Dear Max,

Recently my sister purchased a subscription to Hard Evidence Magazine – a long-running monthly publication concerned with conspiracies and paranoia. This purchase is highly out of character with the rest of her usual reading digest: Cosmo, New Idea etc, and needless to say, I find it highly concerning.

My question to you is this: How do I tell my sister, whom I love dearly, that I’m worried she’s about to go on a homicidal rampage without tearing a hole in the entire relationship?

Clare

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Dear Clare,

In this life, there are some problems you can solve on your own. This is not one of those problems. You did the right thing coming to me.

Ah, sibling rivalry. Ah. It’s a subject that’s quite literally very close to my heart, given that I ate and then regurgitated my twin brother Zax (my parents were quite lazy with names) while still in utero. Yes, he’s definitely now a horribly deformed young man, but I can honestly say I have honestly never had a better or more deformed friend in my whole life. Honestly.

With this said, the sibling dynamic can certainly be a hard one to master, and it appears you and your sister reached a fairly common stumbling block: conspiracy denial. Shut up and let me explain:

Inevitably, during the development of any relationship, there will come a time when one party – usually the cool, mature party – will realise that the other party is a total fucking weirdo who believes in shit like conspiracy theories and toothpaste and monogamy, and will seek to distance themselves post-haste.

(Aside: does anyone understand the meaning of this phrase? I think it means “after haste” but that makes not a lot of sense because if you did it after haste then what would be the point? Email me if you share my concern.)

Unlike in any normal relationship, where you can politely tell the other person that you’d like very much to stop intercoursing them, goodbye forever HAHA DEAL WITH IT YOU SKINNY FOOL, you can’t exactly stop intercoursing your siblings without dire consequences. Or something?

Therefore, what it’s best for you to do is to be supportive of your sister’s new direction in life, while also slowly distancing yourself from her incestuous clutches. Take an interest in her interests, and get yourself up to speed on some of the most common conspiracies to show you’re putting in the effort. To get you started, I’ve compiled a comprehensive list of conspiracies that may well turn out to be communist plots. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should at least give you a leg up in conversation the next time you see your sis:

– The plight of Tommy, the deaf, dumb and blind Pinball Wizard from The Who song ‘Pinball Wizard’

– Janet Jackson’s nipple slip at the Superbowl XXXVIII Halftime Show

– Adolf Hitler’s grave

– Every David Letterman ‘Top 10’ list from the year 1994

– Hurricane Katrina

– Hurricane Katrina’s twin brother Hurricane Zatrina who was eaten and then regurgitated in utero…

It’s also important to remain at least a little bit coy, lest your sister begin to think that you, too, are in on the conspiracy. I mean, the last thing you would want to do is give a suspicious, paranoid person interested in conspiracies reason to be suspicious of your involvement in a potential conspiracy, right? Right.

That is, unless you are in on the conspiracy, which would now mean that I’m in on the conspiracy, which now means you are all in on the conspiracy hahahahaha.

WE HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED. ABANDON SHIP. ABANDON SHIP.

Mel Gibson was a ghost the whole time,

Max

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