Mary-Annette Stringpuhler of Plumbpond, Nevada recently wrote to us to bare her soul. Apparently it is quite warm in Nevada this time of year because her bare soul never seemed to get cold, even after thirteen pages of incoherent ranting. The following comment was rescued from that convulsing sea of correspondence.

“Dear Danger Couch,” she writes, “All my friends tell me you are funnier than an inhaler full of pepper spray, but I don’t know for myself, because I am afraid to watch your videos for fear that a sudden power surge to my computer screen could trigger a massive video flare and barbecue my retinas, leaving me unable to find my TV remote. This thought terrifies me.”

We empathize with you Mary-Annette and want you to know that you are not a bad person. You are merely a boiling pot of psychoses fueled by a raging inferno of irrational fears.

Now there is something you must keep in mind about your irrational fears..

Simply this - they are stupid and you should stop having them.

If for some reason, this technique does not work for you, try this: cancel out you irrational fears with rational deductions.

If you fear there is a monster under your bed, all you must do is think it through. When you do, you will realize that anything down there would have choked to death on dust bunnies and dirty socks long ago.

Now don’t you feel better?

Good. This will leave you plenty of emotional room for real fears like the following:

The fear that a sudden drop in the supply of liquid hand soap will plummet the world into an irreversible plunge of anarchy, hysteria and disturbingly dirty digits.

The fear that a tribe of nomadic, llama-herding pygmies will camp for the winter in your yard, subjecting you to fresh droppings, shed fur, and nasty letters from the housing association.

The fear that your house will sink into the earth, revealing that it was built on a landfill of used q-tips, rancid jello and toenail clippings.

The fear that all the coins, pens, and keys you have ever misplaced in your entire life will simultaneously appear in your underwear as you walk through an airport metal detector

That’s all the fears we have time for today, please let us know if you need fresh fuel for your paranoia

The D.C. crew