Roll up your sleeves and prepare to witness copious amounts of elbow grease dear readers, another Enthusiask column is here to sanitize, sterilize and criticize you into shape.  Look on me as an advice icon: as morally and mentally muscular as Mr. Clean®, minus the bald head, earring and undershirt ensemble.

Advice is often a messy business, given the occasionally delicate nature of the issues one has to deal with.  And some people aren’t content with just a single problem, they seem to collect them: piling each on top of the other until they are buried underneath like a hoarder falling victim to a teetering stack of dusty National Geographic.

So how to proceed with solving multiple problems, when it seems that most people are incapable of tackling even one successfully?  Well, ask yourself a few simple questions.  Can you walk and chew bubblegum at the same time?  Can you pat your head and rub your stomach in a circle simultaneously?  Can you steer an outboard motor with your foot on the tiller while baiting a hook?  If you answered no to any of these questions then you may rightly have some concerns as to your ability to handle multiple faults within your life.

Then, what to do?  Curl into a ball?  Give up?  Flee town, change your identify and start over?  If you’re the quitting kind, then perhaps those choices seem tempting.   Or, you could look to my personal example and suck it up, soldier.  You’re in the presence of someone who solves up to five problems each week and you don’t hear me complaining (much).  Get out there and give life hell!

Before I forget, in an unpleasant call-back to my last column, it appears I inadvertently managed to offend a significant number of people from Springfield, thought I’m not entirely sure which Springfield.  Possibly all of them?  If I had mastered any other languages apart from plain English I’d be happy to tell you to kiss my ass in some other way, but this will have to do.

So…Onward!  And kiss my ass!

The annual heavy garbage pick-up day in my neighbourhood will be very soon.  Without going into a huge amount of detail, I’ll say that I have some very unusual stuff I need to get rid of.  The problem is, I’m not thrilled about the idea of the people who live on my street seeing my junk, staring at it, whispering and judging me behind my back.  I’ve struggled with this for so long now that I’ve abstained from throwing anything out on heavy garbage day for years now, and things are really cramped indoors.  I want my home back, but how do I get all this out of here discreetly?  – OllieOxenFree

Take it from someone who revels in his position as the most feared neighbour the street: stop worry about what they think.  This junk collection you’re so afraid of showing off could be your ticket to infamy; the stuff of local legend.  Children and small animals will scurry behind cover at your approach.  Grown adults will quicken their pace, eyes downcast, silently acknowledging your supremacy.  Door-to-door canvassers will pass your home undisturbed, out of sheer instinct.  Embrace your inner curmudgeon and a tranquil life will be yours.

Oliver, I’m a long-time comic book reader and collector but I’ve recently fallen on hard times.  I simply can’t afford to budget as much as I have in the past each month to the titles that I follow.  As much as I’ve been resisting the idea, I know I could be subscribing to comics digitally.  It would certainly be cheaper, but there is just something about the feel of the real thing, owning and taking care of the hard copy that I know I will miss.  How do old-school guys like you and me make the adjustment to digital? – ThomWhallop

                Something that electronic versions of comics and the real thing both have in common these days that I find completely jarring is the crispness of the resolution.  The pixel count on the digital artwork is almost flawlessly presented on screens, large or small.  Meanwhile even the physical comics are printed on such high quality paper that at times I don’t feel like I’m even reading a proper comic book.  When I was a kid the paper in these things was so crappy that you could practically see the pulp.  If you held your eye close enough the ink was sparse, spotty and seemed almost faded, even on the day of purchase.  My solution is to smudge my reading glasses all to hell right before I pick up a modern comic book.  Even the glossiest trade paperback is instantly transformed into the low fidelity experience of my youth.  Whether you choose to go a step further and read them in the dark with a flashlight, under the covers, is entirely up to you.  I certainly never do that.

I’m about to start a job where I have to do a fair amount of driving.  I’m also going to need to look up addresses constantly and while my cell phone can help in a pinch, I think I really need a proper GPS for my car.  Do you have any advice on what sort of device to get?  There are so many brands and models I’m overwhelmed. – XoraCroft

Don’t worry too much about what sort of GPS you get, as far as I can tell they all work much the same.  And they all have the same fatal flaw – reliance on satellites.  So in addition to a GPS make sure you have a proper road-map as a back-up.  A surprising number of “end of the world” scenarios from atomic war to geo-magnetic disasters would result in many electronic devices being rendered useless.  So get yourself a road-map, learn to read it and, most importantly, learn the particular talent required to fold the damn thing back up properly without it looking like a broken Origami crane.  Happy trails!

Things are getting pretty messy behind my entertainment unit and up in my suspended ceiling with the wiring for all my devices.  I really think I need some sort of cable management system.  Is there anything that you’d recommend? – ForestofCopper

Yeah I’ve got a pretty good ‘system’ I rely on.  I call it my short-term memory.  If I start counting up machines, connectors and plastic boxes and I end up with more than I can remember without having to resort to writing it all down, then I know I need to start getting rid of stuff.  If you feel like you have to hire a roadie each time it comes down to adding to or adjusting your home set-up then you’ve gone too far.

Hey, first time writing in.  So, I’m new to tablets.  I like the look and feel of them but I’m still deciding about the best input method, seeing what is more comfortable.  Should I go with a stylus or just continue to use my finger? – SteelSlumber

I think you’ll find that you’ve got things a bit mixed around.  Tablets are for swallowing.  It’s suppositories that are meant to go in the difficult end.  Honest mistake though, we’ve all been there: sometimes the packaging isn’t entirely clear.  It’s probably best to cover these things with your doctor (or proctologist, where relevant) when in doubt.

And as another column winds down, I can’t help but be proud at all the people I’ve assisted this week.  Well done, Oliver.  Please send your advice requests to Oliver@Enthusiacs.com for my consideration.  Until then, as the kitten on the poster says, hang in there.