Q: What should be prescribed for a cat that has a runny nose and is lethargic?

A: I had the same problem about eight years ago. Drove me crazy. Couldn't solve it. Stayed up all night trying everything I could think of, every home remedy and old wives tale. every long shot strategy, every wild plan randomly chosen from the Bible. Nothing worked. My son still laid on the ground, still and cold and dead as the day that garbage truck ran him over.

I probably should have said this sooner, but when I said "I had the same problem," I meant, "I had a similar problem, expect instead of a cat it was my son and instead of having a head cold and being lazy, he was dead and grey matter leaked from the fractures in his skull." But otherwise, exactly the same.

Anyway, as you understand, seeing a loved one in pain or dead can be a terrifying experience. You feel helpless, like the whole world's crashing down on you.  But I was not going to give up and take my son's condition lying down. I knew what I had to do:  travel to Haiti to try and harness the power of voodoo.

The trip was a bit of a disaster. I angered a local voodoo priest who drove nails into my scrotum and poisoned me with voodoo drugs, turning me into a zombie. They made a movie about it. Maybe you've seen it. RoboCop.

Obviously they changed a few things.

Once I got back to the states, I used all my acquired voodoo knowledge to revive my son. By this time, he was in a bad shape. My wife turned off the cooling system and he began to rot. The vermin got to him. And the neighbors. And the neighbors pets. There was a thunderstorm. We had some flooding. When I got home he was less a son and more of a black son puddle that gave off fumes that would blind you. He was not responsive to the voodoo.

Now, I had two choices: I could stay in that basement, feel sorry for myself, and slowly go blind. Or, I could suck it up, scrape my son sludge off the floor and get on with my life. I chose option B. I got on with my life. Just because I couldn't bring my son back didn't mean I wasn't a father. I had a new son. And another. And another. I didn't stop until I had fourteen children by twelve women. That's how you deal with grief. Once I was done fathering, I left the kids with their mothers, bought this pet shop and settled in for the good life.

It's time for you to face the truth. Your cat's not going to make. Sure I could give you some medicine and some fancy wet food to improve his health and boost his energy. But how long will he last? Ten years? Twelve maybe? Best say goodbye now and move on. What better way to move on with your life than by buying twenty cats?

Please buy the twenty cats. They're only five hundred bucks each.

Ten? Please?

Do you have any idea how much I pay in child support?

Q: Why is lemon rind added to this cake?

Q: Because we're going to turn the Prime Minister into a pygmy goat.

If you had paid attention during our meetings, or done any of the assigned reading, you would understand our plan. And you would have shown up on time, in the proper disguise. What kind of State Dinner invites a plate spinner?

Not in 2012. And certainly not one who spins paper plates. We're not here to entertain the Prime Minister. We're here to make him eat this cake, because, once he eats this cake, he will turn into a pygmy goat. 

That's why we're doing all of this - the disguises, the distractions, the drugging the guards. 

And that's why we added the lemon rind, and the gopher hair, and the volcano ash, and the clippings of  condor talons.

And that's why you should stop eating the cake.

Q: How do you bleed a ford puma coolant system?

A: Couple of years ago I nicked my finger breaking down cardboard boxes in the storage room of an electronic stores. I had, as they say, "fallen on hard times" and my blood didn't coagulate like it's supposed to. Started gushing everywhere, all over the boxes and the floor on my khaki pants, and I started freaking out and kinda crying. I guess "kinda" kind of undersells the moment. I was sobbing, wailing some, my face all red and wet. Snot bubbling out my nose. You could say I lost my composure.

My co-worker Bret, he was the one breaking down boxes with me, he said something to me that made me laugh and took my mind off my pain and the gushing blood, something that put the whole scene in perspective. He said, he looked down at my finger and back up and me and he said, "If it bleeds we can kill it." I found that real funny.  And he said it with kind of a German accent. I found that funny, too.

We stood around that storage room laughing and bleeding - me bleeding, him not, both of us laughing - for what seemed like hours but was probably only about ten minutes. By the time we stopped laughed I had stopped crying, and, wiping the snot from my nose and wrapping some paper towel around my finger, I looked him in the eye - rare for me at the time - and said, "Bret, you're a real funny guy. How do you come up with this stuff?"

I'll never forget the way he looked at me. He stopped laughing and his face went slack and he looked at me like how you would look at a slow child or a dog that shat all over your Wonderbread and he said, "That's from Predator."

And it stopped being funny.

And I started crying again. Like how I'm crying right now. And he kept looking at me in that way, the same way you're all looking at me right now.

When announced that I would end today's class with a Q&A session about automotive maintenance  I didn't expect any of you to ask anything that would trigger such a painful memory and reduce me to such a helpless state.  But here we are.

That's going to be all the questions for today. We still have about eight minutes left before the bell rings. How about you kids play a game of Seven Up while I curl up into a ball in the corner? Those of you without thumbs can come join me if you want.

Q: How much money do you need to start a photography business?

A: These days, not that much. You don't have to pay for film or processing or prints. If you have the right phone, you don't even need to pay for a camera. If you have the right clients, you don't even need lights or talent. Just so we're on the same page, the right clients are recent high school graduates rushing into marriage. Get enough of them and you can start shopping at the nice mall.

All you need to start a photography business is the will to start and a couple of dollars in your pocket. Starting a philosophy business, now that's a different story.

The philosophy business has been in a bit of a downturn for about the last 80, 90 years with no end in sight. The big philosophy firms aren't hiring like they used to, most of the top philosophers have gone independent, and every year there's a whole crop of new philosophers coming out of America's liberal arts schools all ready to capture the essence of life in one simple metaphor.

Used to be a man could toss on his toga, bang out a few aphorisms or paradoxes, pocket some money and go hot the gruel house. I don't have to tell you how much it has changed. The modern public lacks a thirst for knowledge. They no longer question the great existential dilemmas of our time. What is the purpose of life? How does a man live his life? Do we make choices or are they thrust upon us by great unseen forces that live deep in the bowels of the internal combustion engine? Are there demons in my cereal?

People today don't care about these questions. Don't want the answers. You could stand in their living room all day shouting the answers to the great mysteries of life and writing theorems on the walls and, where you would once get praise and cherished looks of enlightenment and patronage and sexual favors,  now all you get is laughed at and asked to leave and shouted at and told to leave and screamed at and begged to leave and surrounded and pepper sprayed and brought to the station and questioned and told to take off your toga and admitted to the mental hospital and kept for evaluation and given pills and told to take them and told to obey and asked to remain calm and to keep back and to listen because this is your last warning and pepper sprayed again. And at the end of it all they hand you a bill.  A bill. They used to hand you offerings, burnt meat and the hearts of enemies. Now try getting the heart of an enemy after a good rhetoric. Even ask for one and they'll look at you like you're a crazy person.

It's like the whole world has gone mad.