I now initiate the duties required of me during my mandatory cultural exchange, a punishment for my ... crime. Apparently I am expected to serve as an Advice Columnist for this benighted MakeSweet establishment, a strategy that the Council hopes will give me some experience of emotions beyond despair and loathing. So far, it is not working.

This communication was forwarded to me from one amongst you:

Dear MakeSweet, I've met this guy, he is so cool, but I'm way too shy to ask him out. What should I do? Yours, Shy-shy McShyshypants.

Ugh. This is so like a Human. Listen to me. You live in a universe containing objects and processes your little jelly brain is only beginning to understand. You lie on an unbroken chain of ancestors tracing back to before ancestors existed. You have the radical freedom to choose actions that will spill outwards from you to the end of human history and beyond. You have the capacity to experience and provoke. Those around you do too. All these things are not often so. Do I have to spell it out for you?

You people make me sick.