Mailbag Vol. 2 Issue 2

By Jake and Glenn

Oh my God we're back again
Brothers sisters everybody sing
Gonna bring the flavor
Show you how
Gotta a question for you
Better answer now

--Backstreet Boys "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)

I've been reading your blog/online magazine since I fist saw it linked to on my friend's Facebook wall. I find your humor often times funny, but sometimes it don't get it. Can you please explain it to me?

-Tyler

How am I supposed to explain "humor" to you? If you are on Facebook, you can clearly see humor in life and on the internet, so why should our website be any different? Please email us back with your friend's measurements (man or woman) and we will try to make sure all of our future articles cannot be "gotten" by you. That way there won't be the confusion of you laughing at some posts and scratching your head at others - everything will look like hieroglyphics to you.

I have a lot of oily rags in my garage. I know that these rags are very flamable so I mostly just stay away from them. Recently I've been worried about lightning striking them. If lightning strikes them my garage will probably explode. I don't have explosion insurance on my garage. Do you think I should 1) wash the rags 2) throw the rags away or 3) get explosion insurance on my garage?

- Sylvester

This is probably more of a question for "Hi Katy" but since you emailed us here at mailbag, we'll try to help. First of all, what are you doing with oily rags? Second of all, how did they get oily? Third of all, what are rags? Think about those three questions for a moment and the way that I asked them while I check on your garage. [Moments pass.] I checked website of the vendor who built your garage and it looks like you have nothing to worry about because your garage is made of solid mahogany wood. Like me, lightning is only attracted to metal and "scene" girls, so it won't be striking your lovely garage any time soon. Get rid of the rags though, man.

I have been enjoying the regular columns on your site. I especially like the 'Hi Katy' column. I feel that even though your site is mainly sarcastic and satirical, that having serious articles and regular columns help validate you site as more than just a run-of-the-mill Onion rip-off, to something that is slightly more. Please keep up the good work, and try to write more articles about ex-football players.

-Cheryl

Cheryl, thank you for these kind words. If 100 people wrote in each week to tell us things like that, we wouldn't be losing so many writers to suicide and we could convince women with low self esteem to write more articles for us. As a woman it's especially important to hear your words of encouragement. Sometimes male voices, due to a tragic combination of genetics and social upbringing, can overwhelm their female compatriots - as I'm sure an intelligent woman like you has noticed occasionally happens even on a site as progressive and gender neutral as One Year in Texas. Look for a "Bo Knows" article by the end of this upcoming week, based on the famous football (and baseball) player Bo "Bo" Jackson.

Hello, my name is Theresa and my son's name is Noah. Even though we have Net Nanny on our old family computer, which is a very old 386 Packard Bell with only 16 MB of RAM and a 540 MB hard drive, my son has been able to access your website, which is very inappropriate for him to read. He is only 2 years old and we gave him that computer thinking he would not be able to access any websites, just to play games on it. I am upset and though I probably will not stop him from reading the website in the future, I am writing to ask you if you will not put anything on the website inappropriate for someone as young as 2. Thank you and please don't let these be the terrible twos for my son Noah.

-Theresa

Besides the one anal bleaching article and the articles about Kentuckytown, I would say that there is nothing that would bother your son. Some of the humor might be a little juvenile for him, though. When I was two, I was busy writing on the walls with markers and getting subsequent beatings with wooden spoons and Hot Wheels track. Now when I write on the walls not a god damn thing happens, except my fiancee yells at me for two hours and tells me that I don't respect her feelings. It's not true, I do respect them. I just like drawing on walls. My answer to your question is get your son some paper and he will stop drawing on the wall, and if he does just use the fine Mr. Clean product the Magic Eraser to magically erase your autistic son's doodles. Autism is something that can't be controlled, unfortunately. If you want something that can be controlled get an ASIMO.

yo bros this is steven from high school. I went to school with you guys! You were funny back then and you're really funny now. Are you coming back our ten year high school reunion and will you mention me on your website? Got a bet with my girlfriend that the people on this site are really the ones I went to high school with. See you guys soon!

-Steven

Steven! What's up homie? Of course we're going to our 10 year. It's not for two more years, but we'll be there. There's five writers on this site that graduated in the same high school class. We'll all be there smoking blunts before going inside and eating all the cheese squares. Fuck yeah, we're going to eat all the cheese squares. Nobody is going to say shit and if they do what do we care, we're going to be baked like a fuckin' pan of brownies. Steven, you want to meet us at Richmond Hill? We'll toke up there. Remember, two years and we're gonna be straight blunted, listening to Lil' Wayne (of whatever rapper is the most popular in two years), sippin' on Vitamin Water and doing impressions of Dennis f'n Miller.

My name is Melissa and I'm a 25 year old woman who has an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in Chicago and am working on a graduate degree from the Kennedy School of Government. I only say this so you know that I'm an educated woman and am wondering why you don't have any women writing for your website. If I wanted to read a website written by men for men, I would simply navigate to FHM.com, which is a magazine for men that only exists in online form. Please help an educated woman out.

-Melissa

Hold your horses Melissa. We have several female writers. The problem is that many of them have full time jobs and can't diarrhea articles out like Glenn, Bub and Jake. Jake hasn't had a full time job ever, and is talking about himself in the third person, which might be part of the problem. Glenn will eventually have a job, but will still (hopefully) continue to post his Good Morning from OYIT column. Bub is just a smart guy who can write his ass off. He has a job and lives in Australia.

There is another theory that has floated around that women have low self esteem, therefore are unwilling to post articles. This is simply half-true. Some women feel this way and stop posting after one article, yet others merely feel this way and keep posting regardless of their inferiority complex. As a man, I feel that women play a more important part role on our website than they do on sites like the Onion, FHM.com and Adult Friend Finder. I think that both men and women have unique senses of humor and we need to share and share alike (share jokes).

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Remember, if you have any questions, please address them to mailbag@oneyearintexas.com