The Giant Cheese Wax Ball Knows All, 10/4/13

They can shut down our government, but they can never shut down our GIANT CHEESE WAX BALL! No question unanswered, no advice unproffered, no problem unsolved. En garde!

GCWB, why do people who go on and on about Christ's love and forgiveness always turn out to be the least loving and forgiving people?

-Katherine C.

GCWB: I'm going start by disabusing you of your premise, Katherine--the actual least loving and forgiving people are the Granite Horde of Titan, who are known to respond to any perceived slight by immediately drowning the offender's entire living family in methane, and then feeding their remains to the Mighty Gronx. But the people you're talking about are no picnic, either. 

As for why that might be the case, I think it's because they're human beings, who as a rule are basically terrible. In fact, if you meet any exceptions to this rule you should consider yourself extremely fortunate, while keeping in mind the probability that they are only pretending not to be terrible, while secretly plotting dastardly acts. Happy Friday!

Oh great and sensually pungent cheese wax ball, if the Republicans can shut down the US government because they don't like the health care bill, can I shut down major league baseball because of my opposition to instant replay?

-Keith S.

GCWB: You can, Keith, but it's not going to be easy. The plan is complex and costly, and involves lying, grand larceny, kidnapping, hacking into the ESPN mainframe, stealing Bob Costas's retina, the creation of a life-size Bud Selig Real Doll™, the substitution of all official baseballs manufactured for the playoffs with exact replicas filled with blue cheese, sneaking into the ballpark the night before the game and leaving the sprinklers on, lacing hot dogs with PCP, scaling the press box at Dodger Stadium with no climbing equipment or clothes, waterboarding the San Diego Chicken, and convincing Vin Scully you are his long-lost daughter. Are you prepared for all this? If so, bring $50,000 cash and a hacksaw and meet me behind the Coliseum at midnight.

What caused the Tunguska event?

-Roger H.

GCWB: I did. My bad! I was actually aiming for young Stalin, but I was distracted at the last moment by a dog-walker with a particularly memorable bodily attribute, and the Russian backwoods took the hit instead. On the bright side, there are 80 million trees that won't be dropping their damn pinecones on anybody's car anymore.

What's unfriendling about?

-Saki K.

GCWB: Saki--"Unfriending" is a term used to describe the process of removing someone from your list of Facebook friends, and usually occurs after said person posts a comment or link which demonstrates he or she is an idiot whom you would never consent to standing next to at a party for 5 minutes, let alone sit down and have a meaningful conversation with about the issues, so why should you infect your wall with their blabberings or award them the admittedly low-bar title of "friend," even if they did pull you out of that frozen lake when you were kids?

UNFRIENDING is the most severe of a number of steps one can take to remove a person's annoying and/or stupid presence from your online life. Less final steps include just IGNORING objectionable posts (a good choice if, for example, you used to date the person and feel the need to continuously confirm that his/her current partner is not nearly as good-looking as you), or HIDING (a good choice for relatives who might make things uncomfortable at the reunion if you went for the full unfriend and who, due to having the internet savvy of a person from 1995, shouldn't really be expected to suspect that the emails they forward about how the president is sending UN troops to force old people to pledge allegiance to Jane Fonda might not be 100% true).

But for certain cases you have no choice but to break out the big guns. For example, if--and I'm just being hypothetical because who could actually believe such a crazy thing?!--someone thinks that shutting down the government, furloughing 800,000 people in a struggling economy, and defaulting on the national debt, in order to prevent poor and sick people from being able to purchase health insurance is not only a good idea, but is probably something Jesus (1st-century Jewish historical figure--you can Google him) would heartily approve of--then I think you should not only not feel bad about dropping the unfriend hammer, you should actually go out and celebrate with your like-minded friends (until you discover they believe vaccines cause autism and you have to unfriend all of them, too). But they can at least thank their lucky stars they're not getting unfriended by the Granite Horde of Titan. (No spoilers, but the process involves something that starts with an "M" and ends with an "-ighty Gronx.")

I see. Very interesting. But I believe she asked about unfriendLing, no?...

-Linda P.

GCWB: Ah, good catch, Linda--"unfriendling" is when you stop going to Friendly's because they served you a Fribble with a hair in it.