My older sister is a raging alcoholic. What should I do?

Answers Velveeta: Box a kangaroo.

Q: After 30 years of marriage, my husband is more interested in watching politics on TV than interacting with me. We are, by mutual consent, no longer intimate—but he totally ignores me. He will talk to anyone who looks his way, but he doesn't talk to me. His idea of doing something together is driving around the countryside for four hours looking at the scenery. He'll lie on the couch and watch TV or read while I'm a few feet away and not say more than a dozen words to me all day. I can't do this much longer. What do you suggest?

Answers Velveeta: Grow a beard. Grow a handlebar mustache.

Q: My son says he wants to be an astronaut, but I fear by the time he's an adult we won't even have any astronauts. What do I tell him?

Answers Velveeta: Feed three quarters into a Pepsi machine and just walk away.

                      [cows are invented. cows are the darkness. cows stop
                      and wait and smell like garlic cloves rubbed into snow
                      filling footprints. the exquisite and ugly cow. cows
                      beaten with a family stick. cows wallowing along the
                      interstate. many-colored birds on the soft backs of
                      cows. glass balls blown with bellowing. clattering
                      hooves. count the spaces between the ribs of cows.
                      carve your spoon. the cow is the cow is the cow.]

Q: Don't you think they had a responsibility to contact all their guests and advise them of the problem, and even express concern and apologies?

Answers Velveeta: Listen, your letter never came.

           [At this point I left my Writing Chamber and visited the state
           fair. I required a snow cone and a copy of The Paris Review;
           the heat was insufferable. Sweat pooled along my waistline.
           We were standing in line. A little girl turned to me.

           "Hamburger," she said. "Hamburger comes from cows. People
           kill the cows and they slice them up into circles and then they
           eat the circles. They made me eat cow circles but I didn't
           know what it was," she said sadly. "I didn't know…"

           "Please don't start again!" her mother said. She gave me a
           harsh look like I'd initiated this line of reasoning. "No one
           meant to taint you. No one knew how you'd feel about it."

           "I ate cows," the little girl persisted gravely.

           "This is no time to talk about such things!" her mother
           insisted. She gave me another accusing glare. I glanced down
           at my feet.

           "I just didn't know about the circles," the girl said.]

Q: What is the purpose of life?

Answers Velveeta: Get tazered.