Q: How do you keep carbon monoxide from coming into your home?

A: Shrink wrap your home, then encase it in three feet of cement, until it's completely air tight. Nothing in, nothing out.

Make sure you wife and kids are inside the home before you start to save yourself from an awkward phone call later.

For best results, encourage one of your children to evolve into someone who exhales oxygen. You're gonna need that in a couple of days.

Q: What do most Romanians eat for breakfast?

A: I would imagine he eats the same as any 8 year old boy, colorful cereals featuring magic leprechauns or nautical heroes.

Oh, but what if they worship leprechauns in Romania? I wouldn't want to offend him. He seems so nice. And hasn't Romania been involved in some awful wars lately? I admit, I don't read the papers much, but I seem to remember hearing something. He does look a little war-scarred. A bowl of Captain Crunchberries might trigger some sort of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The last thing I need this morning is a screaming 8 year old tearing my kitchen apart because the drawing on the box of cereal reminded him of seeing his father ripped in two by collapsing sail. My tee time is at 10. Better hold off on the cereal.

Eggs. Everyone likes eggs. Unless he's allergic. Or his people worship chickens and hold them holy, like some people do with beef and cats. Maybe I shouldn't serve him beef either. I'm certainly not about to serve him Bella DeJour, not after I spend $400 at the vet on her. If he's expecting to come into my house and eat cats, he  better either get good at finding strays or get used to being hungry.

Toast. Who doesn't like toast? Toast it will be. Simple. Easy. Give him butter or peanut butter or jam, even some Nutella so he understands that I am sophisticated.

Oh, I'm all out of Nutella. And jam. And bread. The toast will have to wait until tomorrow.

What can I make? What can I make? Why don't these foreign exchange students come with instruction manuals?

Isn't Transylvania in Romania? I think it is. Maybe he eats blood for breakfast. But how would I prepare it? I'd hate to get it wrong and have him think all Americans are self-involved neurotics completely ignorant of foreign cultures. How do you cook blood?

Wait a minute, what am I saying? Nobody cooks blood.  If he eats blood, he has to take it raw. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. I don't even have to cook anything. Just one little slice and -

Oh boy -

 - That's coming out fast.

Come and get it, Grigore, before it ends up all over the tile.

Q: How did Jefferson Davis want to fight the war?

A: With a plan so ingenious, so original, so powerful, that the Union army would concede victory in a manner of days, allowing the gentleman and women of the South to govern themselves as they saw fit, free of the tyranny of Northern oppressors.

In Davis' plan, dubbed, "Operation Last Cavalry," the Confederate Army would create a new brigade, trained and led by masterless samurai, acquired in exchange for graphic photographs of war wounds and 500 barrels of peaches. These men were called "ronin," and were known for their lack of honor and mercenary lifestyle, but Davis called them, "my secret weapon," and would walk out of the room after making his pronouncement, ending all debate on the topic. Once the Confederate army learned the secrets of the samurai, such as their ability to hide in plain sight, their ability to kill foes at 100 paces with a thrown metal star, and the ability to disorient the enemy with smoke bombs, the South would emerge victorious and Davis would be named President and Automatic Pitcher for Life.

Unfortunately, Davis confused ninjas with samurai. He also confused China with Japan. When the boatload of Chinese immigrants arrived, simple farmers unfamiliar with even basic artillery, unable to hide even in the darkest of shadows, their whimpers and shakes and shouts of confusion always giving them away, Davis cancelled his plan and ordered all mentions of it stricken from the official record. Never one to admit defeat, Davis put these new troops to work in new capacity, but "Operation Ancient Chinese Secret," while producing the brightest whites in U.S. military history, achieved little in real results.

Q: Can inheritance affect your section 8 housing benefits?

A: Traditionally such questions are answered after the reading of the will and by your private attorney, not here, in such a public forum, in front of your extended family, by your late father's executor. But as you have asked the question five times already at increasing higher decibels, have ignored all attempts at shushery and calls to decorum by your fellows in grief, wrote the question on a large placard and waved it about your head whole shouting, "Look here, look here, oh please, old man, why won't you look here," and now hold in your hand a megaphone to undoubtedly ask your question again at a decibel level previously unconsidered, I will depart from tradition and answer your question first.

