German advisees make this an international blog. (or, Obedience is a great consolation prize)

Dear Janel,

I recently became... involved with a guy who I knew would jerk me around, but my drawing pool is very small, so I decided to just go with it. Sure enough, he's started doing the jerk-around, and I'm not into that. But, Gott in Himmel, I'm bored! is it wrong to try to make him super hot for me so he'll come crawling back, or just a waste of time? Be honest.

-Bored in Berlin

All right. I'm pretty sure you've been wasting your time all along, but hey, sounds like you don't have anything better to do with it anyway, right? And looking super hot when you see him can't possibly hurt. And flirt with a bunch of other guys if you can. Either he'll get jealous and come crawling, or at least you won't look sad and pathetic like you would if you waif around and cry a lot. I wish I didn't know that from experience. Maybe it will even draw some less retarded types your way. If not, at least you now have a reputation for being smokin' hot. And the fact is that if your skirts are short enough, you'll probably find that the lamewad guys of your admittedly limited acquaintance are a lot more readily doing your bidding. And who doesn't want that? Nobody, that's who. Obedience is a pretty great consolation prize.

Should I move out of my grandparents' house and in with some strangers or not? I'm almost 25 and I have a great job, but I moved here a little over six months ago and had hoped to develop some sort of meaningful relationship with a man by this point. And I'm sick of living in their spare room. Even though it's free... But I'm not sure if I should take the plunge and sign a lease when I might hate these strangers.

-Stumped in San Francisco

First of all, you live with your grandparents. That might not be all that conducive to meaningful relationships with men (although maybe you just have the same problem as our Berliner above). And how bad can it be? You lived with your grandparents for six months before you started to scratch your eyes out, so I bet you can handle a six-month lease with some random strangers. Especially since they'll probably try to impress you, at least at first. The first few months of new roommates are usually the cleanest, so you have that to look forward to. And if they suck, you can steal their boyfriends. That's probably the way to go. Or, if they do something truly horrible, like cut their toenails onto the dining room table, you can head down to the local pond and get a bucketful of tadpoles to fill their beds with. Is it tadpole season right now? It seems like, if it's not tadpole season by now, it certainly should be by the time you finish the Super Clean Roommate Honeymoon Period. If there are tadpoles in your neighborhood. Which actually, my dad says that having frogs around is a sign of a healthy ecosystem because apparently frogs breathe through their skin or something... And you live in San Francisco so there could be a lot of pollution... probably is. But actually, if you have the right kind of pollution, maybe that will only help. Because if what you get is like three-eyed tadpoles in this girl's bed, that might just drive the point home. So my advice to you is actually, you're going to need to check out the local ponds before you actually move in. And look into the kinds of tadpoles they actually have. Because if they don't have any tadpoles, you need to not move in there. Because I don't know what you're going to do then.