A colleague of mine is a thin eastern european woman with very beautiful features and long dark hair. She knows she’s beautiful and works it. A few weeks before a big work event, she asked me what I was wearing to it, and told me she didn’t have an outfit yet. Thinking nothing of it I described my dress to her, and told her its colour which was somewhat unusual.

The night of the event, I had an emergency and had to leave town so I couldn’t actually attend. I just saw some photos from the event, and noticed that she wore a dress in the exact color that I told her I was wearing.

My workplace is competitive in many ways, but I have never been surrounded by people who would bring the competition to the level of “wearing the colour better”. You live in LA, so your radar must be up on this kind of thing. Could this have been an intentional act on her part?

Did the hottie at work intentionally look better than you? Hmm. I dunno. Did you intentionally insult me with that backhanded remark about living in LA?

Listen up, darling. This whole cliché of a question is nothing more than a textbook example of Freudian projection. Let me break it down for you:

You’re a bitch with a lot of passive aggressive tendencies. Instead of dealing with those tendencies consciously, you unconsciously project them onto other people and subsequently begin thinking that they are the ones who are actually passive aggressive bitches.

The impulse to “wear the color better” belongs entirely to you. By ascribing it to your attractive foreign colleague — quite predictably, I might add — you get to walk away with a clean conscience despite it being your negative impulse.

Don’t feel bad. We all do this. The trick is recognizing it for what it is. Catching yourself projecting onto other people is entry-level self-realization. Own that shit and learn from it. It’s the very essence of embracing your inner bitch.

I just turned 18. However, I still find myself watching Hannah Montanna, Spongebob, iCarly, and more shows like that. Should I be ashamed?

I’m sorry, sweetie, but it’s time to change the channel.

The artistic merits of Spongebob could be argued, but there is absolutely no excuse for shit like Hannah Montana or iCarly.

That garbage is for little kids. Not the smart ones, either. It’s the worst kind of artificially sweetened bubblegum babble with no nutritional value whatsoever, and quite frankly, it does legitimate harm by adding to your naiveté.

The Disney Channel and its products promote a certain kind of witless credulity which some consider acceptable in the mind of a child, but you’re a big girl now, and that shit is downright poisonous to the mind of an adult.

Nostalgia is no excuse. You can’t even get away with watching that stuff ironically. I’m not saying your Netflix queue has to read like a Sundance festival schedule, but you can’t live on the pop cultural equivalent of Twinkies and Chef Boyardee. It’s time to start refining your palette.

Start off with something simple like Glee. Ease your way into NBC’s Thursday night line-up. Work your way up to Modern Family and Mad Men, and eventually, you’ll be watching Weeds and Californication like a regular grown-up.

I suppose it’s probably too much to ask, but while you’re at it, feel free to pick up a book every now and then.

I always loose interest in guys the second or third time I have sex with them. I mean, I am happy to meet up and be friends afterward but I never want to sleep with them again after the first or second time. This is sort of a new phenomenon. I am 28 and until now I’ve been constantly in and out mini-relationships (with the exception of a three years not so mini one), but I just don’t have the energy for any of it anymore. If the guy I am with is not the embodiment of all of my petty fantasies, I have no patience for intimacy, and then after the first time we fuck the tension dissipates and I loose all desire to be with that person. Considering the odds that I will cross paths with that boy I never met are pretty slim, any advice on how to make the tension last?

Sexual tension isn’t supposed to last, you fucking crackhead. Those butterflies in your stomach are like any other high — temporary, and in your case, habit forming. You don’t need advice on making that feeling last longer. You need help so that you don’t crave it in the first place.

Oh, and don’t kid yourself. Those aren’t relationships you’re having. They’re bloated one night stands. Hell, you said it yourself: you have no patience for intimacy. You’re not in it for anything other than the cheap thrill you get from being chased.

Listen, this is all pretty much standard issue crazy where I live. I couldn’t throw a grapefruit without it bouncing off two waitresses and an actress who have your exact flavor of intimacy issues.

