I am writing to you, as I do not know to whom else to turn. I recently heard an Associated Press report that Aaron Carter is finding pop stardom more challenging than he had originally thought. He recently said to a reporter, "Honestly, I thought [celebrity] was just being recognized and having everybody in the whole world love you."

At the time I heard this, I was working at my part-time job at the liposuction clinic down on Wilshire Street. The suction device was broken, but Mrs. Van Derhoff's anesthesia had already kicked in, so we were forced to continue. It became my job to find a length of tubing and then to manually siphon out the gelatinous heft. Some of our patients do not need the surgery and are just victims of an overly self-critical body image, but this was not the case with Mrs. Van Derhoff. Since she had only viewed herself in mirrors of standard size, she had no pragmatic idea of how big she really was. Mr. Van Derhoff was not available to tell her, as he was believed to be lost after ill-advisedly following the family moose into one of Mrs. Van Derhoff's more cavernous buttock dimples. She had so many love handles that were it not for her immensely fat body, she would have been the most portable person in the world. Regrettably, upon hearing about Aaron's dilemma, I snarfed the majority of one of these aforementioned handles.

Aaron continued, "But you know, you actually have a lot more enemies being a star than you do being a normal person, because some get jealous. Some people don't think you're fit for it or some people just wanna be doing what you do." He's 13 years old now and, while he is a talented singer, I fear that the combined pressures of fame; in addition to memorizing his haftarah portion just might fling him over the edge.

But is Aaron Carter as lost as he seems, or is he as wise as the Talmudic Rabbis who inspire his every deed? After all, I do believe it was Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki who first offered up, "Girl, I'm Gonna Love You Forever, Baby," as an allegory for the Passover miracle. Yes, it was either Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki or David Chokachi. When I went home for Thanksgiving, a relative of mine asked about the flag burning incidents on campus. The focus of the Thanksgiving dinner immediately turned me. This was a refreshing change, as usually the focus for the majority of the meal is my incontinent great aunt who combines this trait with a traditional drunken belligerence and refusal to walk to the bathroom herself. My cousin and I were just finishing tying on our rubber aprons in preparation to take her to the lavatory when my uncle asked me the question. I removed my protective goggles so as to make more meaningful eye contact with my relatives.

I described how people had descended upon our campus and had destroyed a flag that hundreds of students had just spent their afternoons praising. I continued that I did not understand how these people could simultaneously proclaim hatred for all that America stands for, but do so while they enjoy the freedom to protest which is, ironically, one that the government provides them. I told my family that you could not have the wagging tail without the rest of the dog, unless you built some sort of freakish contraption. The naivete I had towards America's incorruptible greatness in many ways had already been infinitely better articulated by Aaron during the radio interview I heard while operating the Suck-o-Tron. I am not sure what event led Aaron to share his epiphany with the world, but I had been lucky enough to pinpoint the flag burning as the event that changed my perspective on America and our perceived role in the world.

Nevertheless, I continued by saying that if you want the warm nuzzles on a cold winter's day, sometimes you need to put up with a little pee on the carpet. This reminded us that, as insightful as I was being, no amount of insight would be able to get the stains out of the upholstery that my great aunt contributed to the colorfully festive atmosphere of the evening. I wish that there had been a way to simultaneously shed some light on how to react to the unfortunate incidents on our campus and how to plug up my leaking great aunt so as to not ruin yet another chair.

Perhaps Aaron Carter does have the answer to both, when he sings in his classic, "Baby It's You": "Check out the way / She ties up her laces / Puttin' a smile on our faces / I say hey (hey) ho (ho) / Baby it's you that I want / Come a little closer / And don't get me wrong / I'm kinda shy / But I know what I want / I'm crazy about you / So let's get it on."