Hello, my friends! I have long been dormant, this I know, but this man's desperate cry for help has stirred me into action once again! Yes, like a hibernating bear, I rested in the cave I now call home mostly sleeping, eating raw fish, and defecating messily (because of the raw fish). But now like said bear, that the wonderful month of March draws near, I shall answer your questions once again!

On to it.

Always with the multiple questions! Well, that's quite all right. To make up for lost time, I shall answer them all. (Your compliment helped this.)

1) Even given what little contextual clues I was, I could discern the nature of "HFCIT" in a few seconds. An insight into my genius follows.

Step one: Acknowledge that Lara Croft is about every nerdy gaming male's fantasy. She kicks ass, she has a british accent, and she has a large bank account (teats, too!). Put guns in her hands, and you have yourself a multimedia franchise. Step two: What does a typical nerd say in response to this image of the perfect woman blasting stuff to hell with large guns? (Considering that this is a quote from a strategy guide author, we can assume he is a nerd.) How about... (children, cover your eyes)

How Fucking Cool Is That?

There is absolutely nothing phallic about this woman riding an obelisk.

2) I once had a similar conversation with my father, the great Master Goofypants, and at the time I profess neither he nor I knew precisely how the "cousin" system worked in Anglo-Saxon families. I do not mean to imply that you are an Anglo-Saxon out of stereotype, but the A-S system dominates almost every aspect of the American culture, by brute force if nothing else. Measurements of "removed" are dictated by generations of children descending from your cousin. I did some basic research, and have come up with this model for easier understandment:

You are Person A, and we shall dub you Daniel (for that is your name). Let us say that your cousin's name is Cindy. By "cousin," I mean that she is the biological child of a pairing of your aunt and uncle. Cindy is, in longhand, your "first cousin."

Let us now presume that your cousin Cindy is a no-good dirty whore. At age 15, Cindy has herself the first of many children, Scarlet. This child, your cousin's child, becomes your "first cousin once removed." And so on. Should Cindy's little Scarlet also turn out to be a dirty tramp and have her own child, Wanda, then Wanda will be your "first cousin twice removed."

Now should you, Daniel, decide to have a child at a decent age after marrying a woman of good standing, that child (named Rock, because it's such a strong name) will be "second cousin" to the second-generation whore, Scarlet.

Now that that's all clear, I have to ask: How come there are so many whores in your family? Goodness gracious, man.

An inimitable tome of wisdom.

3) The description of the girl's relationship to you reminds me of dialogue from a great and fabulous movie known as Spaceballs. When Lone Star asks the dread Dark Helmet what DH's laundry list "makes them" in terms of relation, Dark Helmet replies "absolutely nothing." (Bonus points if you know how DH finishes that sentence!) Which is true here, too. You are twice-over not related, seeing that there is a step- involved, as well as the fact that this girl (could it be Cindy?) is a foster child.

Biology is not, then, a factor. What is a factor is how the two of you were raised in conjunction with each other. Were you raised, indeed, as cousins? Roughly the same age, play around a lot, watch terrible children's programming together? If so, then you have a problem. Actually, you have more than one problem.

Problem 1: The basis of your relationship is familial. You will see it this way, she will see it this way, and your families will sure as hell see it this way if you decided to pursue romance with this girl. Now, they may be more open-minded than I suggest, but given that you live in a small town, and given that I do not have a complete psychological make-up of your entire family, I can only say what my instinct tells me. And that is that this would end poorly, and rapidly.

Problem 2: You need to meet more girls. Given the small town setting, and the high Dork Quotient (DQ) of your other questions (it's okay, I'm a dork too), I would posit the idea that you don't interact with many women at all. This suggests to me that this girl, Cindy the Whore, is the center of your attraction more out of convenience and exposure than out of genuine romantic inclinations. In short, you dig her because she's there and she's accessible. I may be totally off, but I work with what I'm given.

No matter what, if she has made it clear she views you in a "cousin" light, that is one big flashing red light right there. Lay off, you'll only creep her out.

As for suicide, slashing your wrists in a warm bath is actually kind of pleasant. Remember, slash down the wrist, not across.

I just read about that, is all. That is not a personal endorsement or an admittance of the darkness within my own soul.

Absolutely not.

Who wants ice cream?

4) Dimensions of a mathematical nature (height, depth, etc.) are real (well, they're human conventions, and saying they're "real" is like saying an inch is "real," but you get the idea). Dimensions of the sci-fi nature are not real. We have no evidence to suggest that anything other than our own universe exists. Nyah.

6) I guess not, since you'd be entering a place that is not real.

Bob remembers he left the oven on at a very inopportune time.

7) This is kind of tricky. Let's stick to a short answer on this one, because the longhand answer involves, well, a college education and involves terms like "Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction" and "Doppler shift." If you're willing to pay me $35,000 a year, then we have a deal. Otherwise...

The speed of light is indeed quantifiable, and is generally agreed to be roughly 186,000 miles per second, or 300,000 kilometers per second in a vacuum such as space. The speed of light is generally referred to as c, for reasons that are only completely clear to Europeans.

Anyway, to put it as simply as possible, we as humans cannot break (or even reach) c because we are made of matter, whereas light is simply waves (or particles, or a combination of the two, depending on whose theory you believe). As we move faster and faster toward c, we must pile more and more energy on to keep going. As we approach closer to c, the energy we need to keep going becomes exponentially larger, to the point where literally infinite energy is needed to exceed c. Our hypothetical spaceship would break apart. Check it:

The building block of our universe, matter, is held together by electromagnetic fields. Light itself is an elecromagnetic field (of sorts). To propel matter faster than light, we would have to break the electromagnetic barrier -- that very same stuff holding all matter together. You cannot break A (light) with C (matter), wherein C = A + B (atoms). This is a nifty equation I just now made up to illustrate the illogical nature of breaking the speed of light with matter, so don't go showing it to any physics professors. In short, it is impossible to break something's barrier if the breaker is held together by that something.

Some folks would suggest shooting a slingshot while going at just under c in order to break it. This won't work. I can break it down for you in yet another equation, and this equation is real.

Assume your ship is travelling at 0.9c, ninety percent the speed of light (we shall call this speed X). You fire your slingshot, which travels at a speed of 0.1c, Y. You would assume the total speed of X and Y would stack totally, at Z. In other words, if X were going at 0.9c, and Y were going at 0.9c, the total travel speed would be 1.0c.

You would be wrong.

The real equation looks like this:

Z = (X + Y)/(1 + XY/c^2), wherein "c^2" is c squared.

Plug in the numbers.

Z = (167,400 + 18,600)/(1 + (167,400 x 18,600)/34,596,000,000) =

186,000/(1 + 3,113,640,000/34,569,000,000) =

186,000/(1 + .090070294...) =

186,000/1.09007 = 170,631.24 = 0.917c

The numbers diminish more and more the higher you go. All of this simply re-emphasizes the point: you would need infinite energy to make matter travel faster than a component part of itself. In essence, matter would have to become energy. If matter became energy, well... it would cease to be matter, and become, ba dum, light!

This is running roughshod over some more delicate caveats, but the basic idea, for our purposes, is sound.

And yes, that was the short answer. Extremely short, and extremely abbreviated. Count your lucky stars.

8) After answering that last question, bub, you can find your own damn Question #5.

That's it for today, friends and neighbors. Tune in next friday for yet another barrel of wisdom right here on LethalDeath.com!

Please, write in any questions you may have regarding trivia, love, murder, or hamsters! I'll be glad to answer.

- Dr. Goofypants