Welcome to the Mailbag on Monday (on Tuesday again, this time just out of sheer laziness, okay? You want to make something of it??!). As ever, what follows are actual questions sent in by actual readers over the actual Internet. The address for queries is scott.feschuk@macleans.rogers.com.

Dear Scott: I just moved to Montreal, and I don't speak any French. The locals here don't seem to like me very much. Any advice for fitting in? –G.W., Montreal

Aww, that’s just part of the super-fun hazing ritual to which prank-loving Montrealers subject all newcomers! Don’t worry – they’ll warm up and slowly begin to accept you as a citizen after, oh, three or four generations.

Seriously though, I don’t speak much French either, and I gotta tell you that what works for me when I visit Quebec is repeating myself slower and louder in English, while simultaneously adopting a facial expression that conveys my disbelief and seething resentment that no one seems willing to understand what I am saying even though I. Am. Talking. Perfectly. Clearly. Like. This.

Sighing theatrically helps. Also the eye-rolling.

Do all that long enough and the locals will take a real liking to you – believe me, they’ll start talking to you and gesturing to you and they just won’t stop, not even when the police pull them off of you. Bonne luck!

Dear Scott: When I was a kid, that Mr. Blackwell guy used to get all kinds of press when he did his list of worst-dressed celebrities. He was hilarious! Is he dead or something? (I realize I could look this up on Google in two seconds but somehow it’s more exciting to wait for an answer. You know, anticipation and all that.) – Y.F., Vancouver

No, Mr. Blackwell is not dead. In fact, from what I’ve been able to dig up, he’s already at work on his 48th annual “worst dressed” list, to be released early in the new year. But you’re right – Mister (I feel comfortable enough to call him by his first name) sure doesn’t get the media attention that he used to get, possibly because these days tens of thousands of Americans are employed full-time to critique the crappy fashion sense of boozy starlets, underpantless heiresses and whatever Paula Abdul is.

But I have a soft spot for Mr. Mister, who is approximately 140 years old and had the foresight to be dissing celebrities back when Lindsay Lohan was just a sleazy, hard-drinking gleam in her mother’s eye. Here are some ways to revive the buzz around Mr. Blackwell’s list:

• Reflecting recent trends in celebrity attire, next year make it the 1st Annual List of Worst Dressed Vaginas.

• Instead of using photographs, dress up monkeys to look like the celebrities on the list. People love celebrities and they love monkeys. Do not even try to tell me that a single media outlet in North America would not cover this.

• Increase the stakes by vowing to kill next year’s “winner” with his bare hands and a vintage-chic feather boa.

• Follow the worst-dressed celebrities around with a bullhorn, constantly shouting, “Nice shoes!” – but in a sarcastic way, until one of them punches him in the face and he gets on Access Hollywood holding a big T-bone steak over his eye.

• Form a Guardian Angel-style vigilante group that roams trendy Hollywood nightspots, knocking Britney Spears unconscious and forcibly attiring her in stylish cashmere.

Dear Scott: I love soccer. Love it! But it makes me kind of crazy that most Americans couldn’t care less. Could you please travel to a parallel universe and let me know if things would have changed down there if Beckham hadn’t been injured? – R.E., parts unknown

I’d love to. I really would. But in the last parallel universe I visited, man was but the plaything of a ruthless monkey despot and, let me tell you, I am never, ever going back there – at least not until Zoltan the Monkey King apologizes to me for being unfaithful with Parallel Universe Charlie Sheen. I thought we had something special, Zolty.

Anyway, you too need to accept reality, R.E. You can put Beckham on the field. You can put Rinaldo on Beckham’s shoulders. You can add nudity, stilts, a roving herd of robotic horses that shoot lasers from their eyes – in a sports-saturated age in which Americans have already set aside most weekends to watch hillbillies drive around in circles and the approximately 493 commercials featuring Peyton Manning for some reason, no one man nor team of men nor ambitious attempt at mass hypnosis will succeed in convincing America to watch a sport in which the most common expression is “nil-nil.”

And for the love of Mike don’t go telling them how popular soccer is in the rest of the world – that only alienates them further. Americans prefer profoundly American pursuits, like football and obesity.

Dear Scott: You’re a former speechwriter for a (kinda) world leader – can you give George W. Bush something to say that will help him sell the Iraq war to the American people? Because I think he could use the help. – P.Y., Hamilton

Sure thing, P.

• “Don’t know what you’ve been hearing, but it’s going great now!”

• “My fellow Americans: Are you familiar with the term ‘mulligan?’”

• “Yes, I read the polls. I know that 70% of you don’t support this war right now. But I take comfort in the fact that 45% of you do.”

• “Sleeeeeeepy… [swings pocket watch]… you are getting verrrrrry sleeeeepy…”

• “Hi, I’m George Bush. You might remember me from such impressive presidential moments as ‘standing at Ground Zero with that bullhorn’ and, uhh, well that Ground Zero example is a pretty good one. Let’s leave it at that.”

• “The situation is grim. The odds are against us. As commander-in-chief, I have no choice but to order the calling up of Capt. James T. Kirk and that pointy eared fellow to get us out of this here jam. [Long, awkward pause.] What?”

• “The good news is that the Iraqis are now almost completely able to police themselves in many parts of the country. The bad news is that I made that up.”

Scott: your musings on rock stars were enthralling and thought-provoking. Let's say you were born in such a year that you were of rocking age in the 70s. Let's also say that you were a shaggy, unkempt rock star as opposed to a shorn, unkempt writer. Describe your band, its heyday, and its eventual downward spiral towards powder drugs, sobriety, and the inevitable sucking. – J.G., Saskatoon

My 1970s rock band would have shared a lot of the same narrative elements and thematic subtext as the rise and fall of Led Zeppelin, but with more interspecies sex and 20-minute bass solos. Also: accordions. Three of them. Accordions are awesome because if worn correctly they can leave the audience and law-enforcement officials uncertain as to whether the performer is, in fact, entirely nude. “Wear an accordion,” I’d tell my exhibitionist rock star friends. But would Jim Morrison listen? Probably not. He’s gotta be all, “Woooooo, lookee here, it’s my wang!” Stupid Jim Morrison.

Anyway, it would have been awesome. My band would have stood for something, man. We’d have fought the power – not in the African American way later made popular by Public Enemy, which sounds like a lot of work, but in the thin white guy way of pretending to be anti-establishment but then later selling our back catalog to J.C. Penney for use in promoting their spring white sale.