As you probably know, I write an advice column, in which I counsel petitioners on everything from the rules of English usage to break-up etiquette to whether gout is contagious (it isn’t). But over the weekend, as Glark and I spent the better part of an hour out in the freezing cold, attempting in vain to wedge a Pontiac Bonneville into a parking space the size of a dorm fridge, it occurred to me that I have much much more advice to share than what you might already have read. It’s just that nobody has specifically inquired, “Sarah, if the friendly lady at the rental car counter offers to upgrade me to a Pontiac Bonneville, should I accept the upgrade?” Because I know the answer to that question if anyone asks.

The answer is no. No, you should not.

The Pontiac Bonneville is the Fat Elvis of American sedans. It’s comfy. It’s got good handling. In a face-off against an SUV, it’s going to acquit itself admirably. But it is also unparkably gigantic, and it’s hard enough to get a car the size of a Motel 6 into a parking space when you don’t have a handful of satellite Ford Foci orbiting your own, which you will when you drive a Bonneville. Although you don’t “drive” a Bonneville so much as “pilot” it. I mean, I don’t know about the “bonne” part of the name, but the “ville” part is not a joke. The car is a town. The car is not a little town, either. It has a post office and a train station and everything; I opened the glove box to get my phone out yesterday and hey, there’s a Starbucks in there. And needing one of those little “WIDE LOAD” pace cars with the flashing yellow lights on either side of you in order to get from place to place entirely aside, the other issue with the rented Bonneville is that…it’s a rented Bonneville. Rental car companies haven’t gotten all that mod with the colors. My Bonneville? White. With a spoiler on the back. I guess it’s really obvious that I grew up in Jersey…I don’t know. Anyway. Don’t let the counter lady give you a Bonneville.

Other questions nobody has gotten around to asking me, the answers to which I would like to share anyway:

That Lancôme mascara everyone’s always on about — the expensive kind that’s supposed to stay on until you wash it off or die, whichever comes first? Does that work? No…dammit. I have weird lead-singer-of-Berlin eyelashes that have blonde tips, so I need a fair amount of mascara to get them visible, and also I think that I must blink a lot, because mascara just will not stay up on my lashes the way it should — whatever, anyway, I marched up to the makeup counter at Saks and told the lady, “I want a mascara that will stay on during a daring underwater escape, followed by a make-out session in the rain, capped off with a torrid shower scene, and by ‘stay on’ I mean ‘not run, smudge, slump, leak, or move at all until I dip my eyelids in witch hazel laced with hydrochloric acid.’ I’ve come to spend, and if you hook me up with such a mascara, I will happily allow you to upsell me to a Chanel lip slick thingie-doo that I will wear once and hate because it feels like jelly. Okay, hit me.” The woman reached under the counter and got out the Lancôme mascara and assured me that it would stay on forever. “I call it ‘the sweaty sex mascara,'” she said. “Try it out.” I tried it out. My lashes looked like Madonna’s on the back of the “Immaculate Collection” album. Sweet. “Wrap it up,” I said. “That goopy Chanel…whatever that is, too.” Salespeople at Saks don’t lie, right? But it didn’t stay on forever. It didn’t start to silt down onto my under-eye area right away, but it didn’t do any better than the MAC stuff I’d used before, the texture of which I kind of liked better anyway because I could control the delivery better.

Man, I couldn’t have lost the straight guys in the readership more irretrievably by this point if I’d thrown them down a storm drain, could I? Heh.

Anyway. I didn’t mind spending the money; I’d do it again if the stuff worked, but it doesn’t. You know what works? Cover Girl Professional, the stuff in the royal blue tube. I confess that I have not yet cranked open a fire hydrant and stuck my head under it, but I bet it would stay on, and at a tenth of the price.

Hey, don’t mention it. Glad to help.

I fucking hate fucking thong underwear. I still have to wear it, though, don’t I? God, no. Life is too short, lady. It’s a panty line. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Besides, the point of the thong is to subtle-ize the underwear, but everyone can tell you’ve got a thong on anyway, which sort of obviates the alleged purpose, so…bah. If you’ve tried and tried to get used to the perma-wedgie but you can’t, you can’t. Okay, if you go to the Oscars, maybe you should give the thong another go, but in your everyday life, seriously, don’t bother. Anyone who cares that deeply about your panty lines isn’t a person whose opinion you should invest in anyway.

If I use cottage cheese in my lasagna, it’s not technically lasagna anymore, is it? Probably not, but I do that too — my last interaction with fresh ricotta traumatized me for days. I kept checking the side of the deli container for the biohazard sign. I like stinky, sketchy cheese as much as the next woman. Probably more, in fact. But…ew. Breakstone’s gets it done, and if you use cottage cheese, the lasagna won’t sit in your stomach like a rock. “Faux-sagna,” whatever. Shut up.

Should I stop talking to inanimate objects as though they can hear me? “Inanimate” does not mean “insensate.” Objects may not talk back, but they can hear you. Well, the objects in my world can hear me, and as a result, most of them hate me. When my computer horks and sizzles in the middle of the carefully casual, trying-to-seem-effortlessly-funny email I’ve spent the better part of fifteen minutes fine-tuning before sending it to a boy I like, it doesn’t do it for no reason. It does it because I bitched at the CPU to show some goddamn hustle during start-up and now it feels resentful and unappreciated. A few weeks ago, I snarled at my microwave for not having a cruciform vegetable setting. Then I punched in the time and went to the bathroom to pee quickly before eating dinner, and the microwave waited until the precise moment I flushed the toilet, at which time it blew all the fuses in the right-hand side of the apartment. When your furniture walks out in front of you in the middle of the night and you bark your shins, it’s because your furniture feels taken for granted. Speak in kind, soothing tones to your possessions. Do not wait until your lighter has nearly run out of fuel to lavish it with affection and beg it to light your cigarette as you stand on a windy corner — buy it a Hallmark card and ask it about its day now and then.

The only exception is the phone. The phone is a crazy old coot, and whether you cry and plead or try to bribe it or stand over it with the wild eyes and bellow, “RING, DAMN YOU!” or pointedly ignore it while watching a Lifetime movie, the phone will not respond to any type of human intervention. Save your energy for sucking up to the fax machine.

It looks really neat when people in the movies light candles all around their apartments. Should I try that in my own home? Absolutely. It does look really neat. I myself will abstain from lighting candles all around my own apartment, however.

In other, not entirely unrelated news — cats? Flammable. And stupid.

Will the sunglasses that look good on J.Lo look good on me? No.

If I need to change a light bulb, and my stepladder isn’t quite tall enough, should I put on four-inch platform boots to make myself taller so that I can reach? No.

If I gave my accountant my records all disorganized and late, will writing “me + accountant BFF!!!!” on the tax workbook prevent him from hating me with every fiber of his being? No.

How can I tell when I’ve had too much coffee? Symptoms and side effects of overcaffeination may include anxiety; restlessness; a tingling feeling on one side of the back of your head; numbness in one or both hands; handwriting that resembles a tachycardic EKG reading; incoherent babbling; the sinister and unshakeable belief that madness has taken physical form and eaten the last ginger snap; lengthy prose poems about vintage clothing; twitching and flailing of the muscular and verbal varieties; singing at your pets; inappropriate application of the Ramones; and/or the urge to prevent complete strangers from renting a Pontiac Bonneville.

March 17, 2003

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