Sedaratives: Adam Mansbach

Dear Sedaratives,
I don’t think soy is all it’s cracked up to be. Prove me wrong.
Janice Fischel
Sauk City, Wis.

Dear Janice,
The fact that you live someplace called “Sauk City” seems to suggest that you are wrong about a great deal, Janice. But fine. In skilled hands, soy can be made to convincingly resemble almost all of the more appetizing foods it was designed to replace. Have you ever seen Morningstar Farms Veggie Bacon Strips? They look exactly like bacon. They even have a fake strip of fat running down the middle. Why the hell vegetarians would want their pseudo-meat products to so closely resemble the shit they refuse to eat is another question entirely—a “better” one, in the technical parlance of the professional advice columnist—but the versatility of soy as a food substance, a house insulator, and in surgical calf-augmentation is indisputable. If you don’t believe me, wait a few months and ask any of the presidential hopefuls milling around Iowa, declaiming that the soybean is the backbone of the American economy.
Adam

Dear Sedaratives,
Remember when cobalt blue glass was all the rage? Well, now I’m stuck with a bunch of Mexican-looking glasses rimmed in cobalt blue. I don’t think the homeless need them, so donating is out. What do I do with them?
Paris Pierce
Mountain Brook Village, Ala.

Dear Paris,
Of course I remember. What a week that was! Crazy. Oh, man, that takes me back. Good times.
This is a tough one, in the sense that I just did, like, four shots. Let’s see. If you were my mother, you would decide that whoever had given you these glasses would be deeply offended if they ever walked into your house and did not see them prominently displayed, even if they were given to you thirty-one years ago by a relative who has not visited since and bought them for half a tab of acid at a yard sale. So really, Paris, the question here is: how much like my mother are you? In the sense that you seem inclined to want my opinion about anything, I’d say not much. Line the glasses up along the back of an unwanted couch or black and white TV, walk fifty paces away, peer at them through the scope of your rifle for a while, mutter, “You ain’t worth it” in as gruff a voice as possible, throw down your weapon, spit into the dust, and stride purposefully away.
Adam

Dear Sedaratives,
Hi. Me again. I also have, like, twelve of those big-ass Friends coffee cups, and they are just impractical. I’m at my wits’ end trying...