This week: Advice on growing slowly fatter (Photo: Associated Press)

Truncating the week's advice columns:

If your friend is in her third year of lying about attending medical school, you must ditch her. And if your fiancee has forced you to surrender your very real dream of becoming a doctor in order to accommodate his life goals, you must consider his position. Remember to document an ex-boyfriend's repeated attempts to contact your current girlfriend against her wishes. Don't announce your wedding on Facebook and then complain that people heard about it. If you are invited to a party and instructed to cook a specific recipe, just cook the thing. If your parents call the police whenever you fail to respond to their calls within 24 hours, let the police educate them on the proper use of emergency services. Do not propose to a woman in order to lock her down for as long as your joblessness persists. You are obligated to travel the country, with your sister, in a recreational vehicle. [Carolyn Hax]

Refuse to give gifts to your adult family members. Many young women wear short skirts and low-cut shirts and manage to avoid molestation. It's fine to maintain silence in the face of your friend's plans to wed her physically and emotionally abusive boyfriend. Send a letter to your cancer-stricken mentor.If your wife told you to tell her if she gets fat, and she is getting fat, but she has already hinted to you that she recognizes she is getting fat, you are not obligated to raise the issue with her. If you have elementary-school children, you can't just pretend that your husband isn't cheating on you with another woman. Often, people who are not good about stuff are in possession of a Y chromosome. If your wife punches you in the face and tells you that's normal, you can just skip the couples counseling. If you stop caring about your sibling remembering your child's birthday, you will need to find a new source of simmering family tension. If you're not worried about your husband's plans to buy his married co-worker flowers for her birthday, why are you writing to an advice columnist about it? [Dear Prudence]

You must inform your sex partners that you write about sex, but you must also obscure your identity under a pseudonym in order to continue to convince these people to have sex with you. If you travel to your long-distance girlfriend for the sole purpose of breaking up with her, you will leave her as an otter, banging an oyster against the rocks, in the hopes of breaking and eating it. [Miss Information]

Deal with a troubled 12-year-old with Skyping. Force your colleague to allow you to proofread your work in order to prevent her from annoyingly repeating it under her breath. Do not attempt to communicate with your ex-boyfriend through Ask Amy. Advise the 38-year-old man not to marry your horrible daughter. If you disapprove of men attending bachelor parties, you need to stop acting like such a mommy. If someone asks your race, you should politely respond, "Human."* [Ask Amy]

* This is the stupidest piece of advice I have ever seen.