I could open a drive-thru therapy window where I give girls like you a slap to the face and a framed picture of your codependent parents making you feel unworthy of love.

I’m in a pissy mood right now, so instead of blathering on about healing your inner child or reprogramming your dysfunctional ego defenses, I’m much more inclined to tell you to just buck the fuck up and quit acting like a love junkie.

Lose the petty fantasies, quit chasing the emotional high you get from sexual tension, and go deal with your fears of abandonment, betrayal, and rejection.

My boyfriend and I have known each other for 5 years, and we’ve been together for the last year and a half. He’s 27 and I’m 23. We’re in the process of leaving our respective apartments to move into one together. I assume this means he’ll propose sometime afterward, and he’s alluded to it several times after a couple beers. However, that whole “I’ve never found anyone greater! You’re my soouuulmate!” (shit everyone thinks when they start a new relationship) got thrown out the window like a big gulp on the highway a pretty long time ago.

We’ve had our fair share of break ups and make ups, and what I’m simply learning is that we’re alright with each other. We spend majority of both our time with one another, we’re best friends, we’re good room-mates, we have good sex, and he’s head over heels for me. I think we’re practical, but I’m worried maybe I could be settling just because it “makes sense.”

Doesn’t every couple eventually get this way? Or am I just being an asshole?

Yes, every couple gets this way, and yes, you are settling. Then again, yes, it does make sense, and yes, you’ve got it pretty much as good as it gets.

What do you want me to tell you? You two are best friends who have good sex and can live together without climbing the walls. That’s a fucking marriage right there, with bonus points if you can stand being around his family.

Thing is, do you want that life? If you do, great. Go get a dog, squirt out a couple of kids, and start wearing ugly jeans.

If not though, be strong enough to admit it. This isn’t about your boyfriend. I’m sure he’s fine, but he’s also as interchangeable as a side item on an Applebee’s menu. This is about a certain kind of middle mind, middle class, middle of the road American experience that you’re signing up for at a relatively young age.

Again, if that’s what you want, cool. There’s nothing wrong with eatin’ good in the neighborhood, but I get the sense that you really don’t know how to feel about any of it.

Be careful. You don’t strike me as self-realized enough to be content with what’s being handed to you, but neither are you dumb enough to be happy leading an unexamined life. That’s a recipe for disaster.

I don’t mean to freak you out, but if you follow the path of least resistance without some honest self exploration, you’re just setting yourself up for a miserable seven year itch followed by a tacky mid-life crisis.

Good luck figuring it all out.

I think I’m going to a Tea Party meeting this week just for kicks.  Any advice for fun things I can say/do?  I don’t want to get thrown out, but I do want to rabble rouse a bit.

How about starting a spell-check station? Bring a folding table and a dictionary, put out a tip jar, and offer your services editing their protest signs. Reassure them that you’re not there to correct political errors, just grammatical ones.

Dear Coke Talk,

My grandma wouldn’t sign the sex ed form so my friend Ricky and I had to play tetherball outside.  What the heck were they talking about in there?!

Thanks a bundle!

–Tom Oatmeal

P.S. This is more for Ricky.  I know what they were talking about, but I thought maybe you could just tell me what you think it is first to kind of confirm that we’re on the same page.  But I definitely know.

Dear Tom,

Don’t worry, you and Ricky didn’t miss much.

If your public school was anything like mine, all they did was separate the boys and girls into different sections of the gymnasium.

On the girls side of the room, a nice lady from the local Baptist church showed up with some very colorful posters depicting all the myriad ways we could infect, defile, or otherwise bleed from most of the holes in our young female bodies.

Special attention was paid to areas of new hair growth, as well as the place in fiery hell reserved for evil girls who murder innocent babies in botched back-alley coat hanger abortions wherein they themselves subsequently die from guilt and exsanguination.

Over on the boys side, I’m pretty sure they just raffled off a few of those wooden triangle jump-a-peg games that the shop teacher stole from the Cracker Barrel.

“Eg-no-ra-moose” indeed.

Say hey to Eric for me!