Your status as a recipient of Section 8 housing benefits may be affected by your inheritance, dependent on the content of your inheritance and its actual value. If you were to be awarded a plot of land or a string of upscale condominiums your Section 8 status would certainly be revoked, which would be of little concern as you could live in one of your unoccupied rentals until such time as you find suitable accommodations or have burned the place to the ground trying to make bathtub rock candy. In your case, I would assume the later to be most probable. If you were to inherit money,  your Section 8 status would depend on the amount and your plans for it. Obviously your father was a very wealthy man and there will be a lot of money handed out today, enough money for even the most profligate man to live multiple lifetimes without every having to worry about working. Inheriting one of those large sums would automatically lift you from your current dwellings in the lower lower lower class to the rarefied air of the upper class, thereby disqualifying you from ever receiving Section 8 benefits again.

I wouldn't worry too much about that if I were you. Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself and spoil everyone else's fun during the reading of the will, but I don't think anyone will mind if I come right out and say it: Your inheritance contains neither money nor property. But, don't fear, your have not been left out. During the reading of the will, you should pay attention to the sections about the care and feeding of your father's collection of Rhesus Macque monkeys. They seem to bit rather fond of biting. I hope they don't cause you any problems with the Section 8 people. Your father would hate to think that you had to care for his hundreds of genetically modified Rhesus Macque monkeys and be homeless. Unless that was his plan all along. You'd probably have a good idea of his intentions if you ever bothered to visit him at Christmas.

Now that I have answered your question, please take down your ridiculous homemade sign. The people behind you can't see, and your father's will stipulates that every family member must be able to see every other family member when I read the sections containing the transcripts of the secret wiretaps he placed on all your phones.

Q: Is throwing an object by a minor at another minor and hitting them considered assault?

A: Throwing the object is assault. As soon as it hits someone, you've entered the magical land of battery. Put them together and you have assault and battery, two great crimes that go great together, like breaking and entering, false imprisonment and kidnapping, and my personal favorite, loitering and mopery.

You're probably too young to remember, but back in '86 we had a rash of loiter/moperies back.  The foot shacks on Bowery sat dormant, the tourists dried up, the myopic were too scared to leave the house. We were a city under siege,  until some hot shot detective figured out the pattern, posed as a blind street flutist and put down roots on 3rd and 3rd, waiting for that sick bastard to show himself. The cop waited for sixteen days, and on the seventeenth, just as he was about to quit, who should come walking up to him but a cheesy vacuum salesman, whistling some made up tune and holding a handful of his dirty junk.

The detective, having found his loitering moperer, took off his sunglasses to reveal he was not blind, took out his badge and his service revolver to reveal that he was a cop, and revealed that the gun was loaded by emptying its contents -  bullets - into the stomach, head, neck and groin of the vacuum salesman.

Time stood still in the park that day, all you could here was the sound of justice, followed by the sound of screams - the moping son of a bitch was still hanging on - followed by more justice in the form of bullets, followed by the tepid applause of innocent citizens saved from a diabolical rampage that many did not know existed.

The word "hero," gets used a lot these days, but on that day, no one said it. No one even thought it,  despite the officer's pleas, not even when he passed out the commemorative t-shirts featuring a cartoon rendering of the detective standing in the 'O' of the word hero.

You might be shocked to hear that I am that police officer. I'll pause now to allow you to take in this new information and compose yourselves.

Take your time. There's no need to feign apathy. It's only natural to feel shocked and begin to doubt the very nature of your existence. If you feel the need to hyperventilate, no one will judge you.

Okay, it looks like, due to the reality-shattering nature of my admission, it may take some time for the shock to kick in. I'll just keep going and hopefully be able to finish before you succumb to the shock.

For the past few months you have all known me as Dennis, the new kid, the one with the mismatched socks, and the divorced parents, and the love of Strat-O-Matic Baseball.  I'm sure you all thought the same thing, "Sure, Dennis might smells a little and run funny and spend too much time talking to that Racquel Welch poster in his locker, but he's basically just like us, a 13-year old kid trying to figure out his way in this crazy world."

You all thought wrong. I'm nothing like you. I've been  undercover this whole time. And I know all your secrets.

You might have thought that by throwing a rock at fellow minor you'd be safe from criminal prosecution, but again you'd be wrong. You didn't throw that rock at any kid, you threw it at a cop. And not just any cop, a highly decorated 51 year old cop only three years from a pension and assigned to our new Jump Street division due to budget cutbacks. You picked the wrong day to pick on Dennis.

Dennis isn't my real name by the way. It's Detective Peter Milligan.

Anyone feeling any shock yet?