Question: Dear Mrs. Vera, How would you suggest the Congress deal with what they call the Fiscal Cliff?

Answer: Dear Cliff,

Try not to buy into the media hype regarding the fiscal cliff. I for one am completely unworried at the prospect of hurtling off THAT particular ledge. Most Americans’ finances these days are so drained and depleted that the gravity of the situation will barely affect them. Try thinking of your relationship to financial failure as a bright, cheerfully colored balloon, filled with nothing but air. In fact, if you are carrying a lot of debt, it is like your balloon is filled with lighter-than air helium, and the Republican Party’s unwillingness to pay off the debt on the money they have already approved and spent will just leave you floating happily among the puffy fluffy clouds of welching over-reach!

Now if you are one of the unfortunate few burdened with astronomic economic well-being you might be tempted to wail like a crybaby who sees another child eating something you want, even if you don’t need it. These poor souls, if they have one, will have to soar over that fiscal cliff with their balloons full of nothing but weighty rubies the size of peaches, golden coins, burnished scepters, diamond studded tiaras, jade statuettes, bulky sheathes of real estate deeds along with assorted marble antiquities and cast-iron over-sized moneybin padlocks — No Thanks!

And anyway, lots of people have plummeted off cliffs and gone on to have successful, well-respected, fulfilling lives and careers,and some even became famous movie stars, like Montgomery Cliff and/or Cliff Robertson, Johnathan Livingstone Seagull and Chita Chita Rivera Bang Bang! When Mrs. Danvers tried her best to life-coach dim Rebecca into financial freedom, Rebecca’s quaking, paralyzing cowardice prevented her from escaping the grinding materialism of an over-dressed marriage. No number of Oscar awards inside a balloon is going to make that thing a flotation device — trust me on this.

But even if you do earn more in one day than a waitress earns in her entire, labor-filled and exhausting life you should be carefree and gay when your gem-encrusted jalopy’s wheels hit the salty air above those jagged rocks! Instead of repeatedly screaming “EEE! ARH! OH! EEE! ARH! OH!” over and over while your bones liquify allowing you to slide down stairs in a zig-zag stair shape while your speedometer blurrily whirls ever faster before flashing the message “crazy, ain’t it?” you should remember that with the cost of fossil fuels as high as they are you will surely come to a screeching stop just inches from the cold hard ground when the Nation’s vehicle runs out of gas.

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Mrs. Vera Newman is a San Francisco absurdist character, humorist, artist, writer, community organizer, clothes horse and co-founder, with Mister Tina, of The Verasphere. She has been answering the unasked questions she receives from the lonely, empty rooms of America’s heart-shaped circulatory pump room ever since it began beating. Nestled in the politically bent bowels of the Nation since she was a young girl babysitting the very same newborn Nation, her ability to self-reflect about anyone else’s embarrassing shortcomings, inept fumblings or lousy recipes has enabled her invisible rise as a modern day Cassandra, whatever that means. Feel free to dispose of all your worries by leaving them on her doorstep!