Ask Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I finally saw the new Star Wars, and I wish I hadn’t. Not because of the movie itself. But because I caved in to all the fanboy hullaballoo out there. All the people saying their childhood was ruined, and all the people saying... well, that’s pretty much all that people are saying. No one says they like this movie. But it’s still going to make a billion bucks. So I’m wondering, what can I do that people will hate and still make me rich?

- A.A. Jabrams

Dear Mr. Lucas,

I just wish people could debate films based on craft elements rather than the effect it has on their pop-culture childhoods. All the new Star Wars movies are hot trash compactors, but that’s strictly because their creators needed to go read a blasted textbook. You wanna get rich? Write the next definitive story in an underappreciated genre, fire up a merchandising machine, string it out for, oh, 30-some-odd years, then sell out to Disney. Oh wait.

– I have a bad feeling about this, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

My sister is one of these essential oil evangelicals. Everyone she meets, within 15 minutes she’s signing them up. I hate MLMs, but I have to admit, the oils smell nice. And I know it’s cool to bash people saying that oils keep them healthy. But, has anyone proven that they *don’t* keep you healthy? I mean, humans survived for hundreds of thousands of years without medicine. Maybe there’s something to this plant juice thing?

- Lubed Up

Dear Oil Can Boyd,

I have to know. Are you pronouncing it “oyal” or “uhl?” Because I’m just now realizing that while I’ve heard lots of people talk about petroleum products as “uhl,” I’ve yet to hear someone say “essential uhl.” I’m thinking that these wonder-tinctures would be a lot less popular if everyone pronounced it that way. And yeah, no kidding our ancestors survived without antibiotics and Robitussin. They also survived without those little glass bottles.

– Go eat a plant, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

What happens if you take a probiotic and an antibiotic at the same time? Do they cancel each other out? Do they fight each other instead of focusing on their tasks of building good bacteria and decimating bad ones? Do they collaborate to build a better microbiome? Or is it a Thunderdome situation, where two biotics enter and only one biotic leaves? I called to ask my pharmacist these questions, and she hung up on me before I finished.

– Pill Popper

Dear Bio Curious,

When we experimented with drugs back in my day, which wasn’t so very long ago, mind you, this is not what we had in mind. Though I am curious now. I think you’ll have to experiment with a full course of antibiotics. Otherwise you’ll end up with a resistant strain of probiotics, and when they decide to rise up against their human masters, they’ll overrun us like a bad case of Disney spinoffs.

– Better your belly than mine, Rachel